Madness, madness.

I’ve been going to Bockfest for years now. Back in my day, before these damned cellular telephones, facsimile machines, and lava lamps, one could actually sit in the biergarten and drink bock in a leisurely manner. As the years have gone by, the crowd has swelled larger and larger. Good for Capital, I suppose... but midway through an hour-long wait for beer, trapped in the middle of a sea of people, I began to curse the tides of progress.

After this soul-crushing winter, perhaps it was the first bright hint of decent weather that caused the event to resemble a tick about to pop. Gates opened at 11:00 and beer didn’t flow until noon. By that time, the crowds were solidly packed around the various dispensing locations. My friends and I staked out a promising location and waited.

At noon, Brewmaster Kirby Nelson took to the stage, made a few remarks, and with a starting pistol, officially marked the opening of the taps. The crowd lurched forward. Within fifteen or twenty minutes, I had managed to snag a beer: Blonde Doppelbock. Capital has been controlling the amount of Blonde dispensed over the last few years, and this year we were limited to a single, 16 oz. serving. I decided to go straight for it, and it was as tasty as ever. Sweet, strong, and smooth. And once I’d finished it, well, I only had to wait an hour in line to get my second beer.

Strike that. It wasn’t a line. This was a maddening crush of primates desperately squirming towards the taps. There was no discernible progress, just a weird, high-pressure shuffling. Occasionally, a crazed drinker would slither in from the side of the cluster, squeezing out the poor souls who were trapped in the middle. Impotent curses would ring out, followed by choked sobbing. If you were lucky enough to get your mug filled, you faced the daunting challenge of reaching the perimeter without getting your precious cargo spilled everywhere. It was brutal.

With booze in hand, however, it was a far calmer scene. Packed like sardines, to be sure, but with the sun beating down, Pupy Costello playing somewhere in the distance, and Porta-johns in abundance, one could feel that this was a good and wise way to spend a Saturday. I went with Maibock for my second beer, and it is entirely possible that this crisp golden brew enhanced my mood somewhat.

Late afternoon brought the fish toss. This, of course, is one of Bockfest’s signature events, and I looked forward to it. Not to participate -- I’ve had fish corpses explode in the air above me before, and I can leave it to others these days. In truth, I hoped that the crowd would be so distracted by the spectacle that we would have an easier time getting to the beer. Nope.

As we gazed longingly towards the taps, fortune smiled upon us. Through fast talk, code words, secret handshakes, winning charm, and true grit, we managed to talk our way through a secret passage to the dank control center of the brewery. There we were granted a brief audience with Kirby Nelson himself. He allowed us a tantalizing taste of something new -- Baltic porter, a dark brew made with lager yeast. It was incredibly smooth, and a bit sweet.

Eventually, we shuffled out and away. By that time, it was something of a relief. I love Bockfest, but the vast crowds are becoming difficult to endure. Still, the forced rationing of booze had an upside: I was nowhere near as far from sobriety as I normally would be by the end of Bockfest. In fact, I only fell down once.