Ichiro’s devious Papua New Guinea beer update update

DMZ · July 2, 2008 at 5:15 pm · Filed Under Mariners 

“Usually I enjoy Japanese beer, but given the situation, if I was objectively watching the game, I wouldn’t care if it was Japanese beer, American beer or beer from Papua New Guinea.” — Ichiro

In our quest to honor Ichiro’s wishes and consume American, Japanese, and Papua New Guinean beers as the team finishes out this season, we were briefly stymied by the total lack of Papua New Guinean beers in Washington. Or, it appeared, anywhere we could get to.

But we rallied! And came up with some ideas. Some others claimed they could get Washington State Liquor Kombinat stores to special order the beer, but I haven’t heard from anyone that did it, so I’m betting that turned out to not be true.

I ordered from this place, and was skeptical of their claimed quick delivery time. This turned out to be prescient as it took them quite a while to respond at all to my order.

My order number was in the single digits, and it wasn’t nine. I would bet that they were all sitting around peacefully, minding their own business, when suddenly the cute little website they’d thrown up started to spit out shipping manifests for Ichiro loyalists, and they had to run over to the store to buy some beer to ship people.

But it’s coming, or so they claim in their latest email. And I remember that I wrote this:

Ichiro can’t come out and call for the fans to rise up and oust this inept franchise, to somehow make a change from the people who represent ownership on down. He may even have no idea how it could happen. He doesn’t know how a huge, angry, resentful fan base might pull this off.

But Ichiro has faith in us, in our ability to unite together to acquire crazy obscure beers where there are no local sources to be found, and from that, to go on and affect the larger, even more difficult changes we all know must happen here.

And in each of these victories, cracking open a bottle of potentially delicious beer or watching the franchise build a winning team around our favorite players, will be all the sweeter for having seemed impossible from where we stand now.

That was May 26th, and look what’s happened since then. Ichiro knows what he’s doing.

Comments

8 Responses to “Ichiro’s devious Papua New Guinea beer update update”

  1. RobP on July 2nd, 2008 6:30 pm

    Well, I think this whole quest was pretty damned awesome, as a non-Mariner-and-non-beer fan three time zones away. Tried looking in the liquor stores here in Montreal, but you obviously had more success than me.

    Needless to say, Ichiro has another unreasonable fan.

  2. PositivePaul on July 2nd, 2008 7:25 pm

    Funniest. Subplot. Ever.

    Nothing like rallying the masses for a (good?) cause!

  3. Lauren, token chick on July 2nd, 2008 8:53 pm

    I am not a beer fan either, but I will happily attend the event that we have to ceremonially consume this beer from afar.

  4. daveblev on July 2nd, 2008 9:44 pm

    I’ll fly out to Seattle for this event. I’ve looked in some east coast places to no avail. While I was in Reno all last month, some places claim they have over 30 imported beers, none of them were Papua New Guinea. My challenge is to find a bar or store out west that sells Abita’s Purple Haze. Meanwhile, I’ll ask the local Taphouse here if they can order Ichiro’s beer.

  5. mln on July 3rd, 2008 3:07 am

    Ichiro should hold a massive keg party … at Howard Lincoln’s house.

    All Mariner fans invited. Free beer for everyone!

  6. msb on July 3rd, 2008 6:27 am

    count me in on beer-quaffing.

  7. marc w on July 3rd, 2008 9:07 am

    We’re in the same boat, DMZ. I got the same e-mail on May 26th.

    I have to admit – now that we’re into July, the fact that the order is still listed as ‘pending’ is starting to get a bit worrisome. I’d accept ‘Shipped’ with the knowledge that they were never going to get it to me within 2-4 weeks as they claim, but I’d really like to think that they were able to put their hands on the beer and get it ready for shipment. Yeah, they must have been pretty surprised to get several case orders on the same day, but hey – that’s what you live for in business, right?

    a bit anxious, but trusting in the benevolence of any enterprise that in any way involves Ichiro,

    MW

    (oh, and PositivePaul, I’ve got you covered if/when this blessed box does show up on my door)

  8. nwtrev on July 3rd, 2008 5:17 pm

    dw said he emailed the brewery. I didn’t find if he posted a reply or not. I emailed them today but based on their web site, I’m not entirely sure it was actually sent off.

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