There are lots of things one could say about Delmar that are less than flattering. I know, I say them often. But you can’t say it doesn’t have a microbrewery and that tends to take the edge off some of the negativity.
To be fair, Evolution Brewery didn’t choose Delmar. The short story is that they were trying to open a cool brew pub in Salisbury. The town council there, however, is apparently committed to urban blight. Rather than allow the owners to renovate a defunct railway station ruining the areas crack house motif, the town played hard ball until the owners decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
The upside was the company already had the equipment and they needed to start putting it on a paying basis. In a one fingered salute to the state, county and town they opened up shop about 150 feet over the state line, in Delaware. Now I’m stuck with a brewery walking distance from my home. Pour me. (Jesus, that was bad.)
The brewery supplies beer for the owners several popular regional restaurants and to some of the local liquor stores. They also offer tastings. For $5 you can sample the four beers (soon to be six) they keep on tap and for another $7 you can have a growler’s worth of your favorite.
Because they don’t have a restaurant license (I think) they let you keep the glass meaning that one thing almost everyone over 21 in town has in common is a collection of tiny Evolution brewery glasses and a fierce loyalty to the local brand.
Also, the beer is superior.
Anyway, one out of every three trips there is an adventure as I get to meet more of my neighbors and passers-through and generally interesting folks. I figured documenting them was worth its own page.
Emancipator? I hardly know'er!
The joke goes like this: You ask your audience how every racist joke begins. Then you look around slowly to make sure no one resembling your punch line is within ear shot. The problem, of course, is sometimes your audience might be indignant even if they look as you do. The only thing worse than offending some one’s sense of morality is offending their self-image.
