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Beer writer, fans of Downtown Crossing bar engage in brutal online slapfight
By adamg on Sun, 04/05/2015 - 6:13pm
Will Gordon, who writes about beer for Deadspin (and sports for boston.com) and Stoddard's, which sells beer downtown, along with various fans and friends and coworkers on both sides have spent much of the past day exchanging expletive-laden pleasantries over what a Stoddard's bartender may or may not have said about a particular type of craft beer in what may or may not have been a private discussion yesterday afternoon.
The frank and open exchange of ideas has been carried out over Twitter, which can be a difficult medium in which to follow a discussion in hindsight, but hey, parsing stuff like this out is just the sort of thing to try on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
It started yesterday afternoon when Gordon tweeted:
Bartender at @StoddardsPub loudly dissing Founders KBS as marketing fad for chumps. Ok to have an opinion, except he was hosting KBS event.
Founders is a Michigan brewer that just launched KBS, "an imperial stout brewed with a massive amount of coffee and chocolates."
Only problem is people at the bar claim Gordon overheard a private conversation and mistweeted what was actually said; that the bartender was not dissing the beer and making a general comment about the economy.
Oh, yeah, Gordon retorted? Yeah, and so's your old man, Stoddard's backers replied.
Well, more specifically, Gordon called the bartender a dickhead and said "Stoddard's can fuck off forever (or get a better social media intern?)"
To which Stoddard's manager Jamie Walsh replied: "This @WillGordonAgain is a piece of shit of the highest order. Cowardly keyboard tough guy."
After Gordon demanded Stoddard's admit the bartender had "messed up," Stoddard's replied, "Messed up for having an opinion? This is America yes? He didn't dis the beer. Gave an opinion. Its okay we will survive."
You would think that was all one could say in a situation like that, but the slap fight continued late into the afternoon today. Further bulletins as events warrant.
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Comments
T shirt?
Will boston.com, or Gordon be selling a t shirt about this?
Would buy it.
Probably the most exciting fight between two drunk dudes.
Would want to remember that.
Don't know about you, but I wouldn't get this salty
with the OG Salty at Stoddard's, online or otherwise.
Impact on Owner
MCSlim,
You are one of the more trusted opinions around here on such matters. My thoughts as I followed it real time in discomfort and am curious your reaction.
1. Will's job is to comment and review the beer industry and everything around it, and, in the process, drive page views for his sites. The start of the discourse, (saying that a bartender spoke ill of a product the bar was endorsing and making guests feel unwelcome) is along the lines of his employment. His reaction, to say the least, went overboard. He did highlight a major factor that runs deep in the boston bar world, and Salty puts himself out as representing; a hostile white world where words must be backed by violence or the threat of violence. Ergo the absurd quantity of violence at our bars compared to similarly situated cities. Will is right to highlight that wart on our city, but he did it in a (very) poor fashion. However, he still wins, because page views will go up.
2. Salty's employment is to run the bar at Stoddard's for the owner of the establishment. Full stop. While Salty tried to move this away from Stoddards, it was always at the center of the conversation. Every word that left his mouth, and the mouth of his compatriots (Caplan), it was as if the bar said it themselves. Patrick as always was a voice of reason but Will in very poor fashion went after him as well.
3. If I'm the owner of Stoddard's, and Salty didnt' expressly go through him for this twitter war or approve it in some way, I'm ripshit. Full stop. Stoddards has already filed Ch.11 once. Bars come and go. Whatever work and effort that the ownership group has put into the branding of stoddard's is gone. In one evening Salty and Caplan managed to completely change the branding of this bar from an urban craft beer bar with great food to a hostile townie joint that happens to have craft beer and decent food. And that's when folks like me who want a great place to go with our wives and families for lunch or an early dinner stop going. And for the owner, that's a danger.
Agreed that it's one of Gordon's jobs to comment on
the beer scene. But I don't think that precludes someone like Salty from reacting to perceived online insults, assuming his management is okay with him letting fly unedited and unmediated (he's been doing it for a while).
Granted, calling out critical customers online is tricky territory -- you can have it blow up in your face, as the old Pigalle chef/owner did, or get away with it without too much harm, as Alden & Harlow's chef/owner recently did. I'd say Jamie Walsh seems to be on pretty firm ground when he uses terms along the lines of "Internet tough guy" here.
Where Gordon loses me, aside from the imprudence of looking like a drunken ass who doesn't have the good sense to step away from the keyboard when angry, is on the ethnic and class slurs. A professional writer should be able to make his points without resorting to calling people "micks" and "townies".
Maybe a bit exaggerated? but...
This may be overstating the case a bit. There are a great many people who don't follow the incestuous social media wars of the Boston bar world, and who wouldn't even know about this spat, or care if they did. With that said, I share your view that as a business owner, I'd be beside myself if one of my employees got into a public fracas about something that was related to his employment capacity (and thus could become associated in the public's mind with your business). I'd also be kicking myself if I hadn't made clear my expectations of how my employees would conduct themselves, on social media or anywhere in public, in situations where they were identified with my business.
Just to be clear
When Will began calling everyone Meatball Mick Townies you just believed it and decided that the entire brand was now changed?
Ok. This isn't the earth shattering life changing event you made it out to be. I would say that defending your staff and bar from lies is part of the job.
I, as a witness and customer was under no one's authority and I would point out did none of the ethnic or obscene name calling. Only Will did.
Your take away is, "OH no shouting, not good." I hear you but sometimes that happens.
Calling any bar in DTX a "townie bar" whatever that entails just shows you are from somewhere else.
A 'hostile white world'
?????....
Last night
I saw some of Mayor Cappy's® retweets, about the "S.E. Hinton style insults" these guys were throwing around. Calling eachother "meatball" and "nerd." It sounded pretty brutal!
I was actually there
The entire thing began because Will Gordon was eavesdropping on a conversation and then Tweeting about what he thought he heard which was wrong.
Jamie called him on it and he instantly turned to a name calling troll. Chris Caesar, another Boston.com hack came to Will's aid having never been there proceeded to continue the unprofessional name calling and keyboard tough guy tirade.
Personally I'm just really sick of people going to Twitter, Yelp, FB or whatever to voice a grievance when the person you have the problem with is right in front of you and you re too spineless to say anything.
This whole thing spun out of control. These media outlets hire kids who think they get to say and do whatever they want because mommy and daddy always let them say and do whatever they want.
Jaime handled it. Stoddard's is a great bar and restaurant. If you haven't been, you should go.
But Ron, if you want to talk about potholes now, that's ok by me.
Caffeinated beer?
I recall either the state or the federal government banning caffeinated alcoholic beverages a few years ago. What has changed?
Neither
There are many beers brewed with coffee, including several brewed in our own Commonwealth. At one point the FDA considered banning kiddie-style drinks that combined a relatively high concentration of both alcohol and caffeine, plus fruity shit and day-glo colors (the concern being that the kiddies would guzzle 'em like they guzzle so-called "energy drinks"). I don't think they ever did any actual regulation, though.
FDA did ban them
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/17/alcohol.caffeine.drinks/
I think they've all changed their ingredients just enough to get around the ban though.
Not a blanket ban
The FDA deemed a few specific malt-liquor brands unsafe and forbade their sale, there was never any blanket ban. Beer brewed with coffee has (I believe) much less caffeine than these other sorts of drinks. A blanket ban would presumably have to include Irish coffee and all sorts of other popular cocktails, which would be ludicrous.
Edit: The Mass Alcoholic Beverages and Control Commission did the same thing as the FDA.
Massachusetts did indeed issue such a ban in 2010
in the wake of several young drinkers across the US getting themselves killed or nearly killed swilling Four Loko, which packs about four or five ordinary beers' worth of alcohol and a shot of espresso's worth of caffeine in one very sugary 24-ounce can: pound two of them and you're in trouble, three quick ones can mean alcohol poisoning. The caffeine is thought to mask some of the clues that tell a drinker they're getting stinko, more of a problem for the rookie drinkers at which it is clearly targeted. That's far less of a danger with coffee-flavored craft beers, I suspect.
You want to buy some Four Loco?
I know a guy who know's a guy.
That little twerp Will
Then decides to bash all of Dot.
By referring to them as "townies" no less.
What a tool. This whole thing makes me so glad I'm not a Twitterer.
I believe...
...the correct term is "Twit".
Stoddard's
None of this would be an issue if Stoddard's was still a cutlery store, like it's supposed to be.
Thank you!
I was scrolling frantically hoping that someone would set that straight.
Indeed...
"I was scrolling frantically hoping that someone would set that straight."
Some of us still have a sense of history of this city, a history that is fading by the minute. When even something as comparatively workaday as buying a pair of scissors could be mindful or a bit of a special occasion by going to a place like Stoddard's, rather than just rushing in and out of a CVS or Staples.
Of Negligible Relevance
Stoddards used to be a cutlery shop. It was a locally-owned business that started in like 1850, thrived for 150 years and grew to three locations selling knives, scissors, fishing gear, and stuff, and then crashed and burned when the second-to-last owner's son took over and tried to recreate it in his own image. That image, apparently, did not include selling the things that had kept it in business for so long and it sank not long after. It would not surprise me if the kid kept the name and brought his genius for marketing to this new venture and online presence.
It's not a bad bar...
...but I'm sad about the cutlery business being gone. That was one cool store.
Newton??? Proper Moose???
Not having been a customer myself, I had understood that Stoddard's — the cutlery store — had moved to Newton, specifically to Watertown Street in the Nonantum neighborhood. And about a year and a half ago, the Colonial Drug store, another longstanding old business (which primarily sold fragrances and grooming items in recent years), announced that they were moving out of Harvard Square and would be sharing space with Stoddard's in Newton.
A check this evening on Google, however, yields a Yelp report that Stoddard's has closed, apparently in the past 3 months. And their former website stoddards.com now leads to another website, propermoose.com, also based in Newton, but with no bricks-and-mortar presence. If you read the Yelp reviews and the moose website, it appears that Stoddard's and Proper Moose are/were owned by different people, David and Jeff respectively. So much for "keeping the name and bringing his genius for marketing to this new venture and online presence"!
He's now calling
People "Townie Mic's" this guy is just asking for it.
He's Crazy
Anyone following Will Gordon's total meltdown on Twitter now sees what happens when multiple people call out a text book Narcissist. He has now cursed out all of Boston, (He's from Detroit apparently) used the word Mic as well as many other offensive words, hates it here and hasn't showed any signs of slowing down.
But Ron Newman wonders, "What's the story with coffee in Beer? Is that Legal?"
So funny. "Oh Look a butterfly!"
#TangentGuy
Caffeine as an extracted
Caffeine as an extracted compound added to alcoholic beverages is FDA banned, whereas the use of coffee is not. A few years back, Sam Adams alumna Rhonda Kallman launched Moonshot, a craft brewed 5% ABV pilsner with 69ml of caffeine added. Around the same time, Four Loko was wreaking havoc, prompting the FDA action. Rhonda got screwed being painted with the same brush. See more here: http://beerwarsmovie.com/tag/rhonda-kallman/
Does he need a mic check?
Calm ya livva
Yeah, so somebody asked about caffeinated beer in a thread about a drunken pottymouth getting to spew all the insults he's been wanting to use since third grade.
Thread drifting is a longstanding UHub tradition - look at all the discussions about neighborhood boundaries in discussions about violent crimes. No harm done, and if you can't see something in a story and ask about it right underneath, where can you?
We now return to your regularly scheduled anger ...
Good Point
I've yet to see it not happen. At least we're still on beer.
Tangent?
Seems like a worthwhile digression from a bunch of pots and kettles calling each other black.
UPDATE: Seems Will has a bit of a problem with the Irish
At 7:39 p.m., yesterday, as he continued to fume and rant, he wrote this gem:
He added he can say stuff like that because he doesn't really care about his boston.com gig and his Deadspin boss isn't from Boston.
When will this hipster
on hipster crime cease? How do you get craft beer stains out of skinny jeans? None of us need this stress.
One thing about Twitter's short message length: when somebody
uses it to express a lot of anger, they quickly start to sound like an ill-bred, overtired six-year-old girl.
If he had said this stuff in real life it might matter
but if it's just on Twitter, why take it seriously?
Real Life
If you owned a business and someone was online trashing it or your staff you wouldn't take it seriously?
If it were in a place that mattered, perhaps
but Twitter is not a place that matters.
(Eater, Chowhound, Beer Advocate, even Yelp ... those are places that matter, where you can say something at reasonable length and depth.)
Bingo - Where does the Owner Gain in Twitter Fight
Well put. If you're the owner of the bar (not the bartender), why would you allow your time, effort, capital, and brand be subject to a twitter fight that could lose you potential guests? Why even put a risk out there? There's nothing to gain by the effort and certainly some business to lose. On a pure business POV, it doesn't make sense.
For a grown man
He was WAY to many pictures of his cat on twitter, a classic sign of a serial killer or a sniffling doofus.
or
a homosexual.. ;)
*takes down the millions of cat photos off his Instagram account*
Having been born and lived in NYC,
spent 1/2 by childhood-teenage years in NYC and Boston (the city, not a suburb 30 miles away), and having lived in other large cities in addition to extensive travel all over North America,UK & Ireland, and Europe...I have to ask:
WTF is up with pathological hatred for 'townies' in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, etc.? My conclusion is it mostly has to do with the many 'prestigious' schools in our area, and New England as a whole, and a pathetic level ( for a so-called advanced society in 2015) level of class consciousness and snobbery. And what amuses me are the worse offenders are usually people who come from absolutely nowhere special. But when they get out into the big wide real world for school or work, go to places like Boston, NYC, etc. they become super sophisticated and superior vs the 'townies'. And unfortunately, there are a few on UHub.
It's an opinion on beer...nothing to get anyone's panties in a bunch. A simple matter of preference. Regarding so-called craft beer, I think some have gone way overboard in trying to out-do others with 'hoppiness', etc.
"WTF is up with pathological hatred for 'townies' in Boston"
My opinion only: if you think that's how most people in the area think, you're only seeing a rather limited slice of the city, i.e., transplants who don't have the tact and graciousness to try and blend rather than remake their new home in their image (and to disparage it as "not world class" -- you better believe that's a transplanted phrase -- or some such stupid shit when it doesn't conform). They're just like any loud tasteless people: their presence is out of proportion to their numbers, and their influence is largely dictated by how much people pay attention to them.
Years ago. Certain labels passed this point years ago.
Hops are cheap. It costs next to nothing to add a lot of hops to a beer. Malt is where the expense is, and it's easy to cover up a lack of quality barley malt with hops and cheap adjuncts. You just bomb it with hops or synthetic grapefruit essence or bat vomit or who knows what, give it a hip name and a hip label and some pretentious marketing, and enough idiots will buy it up because it's got the standard "craft beer" promotional package. The emperor has no clothes, but not many have the nerve to say so.
There are no winners in this feud
Will Gordon seems like kind of a twerp and from personal experience I could actually envision something like this happening at Stoddard's. This place has gone downhill since the early days. There's a few bartenders that are pretentious and rude to their customers. I had the worst experience I've ever had at any drinking or eating establishment, and it was straight from the "OG Salty" who is being referenced in this thread. This guy was a complete hothead and I have never seen anyone act so unprofessional in my life. I can't believe he is the head bartender there.
I used to love Stoddard’s and would go there all the time until Salty ruined it for me. There are many other bars in the area that are better. Stoddard’s could be so much better if they replaced some of the staff.
Looks like Boston.com
Gave this Boston hating hipster the pink slip!
Citation, please.
I don't see that reported anywhere.
Anons
The Anons are out of control!