2. Pete’s Wicked Ale at the Playboy Mansion, Beverly Hills
When you’re The Beer Traveler, you get invited to all kinds of fancy beer shin-digs. Usually, they’re not worth attending.
But one invite stood out like a GQ cover model at a meeting of hunchbacked Parisian bell-ringers: Back in 2001, Pete’s Wicked Ale was re-launching its product line, and they were hosting the bash at the Playboy Mansion. Sign me up!
With my, ahem, “business partners,” the aforementioned Mike of schiesskeller fame and Beer Traveler bon-vivant Frankie C., we made a whirlwind trip from Boston to La-La Land for the big bash.
What a freak show: Hef has monkeys and exotic birds in his backyard, while the bathrooms were filled with condoms and jugs of Vaseline. We got to hang out and get photographs with the Bunnies in the famous Grotto and around the pad. (Frankie C. and I were also each about 50 pounds lighter back then, so we could walk around the place without the feelings of shame and loathing that haunt us when surrounded by hot women today.)
Sadly, the beer wasn’t very good – do you ever drink Pete’s Wicked Ale? – and the Playboy models were merely for show. As Frankie C. put it in his own inimitable way, “It wasn’t the coke-fueled f*ck-fest I had hoped for.”
But, hey, we could have been selling Pete’s Wicked Lighter Fluid and probably still would have made the trip.
The Beer Traveler 