The Kirkland Oktoberfest Bamboozle

At this point there wasn't really a booze festival volunteer opportunity that we were prepared to turn down. Kirkland has several tasting events throughout the year and they are always conveniently within walking distance from our place.

There's this part next door to the library that is comically well used. People of all different walks of life are using the park in different ways and it reminds me of a like architect's imagined sketch of a place he wants to build.

A nice thing about these festivals is they always give you a volunteer t-shirt. Kirkland Oktoberfest was no exception. My clothing budget is pretty flush right now.

The t-shirt goat character was done by local big deal artist Ryan Henry Ward. He has a distinctive cartoon animal style that I see everywhere.

Speaking of serving no purpose, we had nothing to do at this festival. We talked to our handlers about it a couple of times and they moved us around to different booths but they were all fully staffed. We finally just stopped asking and sat on a bench and chilled for a while.

We then took a drastic step of sneaking out, buying ice cream at the nearby QFC, and went home to eat it. We then snuck back in right before our shift was over to clock out in an excellently executed caper.

Fremont Oktoberfest

After the fun times we had working the Kirkland Uncorked wine festival, signing up to work Oktoberfest in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood was a no-brainer.

The company that manages these events seems to be much more organized than festivals we've been involved with in St. Louis.

Festivals around here seem to be pretty strict about some dumb state law that says we can't drink while serving. It is especially stupid because guests will ask us our opinions on the different beers and we have to say we have no idea what the beers taste like. Someone please inform Washington's state government that prohibition is over and the squares lost.

The thing about a festival full of drunkards is that they aren't great about keeping track of their beer punch cards. We helped out with the litter. Keep Seattle beautiful! The deal with volunteering is you work a shift then you can come back the next day an revel.

Our First Washington Festival

We joined the volunteer crew at Kirkland Uncorked, a wine festival near the lake and walkable from the apartment.

They were very anal about the rules. You weren't allowed to drink anything at any time. Also in St. Louis usually these things are sort of all you can drink once you pay the cover charge. Here there was a cover charge plus a token system. Volunteering got us in tomorrow plus some drink tickets.

We were working the beer tent. I kept laughing because although people were buying beer at a wine festival they still wanted to feel pretentious, so they kept ordering friggin asswater Stella Artois that we served in the ridiculous chalices. A whole lot of these stupid glasses ended up in the trash.

We must have seemed pretty untrustworthy because we weren't allowed to handle any actual commerce, we just poured beers.

We got free t-shirts too! Winning.