WAY TO GO OHIO, part 13; or, PORTUGAL FOR THE PORTUGUESE

my uncle sent me a link to an article at cnn.com on the eight best beer cities in america, and i thought that maybe columbus had made the list because he'd sent it the monday morning following the saturday night on which we'd visited the new beer and burgers place on indianola together. but (and of course, as i considered in hindsight) it hadn't. and that wasn't much of a surprise -- although an also-ran honorable mention on a list like that one definitely seems to be where the city has set its sights of late. the crest, on indianola and crestview, is one of five or six derivatively identical self-styled gastropubs to have opened in columbus in the past few months, five or six years after the gastropub trend had already started inspiring cringes outside of ohio's capital, which is now the self-styled capital of "no coast" brewing. the crest isn't affiliated with a brewery, but it's got the copper bar and all of the modern rustic charm of its forebears, the beer and fancy bar food places in all of those other cities that everyone with a small business loan in columbus must think they've been the only ones to visit. and because it's here and not in those other places, the crest also has a half dozen flat screen tvs. its beer list is good, but let's be honest: it doesn't take much thought or effort (or even expertise) to put one of those together anymore. and, anymore, with all of the not at all bad craft beer out there, it doesn't take much to make your list unique either. because the barley's chupacabra had just blown, i had another pint of the bear ass from elevator. i'll go back to the crest for happy hour some time to have some more (if they've still got it) for fifty percent off. i won't, however, go back to eat. the crest is new, and this past saturday night was warm, but the kitchen and the staff at a place styling itself as a gastropub (if a place with a menu like the crest's can style itself as such) should be able to manage a menu such an unambitious menu. the one burger and the three gastrosliders that we ordered took an hour and a half to get to our table, and our server was either too stoned or too scared of us to make even an overture to an apology. if it weren't for the coworker of his who was serving the table next to ours (whose training i assume must have come from a previous job), we'd never have gotten napkins. and napkins i needed, because the unexceptional patties between the gastrobuns of the sliders needed some condiment help. luckily, the crest's house hot sauce is good. there's a bottle on every table, each labeled simply "hot," and the contents of those bottles would seem to be the crest's only signature distinction amid a bustling assemblage of unremarkably pleasant and debilitating inoffensiveness. point, click, gastropub! the irony of the crest's self-styled importance is wholly unintentional and all but lost on the crowd. but i'm not knocking it. the stylings of the staff could stand to be better, and the menu could stand either stricter or more imaginative direction, but i'll be back to drink for half price at the copper bar. until columbus figures out what it does besides be happy not to be the worst of the also rans, it's something. probably nothing even worth writing about, but something. as the generative text (now concluded) on that wall at 88 east broad street contends (with its last): "better late than never." so, for my part, i'd like to go back and change. everything. the boys on the sex apps in the midwest have diversified out from masculine young professionalism into kowtowing to any semblance of creativity. and meanwhile, curation has been replaced by internalization in the vernacular. this is how the class wars of the twenty-first century were won, the funny battle cries for community, designed. but i'll win them all. win them over. i'll go back and be an architect. rewrite the show! before those other ones were written. but then i'll leave. wanted, i'll want to be elsewhere. armed with the national profession, maybe i can convince lisbon to take me back.