The curtain comes up on the coldest beer in town

Since I was eight years old, I knew I wanted to have a beer from the Cape View in Colfax, California. The Cape View was/is a bar on Highway 174 between my house and Sacramento (Home of the Kings). What made the bar special was the sign out front – a piece of plywood shaped and painted like a beer mug, featuring the following text: “Coldest Beer in Town – 31°” The sign captivated my friend Rich and I. Every time we rode/drove past there we’d say we’d get the “coldest beer in town” when we turned 21.

I didn’t get my first coldest beer in town until 2005 and I was 29 years old.

While in California last month I hosted my friend Chris, a great friend from college. I decided to treat him to the experience of the coldest beer in town. Unfortunately, this trip destroyed the decades-long glamour and mystique of the famed brew.

The first indication of a problem was the bar was renamed from the Cape View (cool) to “The Red Frog.”

I was a little surprised by that fact, but not worried, because the legendary sign was still out front. What happened next soiled everything.

Chris and I ordered the coldest beer in town, then watched as the bartender reached into an ordinary igloo cooler to pull out two bottles of beer. I had always assumed the coldest beer in town used some scientific, top-secret, Cobra Commander method to keep the brews cold, but all this time they were just kept in a simple cooler you’d find on the beach or at a tailgate? The legendary sign was no more than a shrewd marketing ploy? I was crestfallen.

I was appalled and shell-shocked. It was as if I met the beer equivalent of the Wizard of Oz. The coldest beer in town was no more than a normal beer in an everyday cooler behind the curtain. Drat, foiled again!! To make matters worse, the bartender kept complaining when she reached into the cooler to get our beers: “Oh my gosh, my hand is so cold! I wonder if I’m going to get hypothermia!” I was so disappointed I chose not to play along with the act, and nearly offered to reach in and grab the darn beers myself.

I’ve since been asked what I had expected from a little hole in the wall dive bar on the highway in Colfax.

I guess I expected something sexier, some sort of high-tech, cryogenically frozen beer keg. Or a beer iceberg that they scraped chunks off of and put into your pint glass. Something like that.

Buyer beware.

g.