If you jump in your DeLorean and go back to 2006, the Atlantic City Beer Fest looked very different.
Yes, it was in the Atlantic City Convention Center and attendees were served unlimited beer tastings, but after that, there are very few similarities.
For starters, the first one was seven hours long
“Man, did we mess some people up,” said Good Time Tricycle’s Jon Henderson, the creator of the Atlantic City Beer & Music Festival, which celebrates its 20th — and final year — over two sessions Saturday, April 11. “It wasn’t sessioned like it is today. We were introducing a lot of people to big ABV beers before big ABVs were a thing, before people realized that there’s beers out there that are 12, 14, 15 percent. We gave people these tiny little cups and people made fun of us and I hear it to this day: ‘Oh, what’s this tiny little cup do?’ And I look at them three-and-a-half hours later and I’m like, ‘That!’ They’re feeling no pain. So, first year, was our learning year and we let people loose.”
While a lot has changed with the Beer Fest over the years — from the prices of beer to it adding ‘Music’ to its name with major headliners and just a societal change that exhibits people not partying like they used to — the one thing that has not changed is Henderson’s visionary approach to the festival scene in Atlantic City along with a commitment from his friends and family to make them the best festival experiences imaginable.
What’s unimaginable is this Beer Fest going away, but Henderson says the “Last Call!” tag that goes with this festival is the real deal. The Atlantic City Beer & Music Festival will never look like this again.
“We’re packing in the bags,” Henderson said. “We got to 20 years, and it was a good run, and all good things come to an end. We thought two decades was the right time to close it off — last call, if you will.”
Last Call … with a bang!
Like everything Henderson does, his final beer fest will be one to remember.
For starters, Henderson and Near Dark Entertainment Co-Owner Jason Goldfarb once again hit it out of the park with some aggressive headliner programming from the music standpoint.
The noon session will be headlined by the successful New York-based punk outfit Bayside, with support from Iron Chic — a Henderson favorite — and MakeWar, followed by a 6 p.m. roster of headliner Starting Line, a Philadelphia pop-punk powerhouse enjoying a major comeback right now, with openers Like Roses and the local Public Works, which Henderson raves about.
“Iron Chic is every part of punk rock,” Henderson said. “They are such a fantastic band. I think there’s always been these sleepers among the festival, like the Brick + Mortars, Wilhelm Screams and the Menzingers that were in these support roles for the headliners that were massive, that people didn’t realize. Iron Chic is one of those bands. MakeWar offers a different vibe and is eventually going to be a really big band. Like Roses is a trio, two of which are girls, and they rock, man! It’s just, it’s just a different, fun sound and sets the tone for the Starting Line, which we’ve been trying to get for a minute.”
Then there’s the beer, of course.
This year, beer drinkers will have the opportunity to sample over 300 beers from about 80 breweries from around the world, but mostly the United States. So, choose wisely.
Major beer brands like Firestone Walker, Southern Tier, and Troegs will be served alongside plenty of Jersey Fresh choices such as Cape May, Farm Truck, Swedesboro, Double Nickel, Hidden Sands, Icarus, The Seed, Mudhen and many more.
There’s great food from TacocaT, Jay’s Crab Shack, Bacon on a Stick and many others, vendors selling everything from candy to Hank’s Hot Sauce, interactive seminars plus a ton of sideshow fun to be had that includes Brew Cup Derby, where people race each other on plush horses and make fools of themselves; Clash of the Kegs, where people will joust with foam poles in a bouncy house; The Mechanical Megalodon, which is basically a shark version of a mechanical bull; a Beard & Mustache Competition; the always popular Costume Contest; Wing Wars, where a bunch of attendees will face off in a wing-eating competition; Toilet Seat Racing, where people get to race on motorized toilets; and Silent Disco, a fun attraction where people wear headphones and dance to two different DJs.
“I think the one thing that makes Beer Fest stand out is that the ticket price includes almost everything there from the beer to the music to the entertainment and all of the shenanigans,” Henderson said. “We don’t charge you extra to do race on a toilet seat or joust with your buddy. We don’t nickel and dime you.”
Trip down memory lane
Saturday will be a bittersweet day for anyone who has attended or been part of Atlantic City Beer Fest, which was once only rivaled by the giant Great American Beer Festival in Colorado as one of the biggest — and best — beer festivals in the country.
“We set the stage for what a lot of beer festivals would adopt later,” Henderson said. “We realized quickly we can’t let people loose for seven hours with tiny little cups. So, we sessioned it out, which ended up being that four-hour session that was adopted by pretty much every beer festival on the East Coast and the Midwest. I’m really proud of stuff we set the bar for that people don’t realize. Over the last 20 years, all of the beer festivals that came after us devised their formats on our format. The guidelines for the state of New Jersey for beer festivals were written out of my office. I wrote those. Our fingerprints are all over this industry, and that’s amazing.”
Evolution perfectly describes Atlantic City Beer & Music Festival’s existence. When it started, there were 28 breweries and the entrance fee was about a third of what it is now: $25… for seven hours!
And then there was music!
At the first Beer Fest, there was a fun local band — The Toga Party Band — that provided weird covers by guys dressed in togas, a couple of food and merch vendors and that’s about it.
“We doubled almost every year after that for a while,” Henderson said. “It just got bigger and bigger and bigger. In 2019, we had 154 breweries and had just shy of 20,000 people. 2017 to 2019 was the peak of the festival. That was the height of craft beer, it was the apex of the pop-punk movement, so we captured lightning in a bottle with great beer and great bands.
The “Music” part of the festival came in as Henderson had to pivot when everyone, their brother and their brother’s cousin started having beer festivals anywhere and everywhere.
“A lot of people were trying to jump on that bandwagon, so we thought, ‘What can we do next?’ How do we add layers and keep people’s attention? So, we decided to make music a focus. It started with Marky Ramone’s Blitzkrieg and Brick + Mortar and we had two stages going with 12 to 14 bands playing with a couple of bigger acts. And then it was in 2011 when we said, ‘Let’s give each session its down headliner. How do we do this right?’ So, we had the Bouncing Souls to kick it off Friday, Saturday afternoon was The Rev. Horton Heat and Saturday night was Rusted Root. That’s when we really kind of leaned into the music aspect, and it just kept getting better and better. It made an impact so we could keep this going for as long as we did. It brought a whole different crowd to the mix, and that created that opportunity for craft breweries to introduce themselves to some new people.
It was a win-win.
“It was like, ‘Hey, you might not be a beer drinker, but if there’s 100 plus breweries here, I bet you can find something that you can go back to when you’re out socially or when you visit your liquor store.’ And that actually proved to be true.”
Other huge bands that have headlined at the Beer Fest include 311, Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly, the Wonder Years, the Menzingers, Newfound Glory, Everclear, The Descendents, Streetlight Manifesto, Manchester Orchestra and more.
“We’ve had a lot, a lot of great bands,” Henderson said. “It’s wild to look back at it. Goldfarb hustles, man. Every year, it’s like, ‘How do we outdo last year?’ We always try to top ourselves.”
More than beer and music
But, of course, it takes more than just beer and music to make it a festival. It takes great food, awesome vendors and all of the little touches that make things memorable so that you want to go back every year. That has been the foundation for all of Good Time Tricyle’s events, which also include the Tattoo Expo, Witchcraft, Micro Wrestling, the Downbeach Seafood Fest and others that have come and gone.
“It’s got to be a lot of components to make something successful, and this holds for anything when you’re trying to capture the public’s attention anymore, which is harder and harder every day,” Henderson said. “It’s an onion. They need layers of things to do. Everybody on the planet has ADHD at this point. Nobody can pay attention to one thing for more than 5 seconds. So, you throw a pile of stuff at them and make that stuff entertaining. Smiles for miles. If you can create an experience that keeps people smiling, they’re not mad at you for spending a couple of bucks on it.”
Last Call, for real?
While this weekend will be bittersweet for all of us who love Beer Fest, it will certainly have an emotional impact for the Hendersons and all of the volunteers, vendors, breweries and people who have been with this over the two decades.
“Some people think we are this big festival production agency, and we’ve never been one of those things,” Henderson said. “When you’re leaving comments, we’re the people who are answering them. It’s always been very natural and organic. The reinvestment every year, it’s not like it’s a big corporation reinvestment. It’s us. Everybody that has been a part of the program has either been family or essentially become family because of how we work or how we do things.”
So, where does Beer Fest go after this?
“I think we’ve got to pay attention to where the beer culture is going, where the music culture is going,” Henderson said. “This festival in its heyday was a 20,000-person festival, so if we look at the lines of where people are at, where they’re celebrating and how they’re celebrating, this thing that it is 20 years old is ending. It’s amazing we got 20 years out of it. So, we really have to do a shift. Will we stop celebrating beer in this market? Absolutely not. It just won’t be this festival as the catalyst. People just don’t celebrate the same. It’s that simple. Then there’s the economics of it. When this festival started, a keg of good beer was $85. The same keg is almost $300 today. And bands that used to be $50,000 are now $120,000 and they aren’t moving any more people than they used to. So, ticket prices go up and attendance goes down. It’s that simple. That’s how it works. It’s insanity, so yes, I’m very confident in saying that this event has run its course.”
One thing is for sure: Saturday will likely feel like a class reunion for many of us who have been there since Day 1.
“I expect to see a lot of familiar faces,” Henderson said. “I expect to see some people show up that haven’t been out in a bunch of years just to kind of get that last reminisce in. The one thing I always thank people for is trusting us with their time. I think that’s important. I think ending something after 20 years comes with a kind of a bittersweet feeling. But it’s the right time to sunset this one and see what new programming evolves in the future.”
The Atlantic City Beer Fest takes place over two sessions noon to 4 p.m. and 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday, April 11, at the Atlantic City Convention Center. Go to ACBeerFest.com
Scott Cronick is an award-winning journalist who has written about entertainment, food, news and more in South Jersey for nearly three decades. He hosts a daily radio show – “Off The Press with Scott Cronick” – 4 to 6 p.m. weekdays on Newstalk WOND 1400-AM, 92.3-FM, and WONDRadio.com. He can be reached at scronick@comcast.net.
