LOCALTOPIA – A Celebration of Local Business (and Craft Beer!) in St Petersburg

February 1, 2014 – 75 degrees, sunshine, St Petersburg FL, an awesome army of volunteers, local vendors, and the “Drink Like a Local” beer truck, made for an exciting, fun, and memorable day for families, friends, residents, and everyone in between.   It was an amazing event!!!!

So many people came together to make the day such a huge success including main organizer Olga Bof, of Keep Saint Petersburg Local, and Brett Andress, owner of The Ale and the Witch, and an army of others.  Here’s the event website www.keepsaintpetersburglocal.org/calendar/event/localtopia/

It was also a big day for our not-for-profit Tampa Bay Beer Week consortium as St Petersburg, FL city councilman Steve Kornell officially proclaimed Tampa Bay Beer Week March 1-9, 2014 (I wrote the proclamation!)

Here’s a recap of the event from a craft beer perspective by Brett Andreas:

Huge Bigger than Big congrats on an absolutely amazing event, when you get a chance to settle back, grab a glass of wine and relax with your family be very PROUD of your vision, drive, passion and enthusiastic support in gathering so many locals into our oldest City park for a day to enjoy together as a community. It was absolutely beautiful!!

From a beer perspective you accomplished many great feats as well. You sold out of an event beer truck with ALL local Florida beers from multiple distributors and breweries which is unheard of. Over 4200 beers were poured yielded from the kegs you started with and the kegs that Cycle and Green Bench brought in addition to. 4200 beers is over 10 beers poured a minute…. 10 beers A MINUTE and this wasn’t even a beer event. Be proud of selling this many LOCAL beers to our community as they gathered together to spend time together in Williams Park. WOW

It is all about Local and this event was a fantastic show of what local can do together.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to my army (over 50!)  volunteer beer pourers whose enthusiasm, energy, patience, and sheer dedication made the day a great experience for those who came out.

Here’s a slide show of the event!  Can’t wait to see you all at the next beer event… we are an amazing community.

— Carol Dekkers

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