For Display Only

During Covid, my cousin Mikey lived in Asheville Air BnBs for two months. During his tenure here, we typically ended our weekends with a shared pitcher—pitchers, if the day got away from us—of Surf Wax at Burial Brewing.  I need to stop here and say it’s wild that Burial does pitchers. Surf Wax is a not-nothing 6.8% abv, but most of their beers are much heavier. That is to say, respect to Burial for this decision. I don’t know any other breweries that offer pitcher options. 

Mikey was down visiting recently, and on Thursday night, we went to Burial with my friend Dani to split a nostalgic pitcher of Surf Wax (as we were walking with the pitcher from the bar to the outdoor tables where we planned on consuming it, a fellow patron looked at me and said, “holy shit, they sell pitchers here?”). It was predictably delicious and a reminder that Burial is a solid place to hang (for no other real reason than parking and proximity; I tend to only go to Burial when visitors are in town and prefer frequenting Forestry Camp for my day-to-day Burial needs). 

While we were there, we noticed that Burial has a vending machine filled with….crap, is probably the best way to describe the offerings. There was a Mariah Carey CD. There were a bunch of winning lottery tickets (from what I could ascertain through the glass, the winnings were, naturally, more lottery tickets). There were four loose dollar bills. I also clocked a pair of futuristic, band-like sunglasses, which Mikey should own. “You need these,” I told him. He agreed, but since it’s 2024, none of us were carrying the cash necessary to go to the bar and ask for change in the quarters this vending machine required. 

That Saturday morning, when we were mapping out the rest of our weekend, Mikey said that the only thing he wanted to do was go back to Burial to get those sunglasses. We made a note to remind each other to secure cash or quarters on Sunday so we could stop there after our planned morning kayak. 

On Sunday, naturally, we left East Asheville without stopping at the ATM we’d talked about stopping at or checking my coin jar to see if there were enough quarters to make this purchase. Luckily—or annoyingly, depending on who you ask—I forgot the doggy life jacket that lives at my apartment that we needed for my friend’s dog (who also doubles as my best Asheville friend) to join us on our kayaking tour. Everyone was a little peeved at me for making us drive all the way back to East Asheville (a distance I had to remind everyone several times, that’s a mere nine minutes), BUT it also gave Mikey the chance to raid my quarter jar, which it turns out, was fully stocked with quarters (so stocked in fact, that I took it to a Coinstar on Monday and got $47.00!). 

 

After a successful kayak and lunch at Asheville Brewing, we went to Burial, where our first stroke of bad luck occurred. I went to the main bar and ordered Mikey and me two beers, thinking that when he went inside, he was going right to the vending machine and to use the bathroom. Not so. He went to the cellar bar and got us another pitcher of Surf Wax (if Burial were located on O. Henry Ave, I’d try to make some sort of Gift of the Magi allusion, but it’s not, and I don’t think that allusion works no matter how much I try). The second stroke of bad luck occurred when Mikey took his quarters and attempted to put them into the vending machine, to not avail. When he returned to the cellar bar to inquire about the matter, he was informed that the machine was “for display purposes only.”