Ya everybody! Is dat time once more, lederhosen, dirndls, lift yer stein it’s German time! Vat are you sinking?! Oktoberfest!

Ya everybody! Is dat time once more, lederhosen, dirndls, lift yer stein it’s German time! Vat are you sinking?! Oktoberfest!

Hallo my German friends! It’s almost October (pardon, Rocktober) and you know what that means? Excellence! Excitement! Football! Hockey! I have to say that for not being summer, this is the best month of the year for all things lasses-faire and fun like tiny candy bars. And anything featuring the word “spice”. It’s the time of year where the air is crisp and everything is spooky and grown men dress like comic book characters and hit on slutty (insert noun here)s. Very romantic. But it all starts here, vith Oktoberfest! Ya! Yay!

Everybody pour the beer! When it comes to ethnic celebrations, Rocktober is also the best time to celebrate our Slavic/Bavarian/Germanic neighbors from the East. Believe it or not, you don’t have to be in Munich to enjoy the excess. Just imagine row after row of vomit-soaked picnic tables covered in food-slaws and various wursts, knocking mugs with fat guys and old dudes with puppets while an oompah band plays AC/DC into the night right here in your home town! This weekend John Ball Park will host the second annual Oktoberfest celebration for your boozy enjoyment. In case you happen to mistake the festivities for the actual zoo, Oktoberfest will be the drunk people under the tents, the monkeys and blind disabled bald eagles will be the zoo (extra points will be rewarded to those who can smuggle a monkey or blind eagle into Oktoberfest). Bring twenty dollars to sample delicious German beers from your favorite breweries and halls, Erdinger, Ayinger, and many more (ps-if you don’t make it to the tents, at least get yourself to HopCat for a magnificent glass of the radiant Hacker-Pshorr Oktoberfest. It’s so good it’s like drinking moonbeams and sunshine and tractor pulls and dwarf tossing in a glass), and your favorite heavy, gut busting delectables from Erika’s and more. If you ask for a Heinekin, Dolf Lundgren (he isn’t making a special appearance or anything, he just really likes these things) will jump out of an edelweiss bush and beat you with a schnitzel within an inch of your life. And it’s really fun! There will be German bands, accordions, tokens, and Frauleins who all need help tying their bustier. I believe they will let you in even if you’re not wearing long blond pigtails and a rucksack. I think…

But why stop there? Who else loves a good, drunken Westside parade? The Polish! So don’t blow your entire wad at the beer tent, next weekend it’s Pulaski days! Yesss, the best kind! Nobody, and I mean NOBODY knows how to throw and old fashioned throw down bacchanalski like us. Polish halls all over Grand Rapids open their doors to the general public and allow pretty much any nationality to cross our boarders and occupy our facilities, listen to our clown bands, and do our easy drunk girls. Hmmm…sounds like history…this is one of the best weekends to be in this town for sure. Who enjoys a good invasion more than the Polish? Dunno! Lots of food, dancing, classic rock and polka, in too many different places to go to stay in just one. It’s like St. Patty’s day only it goes for an entire weekend. Diamond hall, Eastern Hall, Kashuska, Sons and Daughters, Falcons, Little hall, really pack ‘em in there. So show up early and please, take getting wasted seriously, this is a national holiday commemorating Poland’s greatest hero. Roll out the barrels and join the parade, me and KP will for sure see you there, ya!

I’ll know a little more about where we’ll be for Pulaski days soon, but that should keep you drunk and getting laid by authentic Westside ass for at least a few weekends. Seriously though, there are a ton of other things to do this Rocktober, so stay tuned friends, this is just the beginning!