Week of Wurst (The Happenstance)

By Rube Ambler

Go West Young Man

I used to go to this little German place on the West Side, not really Upper West, sort of the business midtown West Side – if you know what I mean. If memory serves, it was called something like Hey Berlin or at least that’s good enough for these purposes.   It was hardly a fancy and maybe of questionable cleanliness (at least one of my co-workers claimed so). The shop’s primary offering was sausages, or wursts. They would fry them in these old cast iron skillets that appeared about as big around as a pizza pan and must have weighed close to a metric ton (give or take a few kilos). The skillets were visibly encrusted with the remains of previous orders and a careful observer might notice that cleaning between preparations consisted of a quick rinse under an open tap, and that was about it.

I suppose it was at this sausage express that I first realized that all brats were not the same.  Despite some experience with the Philly smoke and the Texas hot, I still thought of a brat as a fairly uniform sausage usually served on a soft roll under a pile of sauerkraut by a street vender outside Three Rivers Stadium.  It never occurred to me wursts came in several varieties, based on the meats and spices involved.   I came to find out that bratwurst was sort of the hot dog of wurts because it consisted of any mix beef, veal and pork and was spiced for commonality. The frankfurter on the other hand, unlike our typical hot dog, was only made of pork.  I also learned that there were many different names for a wurst, depending on the principal meat and seasonings in the sausage.

More than just the discovery of these subtle differences in the nomenclature, was the discovery of the vast difference in flavors that were possible with the different combinations of meat, spice and preparation. Really I found most of it delicious.  This place was near my old office and became a favorite weekday spot for me and one of my workplace pals. We used to hit it when we had time for a long lunch and talk about electronic music and all the old garage records he was buying (often for less than $3) on eBay.  My Manhattan living quarters didn’t provide enough space for the luxury of a record collection, but he camped in Brooklyn where he and the girlfriend could share a cavernous 1200 square feet.  Those days before airline security checks and the [internet, real estate, financial, job] crash seem far away – and I suppose they are.

But this place where I discovered the difference between a sausage made of veal and one made of pork (and the different between triphop and trance), used to have a lunch special where you could order three different sausages and two sides. They called it the “Soul Food Platter” and that’s where the musical hook comes in.

Delicious Sounds

This coming Saturday night, The EARL will host The Happenstance.  What is The Happenstance, you ask?  [Gee, I'm starting to sound like Alex]

The Happenstance rightly carries the slogan – A Battle of Hastily Assembled Bands – because it is a brilliant event where the organizers (wordproductions) assemble 30 musicians in the morning, divide them quite randomly into 5 different bands, and ask them to create a 20 minute set of music to be performed that night.  You pay a small cover ($7) and get to see what they come up with – sort of like making wurst. (Yeah, it’s a cheap hook to get that anecdote into this post but I’m the one paying for the economy server package after all, right?)

Another thing that is really cool about this event is that there is a charitable hook – these guys are having fun, making music and giving back – we really can’t think of a better way to spend a weekend.  Past Happenstances (?) have benefited The Atlanta Community Food Bank, Habitat for Humanity and The New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund.

What’s also neat is that other locals are on board.  Obviously The EARL is giving up its space, but we know from the evesdropper’s dream known as Twitter that Firehouse Guitars (@guitarsatlanta) will be a sponsor and Ryan Peoples and Matt Jarrard of Oryx and Crake will both be among the performers.

Lots of different soul food flavors – sounds delicious.  If you want to know more before the date, please visit The Happenstance.  If you’re okay with a little randomness in your life, then just show up on Saturday night.

That’s another Week of Atlanta’s A-List, and we used to talk about these days…