Most of the time we reach out to hotels in advance of our visits for the Beer Parlour Project. This allows us to issue a press release to local media, and also to put the call out to local residents. We always post our schedule on the Beer Parlour Project website, and Chris makes advance announcements on social media. But sometimes our attempts to pre-arrange things, just don't work out. At times we are unable to connect with the right people. Running these small businesses is very time consuming and the last thing in the world that some owners want to do is waste time talking to a group like ours. Other times there is a language barrier and we can't get our message across. Many of these old hotels have been taken over by immigrants from India and Asia. So occasionally we just cold call on one of these establishments, introduce ourselves, and see if we can gain permission for a visit.
During this most recent trip to Saskatchewan, our first two attempts at cold calls didn't work out very well. The hotels in Wilkie and Macklin were just too quiet, and there was no one in attendance to interview or to photograph. We had more success at the Muse on Main Hotel in Unity, Saskatchewan. On the evening of Thursday May 8th Chris and I stopped in for "Just 1 Beer" and something to eat. There were a number of locals around, so we decided to introduce ourselves and see if we could set up. This became BP 25.0 and a full blown visit of the establishment followed. Owner Ben was a gracious host and allowed us to do our thing. Chris conducted a number of interviews, and I took several portraits with the big camera. When I get around to processing my film I will share some of those images. For the time being, here are a few phone snapshots I took during our visit. We loved the wall of shame, where the owner posts the names of patrons that stiffed him for their tab. I managed to take a portrait of our server, with this in the background.
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