Sabroso Craft Beer, Music, and Taco Festival
April 28, 2019
Fiddler’s Green Amphitheater, Greenwood Village, CO
Imagine for a moment that you could create your own festival. What would it look like? Who would you book to perform? What special attractions would you feature? Personally speaking, my platonic ideal of a killer fest would showcase the following: a spacious outdoor amphitheater, punk bands, all-you-can-drink craft beer, lucha libre wrestling, and taco food trucks. Silly fantasy, right? That is, until the Sabroso Festival made all my most outlandish dreams into a rollicking reality.
Emanating from the expansive Fiddler’s Green Amphitheater grounds in suburban Denver, the spectacle of masked men in spandex pummeling one another immediately greeted attendees looking for mayhem. To whet these appetites for destruction, Sabroso’s beer tasting section touted an array of local Colorado breweries, including but not limited to Odell, Avery, Ratio Beerworks, Ska, Renegade, Strange Craft, and Black Sky Brewing. Eats were provided by a phalanx of Denver-area restaurants on wheels slinging varieties of everybody’s favorite Mexican cuisine staple-turned-late-night drunk go-to meal.
After the kegs emptied and craft beer vendors wrapped up their wares, live sets from a mixtape of your old punk favorites took the stage. Bad Religion, The Vandals, Strung Out, and The Dwarves played in pristine, sunny Springtime weather to a crowd ranging in age from families with young children to typical teenage gadflies to the old graying guard standing in the back. The serious moshing in the greenery area began as SoCal legends The Vandals went wild and Greg Graffin and the boys in Bad Religion had everyone singing along to catalog standards “Sorrow,” “No Control,” and “Fuck Armageddon... This Is Hell.”
Unfortunately, by the time headliners The Offspring picked up their instruments, storm clouds gathered and torrential rain along with a cold snap made conditions miserable for many folks donning only shorts and t-shirts. The hitmakers made the best of the situation and renditions of familiar tunes from high school such as “Come Out and Play,” “All I Want,” ”Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)”, and “Self Esteem” entertained fans huddled underneath blankets and tents.
But even the capriciousness of Mother Nature could not sully an otherwise fun-filled day of flying luchadores, free-flowing beer, and greasy tacos capped off by obnoxious punk rock. Really, what more could you ask for?
by Steve Lustig
