History of the Beer Knights

History of
the Beer Knights

Every July in Sherman, New York, there is a huge gathering known as The Great Blue Heron Music Festival. People come from all over the country to camp, listen to live music, and enjoy the company of their fellow partiers. Tie-dye and beer are plentival, as are creative people. It is a place where you can go all out, wear anything you wish, and act like you want but don't dare to in real life. My idea of Heaven isn't too far off from the Heron.

While in college, I often visited a website called College Humor.com. They posted funny pictures that people had sent in from universities all over North America. Most were college kids doing drunken, crazy, stupid things. One picture that caught my attention was a couple of guys in armor made out of beer cases. I looked at them and said, "Whoa...that's the smartest thing I've ever seen anybody do, EVER!" So I suggested to my friends after the 2005 Blue Heron that we make similar armor for the next year. Although I was in Korea for the intervening year, I did what I could to organize the entire situation via my friend's website, NerdHatch.com.

I came back to New York from Korea on Monday July 3rd and worked fervently to put together my armor in time for the festival on Thursday the 6th. I scoured grocery store bottle returns, drug store dumpsters, and even went so far as to actually buy beer for the cases. My beer of choice was my favorite beer of all time: Labatt's Blue. It turned out this was a difficult selection since Blue is a Canadian import and most of the cases are given back to the importers with the returned cans.

Still, I managed to find enough cases to fashion upper torso armor, a forearm guard, light helmet, shield, and greaves that covered my lower and upper legs. For a weapon, I carried a 4' inflatable sword I bought in Korea and a smaller plastic sword with LED lights inside for nighttime. I worked my tail off putting it all together and I think it looked pretty damn good in the end.

When I got to the Heron, I found out that of the four other guys that were supposed to be donning the armor with me, one wasn't coming due to personal issues (work), one had been busy readying for imminent fatherhood (baby girl), and one was just lazy and didn't make anything. Fortunately there was one man I could count on...a guy I had just met at the previous Heron. He put together some great upper torso armor, a gigantic shield, and the biggest sword I'd ever seen! His was mostly made of Guinness supplies...another tough choice since Guinness cases are probably the hardest of all the big brands to find! He had forgotten his helmet (which I had seen pictures of and it was awesome), but he managed to improvise something at the Heron with a spare case and some tape.

We patrolled the Festival as The Blue Knight and The Black Knight and were treated like celebrities! Fair maidens rushed to be by our side! People lined up to take our picture or be in pictures with us! I'd guess we were in close to 1000 photos, either posed or from afar. The band was ignored when we walked by the stage! We told people we were "collecting the King's tax" and got free beer at campsites. We even had a court jester for a while! It turns out that wearing armor was the best idea ever!

Now we are planning on going to several more festivals and spreading the word of the Beer Knights throughout the Northeast. We're also looking to recruit some new Knights into our Order!

Please feel free to make your own armor and join us!