Of Beer Festivals and Dirty Diapers: A Not-At-All Brief and Fairly True History of Pints for Pups

July 18th, 2025 | Posted by KMdirector2* in Feel Good Story - (Comments Off on Of Beer Festivals and Dirty Diapers: A Not-At-All Brief and Fairly True History of Pints for Pups)

Written by Karel Minor, Humane Pennsylvania President & CEO

I thank heaven there is not a U.N. Convention prohibiting the torture of metaphor, for I would surely be hauled in front of a Hague Tribunal for my crimes.  Allow me to illustrate my metaphorical depravity.  When people used to ask if my wife and I were planning on having another kid, I’d respond, “Good lord, no!  Do you know how little sleep we get and how awful those dirty diapers are?”  Two years later, as we welcomed daughter two, then two years after that for daughter three, someone would inevitably bring my earlier response up and ask what changed.  I’d reply, “Enough time went by that I forgot, and kids are a lot of fun.”

Such is Pints for Pups.  After the last big Pints for Pups held eight years ago, I swore I’d never do another.  I was too old to haul kegs, it was too expensive and didn’t make enough net profit to justify the efforts, and the freak tornadic supercell thunderstorm that dumped six inches of rain on us and threatened to blow the tent away certainly didn’t help.  Do another?  Good lord, no!

But a lot of time has passed, and boy, are these big Pints for Pups Beer Festivals fun.  There, file the criminal charges at the Hague, I’ve strung up that metaphor by its toes.

I’m not going to tell you how great this July 19th’s Mega-Pints for Pups is going to be, at least not outright.  You can mosey on over to Humane PA and read that for yourself before you buy tickets or, better yet, sponsor the event.  Instead, I’m going to wander down faulty memory lane and share the history of Pints for Pups with you, and how it was rooted in a comedy of errors in 1994 at a whole different organization.  That comedy of errors resulted in, as far as I’ve ever been able to figure and I’m sticking with it until someone proves otherwise, the creation of the first ongoing charity beer event in Pennsylvania.  Grab a beer, put on the readers, and turn the brightness up on your phone; this will take a minute.


I’m not one to humble brag.  Not because I don’t brag, I do.  It’s the humility part I struggle with.  But as much as I’d like to claim that charity beer events were all my idea, I can’t.  But I was able to turn lemons into lemonade and hops into wort- darn it, there I go with the metaphors again-when I found myself as a………………………………………..wait………………..what’s happening here?……………………….what, is this some kind of freak out? This isn’t funny, Wonka!

It was bound to happen.  Two weeks ago, I had this brainchild of reimagining Pints for Pups as the Glastonbury of Beer Festivals.  Like any new festival, of course, something would go wrong or run late.  I didn’t want it to be forgetting the portapotties or the beer, so the sacrificial item is this, what was to be a total engrossing history of Pints for Pups.  Oh, well, if something has to give, better this than something else.  We don’t want a Fyre Festival on our hands, do we?  Now you can say you were at the first Glastonbury of Beer Fests and “….It was such a mess, I mean, they didn’t even finish typing the last blog post, can you believe it, Muffy?  I mean, what amateurs.”

I have an idea!  If you haven’t already, you should totally buy your tickets using this link RIGHT NOW!  Then I can finish the story for you in person over a drink! Maybe sitting beside a little bonfire in the moonlit meadow of Strummerville West after the show?

Or, you can wait for me to finish writing this some other time.  But can you stand the antici………..

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The Glastonbury of Beer Fests, or Who is This Joe Strummer They Keep Talking About?

July 12th, 2025 | Posted by KMdirector2* in Animal Welfare | Feel Good Story | Humane Pennsylvania | Uncategorized - (Comments Off on The Glastonbury of Beer Fests, or Who is This Joe Strummer They Keep Talking About?)

Written by Karel Minor, Humane Pennsylvania President & CEO (and aging Punk!)

A funny thing happened on the way to bringing back Humane PA’s Pints for Pups (PfP) after an 8-year break.  It kind of became something else.  PfP had always been a big, fun party with lots of drinks, food, and live music.  But the pause meant that we didn’t have to be just a repeat of last year’s event, only in a different spot with a different band.  It can be what it always wanted to be when it grew up.  A tiny Glastonbury of Beer Festivals!

In case you don’t know about the Glastonbury Festival, it’s a big music festival in the English countryside.  Music, art, pleasant weirdos, and very cool tents.  Think Burning Man but with less pretension and rolling, green fields.

This year’s PfP is being hosted at HPA’s very own Ruiz-Murphy Dog Park in Birdsboro.  It has green, rolling fields aplenty.  We decided to book two bands from the early days of PfP, the fabulous Americana of The Youngers, who first played in 2008, and the OG Brit rockabilly of Dibbs and the Detonators, who first played in 2009.  Wow, did we have not just a band but a mini-festival? HPA events always bring out nice folks who bring their dogs and are generally more humane than the average punter (to steal a Brit term).  These days, nice people seem to be the weird exception and not the rule, and we welcome them.  Pleasant weirdos? Check!

But it all clicked when we were planning to prepare for rain and sun, and I remembered we had a big bunch of giant multicolored sun umbrellas to go with the big sail cloth and tarps we usually hang to give shade and cover from the sun or rain.  I thought, “This is starting to look like Glastonbury more than Pints for Pups.”  Eureka!  This was exactly the vibe at the very best years of PfP – parklike settings, space to spread out, and being not just a nice way to support Humane PA’s mission but a big fun party with a few hundred of our pleasant friends and a band (or two!) we love.

Photos from past Glastonbury Festivals

In other words, Pints for Pups is the Glastonbury of Beer Festivals!  And if it’s Glastonbury, it wouldn’t be complete without Strummerville, Joe Strummer’s village of tents where people hung out around a bonfire after the show.  So, we are inviting you to participate in the inaugural Strummerville West.  Bring your pop-up tent, some extra chairs, and a blanket to set up around the small bonfire.  Hang out during the event and then head to your tent when we light up the fire at 9:00 PM, when PfP wraps up.  Everyone loves a fire, and you can enjoy some relaxation and conversation with friends.  At least until we kick you out at 11:00.  Look, we may all be pleasant weirdos, but we aren’t jobless freaks – we all have stuff to do in the morning, right?

 

Photos from past Pints for Pups Festivals

If you haven’t yet, buy your tickets now.  Everyone gets a complimentary PfP glass, over 75 varieties of beer, wine, and booze to sample, a full cash bar for full pours and mixed drinks, food trucks and vendors to shop, and live music.  Buy or upgrade to VIP tickets and get extra stuff like VIP only tented table seating, food truck vouchers, and full beer pours.  Did we mention you can bring your friendly, leashed, well-behaved dog?

Better yet, go nuts and become a business or individual sponsor of the event to get recognition benefits, extra VIP tickets, and know you’ve done just a little bit more to help animals than the other pleasant weirdos around you.  Hey, we’re not above playing on ego if it saves a life.  But if you’re OK with not saving more puppies and kitties and just want to do the bare minimum, that’s between you and the pet you have to look in the eye.

C’mon, all this and you can bring your dog?  What else do you need – a limo, and we pay you to come?

Is a week out a little late to decide we’re the Glastonbury of Beer Fests?  Sure.  But Glastonbury started out in 1970 when 1,500 people saw T. Rex headlining.  In 1971, 12,000 tickets saw David Bowie headlining.  Last year, 200,000 people saw The 1975 and Olivia Rodrigo.  Which people had the better story to tell?  Get in on the ground floor this year and get the t-shirt to prove you were there and heard of it first.  Next year, you might not be able to get as close to the stage!  Does anyone have Olivia’s number by any chance?  I’d kinda like to have her play.

The slightly less tiny Clash homage shirt designed by Adrienne Trafford for HPA!

My tiny 13 year Clash tee (still worn by my daughter!)

Postscript:  OK. What’s the deal with all the Joe Strummer?  Well, we really like him.  OK, again.  Well, I really like him, I have since I was 12. “What would Joe Strummer do?” might be as much a guiding principle as any at HPA.  He saw and called out injustice, especially against the most powerless, but was realistic that it took work, not just songs and slogans.  Sounds a little like HPA, right?  At his core, “He was very humane,” as Steve Diggle of The Buzzcocks said of him after he passed away in 2002 from an undiagnosed heart defect.  The last thing he did before he died suddenly on his couch at home?  He had walked his dogs.  Am I not going to make homage HPA t-shirts, dedicate our live music events to his memory, or name one of a kind project like the soon to be under construction Joe Strummer Memorial Garden & Turtle Nirvana after him?  As if.

I happened to start working at Humane PA in 2002, the year Joe died.  It’s not going too far to say that his legacy is not only his music, but what it inspired and resulted in through the work of HPA.  They say not many saw The Clash live in England, but they all started a band.  I was lucky enough to see The Clash play.  I say the same is true in America, except we all started a charity and tried to improve the world.

That’s why I’m always yammering on about Joe.  I’m sure you’ll bear with me, as one pleasant weirdo to another.

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