George Washington had focus. Martin Luther King Jr. had vision. John Lennon could imagine. Bilbo Baggins knew what he wanted and grasped for that gold ring. None of them had the drive to achieve their goals the way Kevin Cross is focused on reaching the task at hand.

He is stepping closer to his goal every time he walks into Doyle’s Public House in Tacoma. See, Cross is trying to drink 1,000 pints of Guinness. He is at number 850, but more pints fall every time the Red Sox play.

“Everyone has to have a goal in life,” he says.

Cross had his vision of reaching the holy grail of beer when Doyle’s first opened a year and a half ago. He saw that the Irish pub televised every Red Sox game and knew he was home.

The transplanted New Englander had found his new living room.

“The Red Sox is the closest thing I have to religion,” he says.

He joined the bar’s Guinness club and slowly started climbing the ranks. First came the T-shirt and his name on the wall. Then he pulled into the lead and his competition fell behind in their drinking volume and frequency. The number two position is at only about 350. Cross held the lead even when he was gone most of the winter, when he was on the East Coast with his job as a merchant marine.

Now he is back in town and tossing down pint after pint every time the Red Sox play. That means that much of the bar’s success can directly be connected to Cross’s passion.
“I haven’t done the math,” he says. “But there’s some large money involved.”

Pints run about $4.50. Do the math. That is quite a bar tab as he reaches 1,000 pints.
At his current pace, he will reach his goal in mid-August. But he doesn’t know much about what the reward will be once he reaches that golden number. The bar owners didn’t figure folks would reach it that fast. But that’s fine with Cross, he’ll just keep drinking and watching the games.

Anyone interested in watching Cross near his finish line can do so at an event that marked the start of a new game.

Tacoma Beer Society

The Tacoma Beer Society held its first meeting at Stadium Bistro earlier this month with far more wannabe members than organizers first thought.

“We had low expectations so we wouldn’t be disappointed,” Stephanie DeRosa of Tacoma Beer Society says.

She had expected 10 or so people would attend. They had about twice that with more people expressing their interest in future events — the next one is at Doyle’s July 25.

The group plans to meet on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month, with the first meeting at Stadium Bistro, while the other meetings will be “field trips“ to bars around the greater Tacoma area. Future events will be at Cans, the Parkway, the Harmon, and the Varsity Grill.

“It’s about trying things you never otherwise would,” DeRosa says. “I want to support all the local businesses I can. I love Tacoma.”

Some events will be sit-down dinner tastings, while others will be just social gatherings that involve libations.

TBS already is working on gaining non-profit status so that it can handle membership dues and donations without all those taxes getting in the way of drinking beer.
More on the group is available at: www.myspace.com/tacomabeersociety.

[Doyle’s Public House, 208 St. Helens Ave., Tacoma, 253.272.7468]