Big day for beer drinkers

Beer lovers, rejoice!!!

Tonight, the month-long Oktoberfest culminates in a street party which will be held along the stretch of Ma. Orosa St. in Ermita, Manila. It’s a long night of food, fun and booze, with some of the best pop bands dishing out their cornucopia of wicked dance grooves.

The Oktoberfest street party, dubbed Oom Pa Pa 3, started out in 1998. Holiday Inn’s PR Manager, Sharon Samarista elaborates, "We figured that we had to make some noise in the Ermita area, which was then becoming quiet, especially after all the girlie bars were forced to close down. So, we came up with the idea of a street party."

"We cordoned off Ma. Orosa between UN Avenue and Kalaw, set up a stage and invited some of the best bands to play all night. We also put up a dance floor and surprisingly, people from all ages, even those in their 50s and 60s, danced the night away," Sharon gleefully recalls.

Since closing down the street meant a potential loss for the establishments in the area, Holiday Inn deemed it best to forge an alliance with the neighboring restaurants and bars. And as expected, most of the restaurants were more than willing to pitch in for the grub.

A long night of hedonistic pleasure? There’s got to be a catch. Aren’t the tickets expensive? "No. We’ve priced the tickets at P150 each. Imagine, P120 of that is consumable, and beer is only P30 per bottle or can," Sharon reiterates.

In addition, to keep the drinkers sober, a bevy of games and contests has also been lined up.

The winners of the National Beer Drinking competition will also be awarded tonight.

How did the event’s monicker come about? "Oom Pa Pa was derived from the sound of a certain wind instrument usually found in brass ensembles," explains Sharon. "It literally goes oom pa pa. Unfortunately, I can’t recall its name right now."

One of the more interesting highlights from the past three years was when Fernando Poe, Jr. attended the festivities last year. "Grabe! I didn’t realize he was that popular. Everyone wanted to see him. He was there to award the national beer drinking champion," Sharon muses.

The Oktoberfest tradition began with a royal Bavarian wedding in 1810. The groom, King Ludwig I, wanted to celebrate his marriage to Maria Teresa of Austria by proclaiming a state fair in Munich. The festival was dedicated to the fall harvest and to the region‘s most famous product: beer. Tradesmen and merchants from all over Germany joined the festivities. They examined the crops, sang, danced and sampled the first beer of the season. The celebration was such a success that Ludwig issued a royal decree making the October festival an annual event in Munich. Since then, it has become an accepted tradition in the US and in the other far-flung continents as well.

A fitting prelude to the forthcoming Halloween break, Oom Pa Pa 3, is sponsored by San Miguel, McDonald’s, The Corporate Inn Hotel, Texas Chicken, Max’s Restaurant, Jade Vine Restaurant, Shakey’s, Fu Wah Sea Food Restaurant and Casino Filipino Manila Pavilion.

Now, here’s an interesting bit of trivia. The whole stretch of the Oktoberfest locale in Ermita is situated in Barangay 666. No wonder it has always been the cradle of all things bawdy and irreverent.