THE CORNER SHOPPING CENTER (C)1998 Alan M. Schwartz Irvine, California is a pragmatic unassuming fascist retreat wherein Vietnamese, Koreans, sporadic Blacks, and White residual fill pursue their vocations, send kids to decent schools, garage Volvos and Beemers, live in $300K homes, window shop guns 'n ammo emporia on weekends, and vote Republican. Irvine is a planned community. "Homeless" magically disappear at sundown, forever. Reproductive warrior hordes (Mexicans/Chicanos/Hispanics/Latinos) of La Raza had best not dawdle except for garnering traffic citations or gardening. In the Irvine spirit of all things good and despotic there are corner shopping malls where one can purchase bagel or baguette hot from the oven, roam through a two- acre supermarket, or savor a cheese cake fruit tart with your latte and feed crumbs to dirty pigeons rather than dirty people going dumpster diving after hours. Our Northwood shopping haven, Heritage Plaza, lost its Squid Taco to GO! joint by extemporaneous community sanction despite robust government diversity subsidy (social engineering, with the best Liberal intentions) and a godsent liquor license. The cavernous hole suffered some months' vacancy until a mercantile icon oozing gentility and class-climbing indulgence could be installed. We did church this Sunday by walking past our bank branch on the way to Ralphs Supermarket (the founder's name was Ralphs). Our eyes were riveted to walloping huge stainless steel tanks, autoclaves, recombinant DNA lab equipment, HEPA bacteriological isolation hoods, and other delights being forklifted into the storefront. The only way to get a Democrat into Irvine might be to clone it from Santa Ana chollos. Had bolshy Commie red-as-baboons'-asses Congresscritters sought to gerrymander Irvine from the inside out? No, for a sign was being hoisted onto the marquee: "Back Door Brewing Company." (Name changed, but not by much, to protect the guilty.) Visions of Anthrax Hearty Ale and Moose Drool Lager languidly pirouetted through my mind. The vats bore labels: Batonyterenye, Szerviz Kozpont, Silco- Inox." In days past that would be pretty much a dead end save for a protracted and arduous visit to a university library, reference section, push past the cobwebs and hope. I surfed AltaVista on the Web and was quickly rewarded with Silco-Inox Ltd. Gepallomas str. 5 H-3100 Batonyterenye Hungary +36 32 351873 (vox) (If you ever find yourself visiting the area, say "Hi!" to Havas Zsolt at the Banki Donat Polytechnics College in Budapest. His home is in Batonyterenye - Kossuth u. 9. 2/12. 3070.) "Inox" seems to be local patois for stainless steel, "Szerviz Kozpont" the service division or repair center. Why would anybody send a third the way around our planet for a few rather large steel vats? A quick look inside and out showed the seams to be bargain basement arc welds compared to exquisite laser-welded electropolished US domestic production (which costs like sin). The vats could have been a defensible practicum in a doctoral dissertation at a polytechnical college, technically adequate but professionally unassuming. As Budweiser is emulated by adding a handful of Earl Grey tea to the wort, a little grunge perpetually lodged within internal irregularities probably won't hurt, much. The Back Door Brewing Company opened its doors in time to lubricate the throats of Christmas 1998 shoppers. It did not lay claim to respecting the one true definition of beer - Wilhelm of Bavaria's April 1516 "Jahrzeit des Reinheitsgebot." It did not brew pale pathetic swill popularized by Coors and Budweiser, or proclaiming the advertising obscenity Lite/Light. The Back Door Brewing Company offered a decent selection of passable beers which had people lined up down the block waiting to experience the novelty of quality work. Trader Joe's extensive beer section across the street did not appear to suffer, though refrigerated swill troughs at Ralphs supermarket next door were not moving much Rocky Mountain deer piss-flavored water. I wonder what the possibility is of hundreds of gallons of fermenting wort belching carbon dioxide into a Hungarian pressure relief valve that is not quite up to the task. Will natural biological yeasty inclinations continue to flourish as those unspec'd stainless steel welds are put to a severe tensile test? Baroom whoosh! Beer's up! Irvine attracts good things and keeps the best of them. We can always call the EPA and rat on a major emitter of Greenhouse Effect-amplifying carbon dioxide. Meanwhile we will be hoisting the occasional pint and celebrating the goodness of life enjoyed by productive, educated, responsible, Conservative citizenry. Almost any community could join us in our delight if it allowed its best to proceed unhindered and its worst to proceed unaided.