The Thousand: Storm the gates of Hell
“A picture is worth a thousand words.” Sure, but which ones?
I’m going to try a little writing exercise to get the gears turning again. Each week, I’ll ask my computer to show me a random photo from my camera roll until I feel a twinge of inspiration. I’ll give you the thousand-ish words that the picture is worth to me. It’ll be an exercise in long-windedness. Will I do it every Thursday? Definitely not. Will it be compelling? I can’t say. Is it something? It sure is.
A little disclaimer: if the photo is of particularly high quality, it was probably taken by Michael Hanson, aka @bottlescansandcameras on Instagram. Michael is an angel who has a much greater talent for photography than I do. He’s taken hundreds of photos for me over the years. If you see Michael, buy him a beer. I will include a photo credit with the photo each week.
Your Thursday Thousand starts now.
Here’s one I’m particularly proud of. This is my nephew, Storm Forrest Gates. That’s not a pseudonym, that’s the name on his birth certificate. Storm’s name is always drawing comments whenever he introduces himself. People ask if he was named after the character from X-Men. Bars take photos of his ID and put them on the wall.
A solid argument can be made for nominative-determinism (the influence your name has on your personality) when you take into account that Storm turned out to be a fan of rock, heavy metal, sludge, doom, and the like. And he can absolutely crush a Metallica riff on guitar.
The one thing that always irked me about his name is this: his dad’s name is David.
Now, I don’t really have a strong opinion on parents naming their kids after themselves, but in this case, not doing so has resulted in one of the greatest tragedies in human history. You see, Storm’s name as it stands can be shortened to Storm F. Gates. If David had had any foresight, he would have given his name as Storm’s middle name. That’s right, Storm David Gates, or Storm D. Gates. Probably the one opportunity in all of history to make that pun, fumbled at the five-yard line.
That’s not really the part that I’m proud of, though. I’m proud because of the things that Storm has accomplished, and a little project we got to do together.
Storm and I had always been close. Our age gap would be more appropriate for brothers or cousins instead of uncle and nephew. Growing up, we made music together occasionally — though I hesitate to use the words “music” or “band.” Our little outfit, called Grow My Odd, was a sort of noise project that started as a way to annoy and distract my sister when she was going through a difficult time. Our way of showing our support. We wrote a tune called “Dog Food and Beer” instead of helping my mother bring in the aforementioned groceries when she asked. When my sister asked what we’d like to eat for lunch, we recorded a six-minute dissonant descent into madness, named “Food Suggestions Pt.1” and “Food suggestions Pt.2” as our answer.
Years after I moved from Upstate New York to Santa Cruz, California, my oldest nephew, Rick, his now-wife, Bristin, and our close friend, Christina, all made the leap and joined me on the West Coast. Christina fortuitously had to move back home for a year, where she and Storm started talking. It wasn’t too long before Christina rejoined us in Santa Cruz, with a lovestruck Storm in tow.
By Storm’s own account, if Christina hadn’t returned to New York and coaxed him out of his shell, he probably wouldn’t have ever left his comfortable life in his hometown. Instead, he took a leap and landed thousands of miles away.
His brother Rick had already scored a great gig as a luthier at the legendary Santa Cruz Guitar Company, and Storm was able to join him by working in the spray booth; applying the intoxicatingly glossy finish on some fancy, world-class guitars.
This was especially noteworthy because it was Storm’s first real job. Can you believe this guy’s luck? Not only does he fall in love, but he moves across the country, sight unseen, to a resort-like beach town, and lands a job making the kind of guitars owned by Eric Clapton, Janis Ian, and the guy from Men at Work. But he deserved every bit of it and more.
Over the years, Storm moved from department to department at Santa Cruz Guitar — learning virtually every aspect of guitar making, and even assembling his very own.
It was always inevitable that Storm and Christina would move back to the East Coast. After a few years, they decided to move to Burlington to be closer to family. They both landed work with an up-and-coming guitar company out there, and their bags were packed.
Before they left, I asked Storm to do one more thing. I had been operating The Slough Brewing Collective for a couple of years and I wanted to make a beer to send them off. Storm had been around for some of my home brew days, and we had always bonded over our love for beer; Storm once helped me drink my entire collection of Imperial Stouts and Barley Wine when I decided I no longer had room for them.
So I asked Storm if he would brew a beer with me. We would make it dark, moody, and metal as fuck. We would mash-in listening to “Dopesmoker” by Sleep— one of Storm’s favorite tracks, and an all-time classic of the stoner metal genre.
Style-wise, we landed on a Black Lager; every industry professional’s bread and butter. I designed it loosely after Death and Taxes from Moonlight Brewing, of course, and the ABV just happened to work out to exactly 6.66 percent. At least that’s what we told the TTB.
There was no question in our minds that we would name the beer Storm the Gates. That was until the events of January 6, 2021. We had been planning this beer for months. We were already working on a label with our graphic designer because the lead time was several weeks out, when one of our team realized that the name — Storm’s name — could be taken as a statement in support of the insurrectionist. Something we most certainly did not want to convey.
But the perfect solution was right in front of us: Storm the Gates of Hell. Not only was it even more metal than before, but it also laid out exactly which gates were going to be stormed, and they were definitely not the gates to the nation’s capital.
The weeks flew by, and the beer fermented away with a looping playlist of stoner metal as its lullaby. We had developed a beautiful label that was a callback to the artwork on the Dopesmoker album cover, illustrated by the ever-talented Venecia Prudencio, aka @coping_artist on Instagram.
The beer had fermented to a beautifully crisp lager, with notes of chocolate milk, and an intriguing hint of smoke on the finish. Canning day was as smooth as could be. The yield was good. The labels were perfect. Release day was upon us, but I was dreading it because it meant we were saying goodbye to Storm and Christina.
Thanks to our friend and employee of The Slough Brewing, Marc Lewis, I was able to send Storm off with one more surprise. Apparently, Marc knew the members of Sleep fairly well, and was able to send them a few cans of our little Black Lager. Impressed with our tribute to their album, they sent a signed copy of a rare vinyl, and an invitation for Storm to join them backstage if they ever get around to touring again.
In summation, this particular photo brings to mind a sense of pride for the person my youngest nephew, Storm Fucking Gates, has become, and the road he’s traveled so far to get there. Cheers to Storm.
Thanks for tuning in so far. I’ll try to establish a regular writing cadence in the coming weeks. Please subscribe to make sure you don’t miss a single word.
Cheers,
Ben