Brains, Brews, and Belonging:   A Thursday Night Ritual

Brains, Brews, and Belonging: A Thursday Night Ritual 

Explore Thursday night DJ Trivia at Starflyer Brewing Company in Canton, Ohio—where craft beer, local favorites, and a growing community are bringing new life to weeknights. 

Those Who Create the Magic—and Whom I’m Grateful to Know 

Co-owners Andrew Archer and Ethan Comfort were behind the bar that first night, moving with the kind of calm ease that instantly tells you the room is in capable hands. There is a difference between people who work in hospitality and people who embody it, and if you have spent as many years in venues as I have, you learn to spot that distinction within seconds. They were attentive without hovering, friendly without sounding rehearsed, and confident without carrying themselves like men who had just memorized the phrase “craft beverage program” and were desperate to use it in a sentence. They looked like they belonged there because they did. 

They were genuinely interested in my feedback, and they took time to talk with me. There was no sales pitch, no attempt to market their brand. Instead, they showed an interest in learning my story—and in sharing their own. As they answered my questions, they revealed themselves without reservation. Our first conversation was comfortable, honest, and real. I learned that Andrew had honed his craft while brewing for HiHo Brewing Company in Cuyahoga Falls. Now, as master brewer at Starflyer, his wizardry left me in awe. I found Andrew and Ethan inspiring—I still do—and I was struck by their enthusiasm. Their joy was both palpable and infectious. More importantly, it was earned.

They had built something special—a space that felt less like a commercial establishment and more like a collective living room, carefully curated to feel inviting and safe. The third pillar of Starflyer’s success is Andrew’s wife and co-owner, Bailey Archer. I would not meet her until my next visit, but her presence was deeply felt from the moment I entered. There was an obvious feminine influence in the colors, artwork, and décor that made the room feel cared for rather than merely maintained. It was a room I enjoyed from day one, and one that now feels like a second home. I don't cross paths with Bailey as often because she is the only one of the three to have another full-time job. But I always look forward to our conversations whenever she is there.

Together, Andrew, Ethan, and Bailey have created a space that does not feel like a business angling for your money so much as a room that is genuinely glad you showed up.

It was after that first visit that the idea took hold, and once it did, it would not leave me alone. I knew that room could hold trivia. Not just technically. Plenty of rooms can technically hold trivia in the same sense that plenty of kitchens can technically produce edible lasagna. That is not the same as saying the result will be memorable, or joyful, or something people return for week after week. Starflyer had the bones for it. It had warmth. It had flow. It had personality. It had that increasingly rare quality of making people want to look up from their phones and talk to each other like civilization might yet be salvageable.

So I brought the idea to Morgan Byelene—and I did not bring it casually. Morgan is not someone to whom I toss half-baked suggestions. She is extraordinary at what she does, and that is not flattery, but fact.

I believe I am the only one of her hosts who is also a professional DJ, and she has given me props for catching on to the format much more quickly than most. She has also given me permission to continue scouting restaurants, breweries, wineries, bars, and other venues that might want to join the DJ Trivia family. Should I find one and help bring it in, I have the right to become its weekly host as well. That is not just a vote of confidence. It is an alliance. I consider myself incredibly lucky to both work for and with her.

The Night It Began

The first night we launched trivia at Starflyer felt the way all first nights do: suspended somewhere between uncertainty and possibility. As guests continued to walk in the door, they were hit with the full sensory report: the low thrum of conversation, the clink of glasses, the warm smell of malt and hops hanging in the air like a promise. But what I remember most was the mingling of anticipation and subtle, unspoken tension. Together, they were a reminder that nothing had been decided yet and everything was still being quietly negotiated beneath the surface. Both the room and I were testing the waters, feeling each other out in that unspoken way that happens when people are not quite ready to commit but are curious enough to stay, when attention sharpens and every small detail begins to matter more than it normally would. A room has to decide whether it trusts you, whether the voice at the microphone is going to guide the night or simply exist within it, and the players have to decide whether what they are experiencing is worth building into their routines, worth protecting on a calendar already crowded with obligations and easy excuses. Andrew and Ethan were watching in their own way, too, measuring whether the addition of something new would deepen what they had built or quietly throw it off balance, because a room like that does not come together by accident and it is not something they were eager to gamble with, which made their willingness to roll out a large screen for the game—wheeled in for Thursday night trivia, then quietly tucked back into storage as soon as it was over—all the more telling. It was a small but meaningful concession for a brewery that purposefully refuses to have screens. Starflyer’s aesthetic remains the same; it will never become a sports bar, and the space is better served by that decision.

Someone new to the microphone would have likely been plagued by a debilitating sense of anxiety in those final moments before gameplay, but I was not worried. I had spent the better part of my adult life managing rooms—from high school classrooms to grand ballrooms. For thirty years, I had stared down the apathy of a Monday morning first-period class and navigated the hormonal minefields of Shakespearean analysis, and for almost as long, I had guided couples and their guests through the formalities of weddings, enduring cake smashes, questionable garter removals, and emotional speeches from fathers of the bride before sustaining full dance floors well past midnight. One might think that transitioning from the hallowed halls of academia to the neon-lit world of mobile DJ services to the inebriated crowd of a trivia game would be a series of jarring leaps, one after another, but the truth is, the skill set is identical. Whether I am explaining the tragic flaw of Othello, introducing a couple’s grand entrance, or announcing the Do or Die category for DJ Trivia, I am fundamentally an emotional architect. I have spent a lifetime building spaces where people feel safe enough to be vulnerable, excited enough to be loud, and—in the case of trivia—competitive enough to care about things that, in the grand scheme of the universe, do not matter at all.

Morgan stood with me that night as I took the microphone in hand and introduced the game, and I remember being aware not of nerves, but of awareness itself, of the way the room seemed to be paying attention without tightening, without stiffening, as though the brewery itself were watching us over the rim of a pint glass, curious but patient, willing to let the moment unfold before deciding what it was. Nothing felt forced, and nothing felt rushed, but everything felt observed, as if the night had not yet revealed its intentions and was waiting, just as we were, to see what shape it might take. And then, as it always does when a room is given something real to gather around, it began to shift—not all at once, not dramatically, but in small, almost imperceptible ways that only become obvious when you have spent enough years in rooms to recognize the difference between polite attention and genuine engagement.

The first question landed, then the second, and somewhere in that early stretch—so quickly you could have missed it if you had blinked, or if your team had already decided to ignore your answer with impressive confidence—the room settled into itself, people leaning forward without realizing it, voices rising and falling in a natural rhythm with the questions, conversations sharpening as answers were debated, second-guessed, confidently defended, and occasionally salvaged at the last possible second by the one person who had been right all along (and will never let anyone forget it). What had been a collection of separate conversations only minutes before was beginning, without announcement, to behave like a single room, with laughter traveling outward rather than staying contained, with small moments of recognition and triumph rippling across the space as teams found their footing and began to trust not only the game, but each other.

By the time we reached the final question, there was already a sense—still forming, still just out of reach, but unmistakable to anyone paying attention—that this was not going to be a one-night experiment, not something that would quietly disappear in a few weeks like a gym membership that seems like a great idea on January 1, then gets abandoned by Valentine’s Day, but something that had taken hold beneath the surface, something that suggested return and repetition and the quiet building of habit. It had weight now, a kind of presence that did not need to announce itself in order to be felt, and in that moment, standing there with the microphone in my hand and the room fully engaged in front of me, I understood something that cannot be forced and cannot be manufactured, only recognized when it happens, often just before someone argues passionately and incorrectly about a perfectly straightforward answer: this thing had legs, and it was going to stick.

When a Room Becomes a Ritual

And then there are the smaller details, the little recurring pleasures that help turn the evening into ritual rather than mere programming. Starflyer’s beer, first of all, is excellent, and I do not throw that word around loosely when it comes to craft beer. I have been to too many breweries, spent too much money, completed too many trails, and acquired too many tin tackers and Tagabrews to be seduced by branding alone. If I say the beer is good, I mean it is actually good, not “good for a new place,” not “good if you are already there,” and certainly not “good after the third pint when your standards have become spiritually compromised.” The pours are clean, the flavors are intentional, and each glass arrives with that quiet confidence that says no one here is guessing. You can taste the care in it—the balance, the restraint, the understanding that a great beer does not need to shout to be heard. Even the way the glass feels in your hand, cool and slightly weighted, becomes part of the experience, a small but steady anchor in the middle of a lively room. 

For fellow beer-drinkers who have not visited Starflyer, let me describe the moment I look forward to all night, the quiet ritual that comes after the last answer is collected, the scores are finalized, and the microphone is finally set down: my weekly flight. I do not drink during gameplay—DJ Trivia forbids its hosts from drinking during gameplay, and I respect the rules. I have wanted a weekly residency hosting trivia for far too long to risk losing it over an early pour, and so there is a kind of delayed gratification built into the evening, a reward waiting patiently on the other side of responsibility. Six small glasses arrive, each one a different promise, and I work through them slowly, thoughtfully, the way someone who genuinely loves craft beer is supposed to:

They have IPAs as well, along with a pilsner, a dark mild, a Belgian blond, and yet another stout, and I can say with confidence that everything I have tried has been crafted with intention and care—everything, that is, except the IPAs, which I continue to regard as a long-form practical joke played on otherwise reasonable people, a grassy, bitter experience that tastes less like beer and more like a lawn care decision gone terribly wrong. And yet, even in that, there is something admirable about a brewery that offers range, that trusts its audience to find what they love, and that creates an environment where, whether your palate leans toward the sweet, the tart, the roasty, or the resolutely not-hoppy, there is always something waiting for you at the end of the night. 

On top of that, Thursday nights bring those magnificent beer mug sugar cookies from Lieberman’s Bakery in Massillon, and I say this as someone fully aware of the recklessness of making sweeping dessert claims in public: they are the best sugar cookies I have ever had. Ever. Not top five. Not honorable mention. Number one with a bullet. They are soft without collapsing, sweet without becoming cloying, and just substantial enough to make you briefly reconsider every other sugar cookie you have ever defended in conversation. The frosting alone could start arguments, and I suspect it already has. Starflyer also sells nuts from Heggy’s Candy and Nut Shop, which feels so deeply Canton that I half expect the bags to come with a civic pride pamphlet tucked inside. There is something quietly perfect about cracking open a bag of Heggy’s nuts in a room like that, the faint salt and sweetness mixing with the aroma of fresh pours and baked sugar, creating a kind of sensory shorthand for “you are exactly where you are supposed to be.”

Then, because apparently the universe wanted to make these Thursdays unbearable for anyone trying to demonstrate restraint, there is Mike’s Pizza in downtown Canton. My word. Starflyer does not have a kitchen, at least not yet, but patrons are welcome to bring food in, and many of us do, which is not a loophole so much as a philosophy, a quiet acknowledgment that good rooms do not need to control every variable in order to be complete. There is a generosity in that decision, a confidence that says the experience is strong enough to welcome other good things into it without losing its identity. More accurately, many of us surrender to Mike’s Pizza with very little resistance. By now it has become part of the ecosystem. Orders go in. Boxes arrive. Lids open. The smell alone could derail a monk. It drifts across the room in warm waves—garlic, cheese, that unmistakable yeasty richness—turning heads and breaking concentration at precisely the wrong (or right) moment. Players eat between rounds, hold slices in one hand and answer sheets in the other, grease threatening the integrity of the paper in ways that feel both reckless and entirely appropriate, and somehow the whole thing feels less like people patching over the absence of a kitchen and more like the city itself joining the party. There is a rhythm to it now, the timing of bites between questions, the shared glances when a fresh box opens, the unspoken understanding that someone will absolutely try to answer with a mouth full of pizza and regret it immediately. That matters to me, because this post is not just about a brewery, or a trivia night, or even my own ridiculous delight in both. It is also a love letter to Canton and to the small family-owned businesses that make a city feel like itself. A room like Starflyer does not exist in isolation. It thrives in concert with other good people doing good work nearby. And on nights like these, you can feel that network at work, taste it, smell it, hear it in the easy hum of a room that has learned how to share itself.

The Cruel Irony of Knowing the Answers

I should also confess something that has made hosting trivia both deeply satisfying and mildly cruel. I have always wanted to host a weekly trivia game. Always. There is something about the cadence of it, the community of it, the absurd dignity of adults arguing over obscure facts while drinking beer, that has appealed to me for years. So getting this residency at Starflyer has been, in a very real sense, a dream. And yet, like so many dreams, it comes with a built-in torment mechanism. The hardest part of hosting trivia is not the pacing, or the reading, or the scoring, or the need to occasionally maintain order among people who have had just enough IPA to believe they should challenge the wording of a question written by a national company. No, the hardest part is not being allowed to play. I know the answers. Constantly. Especially at the end of each game when the “all or nothing” Do or Die Dare question is revealed. There have been questions about Shakespeare, Greek mythology, Star Wars, and rock and roll icons, among many others. There was even a Who Framed Roger Rabbit? question two weeks ago, and since 1987, I have collected all things Jessica. There have been several occasions when I was the only person in the brewery who knew the answers to questions. The only one. This is not uncommon. In fact, it is beginning to feel less like coincidence and more like a cosmic prank specifically designed to test the limits of my humility.

And yet on Tuesday nights, when I sometimes play DJ Trivia at Buffalo Wild Wings in Alliance where Morgan hosts, the gods abruptly revoke their favor. The answers that glow in my mind on Thursdays suddenly become shyer than woodland creatures. I still do well. I have won on occasion. I am not stumbling into these games like a man who thinks Nebraska has that coastline I mentioned earlier. But never—never—do I score as high as I would if the exact same questions were in front of me on the nights I am hosting. It is an infuriating arrangement, one that suggests the universe has a magnificent sense of humor and no real concern for my emotional well-being. Still, I would not trade it, because the friendships that have grown out of these Thursday nights are real. The regulars have become people I genuinely look forward to seeing. The owners have become very good friends. They support me, they help advertise my DJ business at the brewery, and what has emerged from this weekly gathering is not merely a professional arrangement but a relationship-rich little ecosystem of mutual support. That sort of thing cannot be faked, and once you have it, you guard it.

The Psychology of the "Low-Stakes" Win

Something else that cannot be faked? The electricity that hums through the room when thirty or more people are simultaneously trying to remember the name of the dog from How the Grinch Stole Christmas (His name was Max). It’s a mix of desperation, nostalgia, and the kind of low-boil competitive fire that usually only surfaces during family board games that end in decades-long grudges. But this is the heartbeat of Thursday nights at Starflyer now. And it exists in the corner of a room where four grown adults are debating with the intensity of a Supreme Court deliberation what fruit-flavored soda was invented in Germany during World War II (The answer? Fanta). It exists from the comfort of the side couch as a team of younger players let out a collective groan as they lose their lead—all because they have never heard of Celebrity Deathmatch (and suspect everyone over age 40 is lying about the programming that once aired on MTV anyway). It exists from the older couple who excitedly jump from their bar stools to high-five one another when they win the game by answering Chevy Chase as the Saturday Night Live alum who portrayed Gerald Ford. In the moment, when playing the game, the rest of the world ceases to exist for our players. The looming deadlines of Friday morning, the geopolitical unrest on the news, the fact that they forgot to move the laundry to the dryer—it all vanishes. There is only the pencil, the slip of paper, and the gut-wrenching betrayal of a teammate who is convinced they know the answer, only to lead the group into the valley of zero points. This is the high stakes of low-stakes trivia. And in a world that rarely allows people to care deeply about something without consequence, that kind of temporary, consequence-free intensity is not just entertaining—it is quietly restorative.

But why do these players care so much? That’s the question I often find myself pondering from behind the mixing board, watching the room lean in as though the fate of civilization might hinge on whether someone remembers the capital of Australia (it’s Canberra, folks). The prizes aren't life-changing ($25, $15, and $10 Starflyer gift cards for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place teams, respectively, and a round of applause), yet the “betrayal” felt when a teammate insists that the capital of Australia is Sydney can sometimes be felt by all. I see it in their faces: the furrowed brows, the hushed whispers, the frantic scribbling on answer slips. It’s about more than just facts. There is a profound human psychology at play during a trivia night. People want to be right, yes, but more than that, they want to be seen. They want to be the one who saves the day with a piece of obscure knowledge they’ve been carrying around since the early ’90s, waiting—patiently, improbably—for its moment. And when that moment comes, when the answer is revealed and they were right, there is a flash of something deeper than satisfaction. It is validation. It is recognition. It is the brain lighting up in the same way it does when effort meets reward, when memory proves itself useful, when identity—however briefly—feels confirmed.

There is also something else happening, something quieter but just as important. Trivia gives people a structured way to belong. Not performatively, not digitally, not through curated profiles or filtered images, but through shared effort. It asks people to contribute what they know, to trust one another, to negotiate disagreement, to laugh when they are wrong and celebrate when they are right. It activates memory, yes, but it also activates connection. The brain, as it turns out, loves this kind of engagement. It rewards novelty, pattern recognition, collaboration, and small bursts of achievement. It thrives on the rhythm of question and answer, tension and release. In a world where so much interaction has become passive—scrolling, watching, consuming—trivia demands participation. It pulls people out of their heads and into the room. It creates what psychologists might call a state of “flow,” where attention narrows, time distorts, and everything extraneous falls away. And for two hours on a Thursday night, that is exactly what happens. People are not thinking about their inbox. They are not replaying conversations from earlier in the day. They are not anticipating tomorrow. They are present. Fully, joyfully, competitively present.

And as the host, I get to stand at the center of that and guide it—not control it, not dominate it, but shape it just enough to keep it moving, to keep it balanced, to keep it fun. I get to use the same “classroom management” instincts to keep the competitive spirit from tipping into something sharper, something less generous, ensuring that even the team in last place leaves with a smile and a plan for “vengeance” next week. There is a responsibility in that, one that feels strangely familiar.

People often ask me if I miss the classroom. My answer is usually a nuanced “yes and no.” I miss the “Aha!” moments when a student finally understood a complex metaphor, but I don’t miss the grading, the helicopter parents, the state testing, or the acronyms (OTES, PBIS, IEP, IPDP, ISG—the list is never-ending). The beautiful thing about hosting DJ Trivia is that I still get those “Aha!” moments. I still get to be the facilitator of learning and laughter. I still get to watch the exact second when something clicks, when a person leans back in their chair with that look that says, “I knew that,” even if they only remembered it two seconds before the answer was due. And unlike the classroom, the stakes here are delightfully, mercifully low. No grades. No transcripts. No long-term consequences. Just the immediate, fleeting joy of being right in a room full of people who care just enough for it to matter.

As a host, I see my role as an “emotional architect.” I’m not just reading questions; I’m building a narrative for the night. I’m gauging the room’s energy, knowing when to accommodate a team’s request for “Cotton Eyed Joe” for a quick line dance between rounds, and when to accept a poorly drawn dinosaur on a pizza box for bonus points. It’s a delicate dance of vigilance. You have to defend the fun. You have to protect the players from the boredom of a stale routine, from the creeping sense that the night has lost its spark. That’s why we use the DJ Trivia format. It’s not just “Who was the 14th President?” (Franklin Pierce, for those of you scoring at home). It’s a multimedia experience that engages the senses and keeps the brain moving as fast as the beer is pouring. If the energy dips, the ritual fails. If the music is too loud, the conversation dies. I am there to defend the fun—but more than that, I am there to protect the space where people are allowed, for just a little while, to care about something small in a way that feels unexpectedly, profoundly big. And the longer I have done this, the more I have come to understand that spaces like that are not guaranteed. They feel easy when they are working, almost inevitable, as though they will always be there waiting for you next Thursday. But they are not inevitable. And once you have seen enough good rooms disappear, you stop assuming they will last. 

Why This Matters to Me Personally

That is why I care about all of this so fiercely, or at least why I feel the urgency of it now, because I know how fragile spaces like this have become.  Craft beer has been one of my passions for years, not in some casual “I once liked a hazy in 2018” sort of way, but in the full-blown, passport-completing, trail-finishing, Tagabrew-collecting, tacker-collecting, deeply invested sense. I have visited every brewery in the state of Ohio—most more than once. I have completed Ohio on Tap app and am currently ranked 15th in the state on the app's leaderboard. I have finished the Summit Brew Path, the Cleveland Brewery Passport, the Medina County Brewery Trail, the Dayton Ale Trail, the Columbus Ale Trail, the 419 Ale Trail, and the Route 33 Brew Trail. All but the 419 and the 33 trails have been completed at least three times, and I am currently doing all of them yet again this year. I have collected tin tackers from 83 Ohio breweries, and I have collected every Tagabrew from participating breweries in the state of Ohio. 

I have watched the brewery boom unfold across this state with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for sports dynasties and long-awaited album releases. And now I have watched too many of those places close. Brewery sales are down nationwide. Costs are up. The market is crowded. Consumer habits have changed. Some people have moved on to canned cocktails, some to spirits, some to staying home in sweatpants and pretending that counts as a personality. Whatever the reasons, the result is the same: breweries that once felt vibrant and permanent are disappearing. Many that were among my favorites are now gone, including four in the Cincinnati area—Listermann, Humble Monk, Voodoo, and Taft's. These were all ranked in my personal Top 20 for the state. It really hurt when they shuttered their doors, and I am still not over it. I may never be over it. I am one sentimental Instagram memorial post away from writing them all elegies, and that feeling—that mixture of frustration, nostalgia, and disbelief—does not exist in a vacuum and does not happen without a backstory.

To understand how we got here, you have to understand just how explosive the rise of craft beer was, particularly in the last fifteen to twenty years, because what we are seeing now is not a sudden collapse but the far side of an extraordinary expansion. What began as a niche movement—small, independent brewers pushing back against the uniformity of mass-produced beer—grew into something that felt, for a time, unstoppable. Nationally, the number of breweries in the United States climbed from just over 1,500 in the early 2000s to well over 9,000 at its peak in the early 2020s, a staggering expansion that reshaped not only how people drank, but how communities gathered. Ohio was right there in the thick of it. Breweries were opening in downtown districts, in repurposed warehouses, in neighborhoods that had not seen that kind of foot traffic in decades. They became anchors. They became destinations. They became third places—the kind of spaces sociologists talk about when they are trying to explain why human beings need somewhere to go that is not work and not home—and for a while, it felt like that trajectory would never reverse.

None of this is meant as a moral judgment, and it certainly is not a call to arms against changing habits. It is simply the reality of a market that has become more fragmented, more competitive, and more dependent on intentional participation than ever before, where breweries are no longer just competing with each other but with convenience, with comfort, and with an entire cultural shift toward staying in rather than going out. At the same time, the cost of doing business has climbed sharply. Ingredients are more expensive. Distribution is more complicated. Labor is harder to find and harder to retain. Rent is not getting any cheaper, and the margins that once felt manageable are now being squeezed from every direction, which makes it much easier to understand why so many once-thriving places are now struggling to hold their ground.

The result is a kind of quiet reckoning, one that does not arrive with a dramatic crash but with a steady, unsettling thinning of the field. Breweries that were once packed on a Friday night are now hoping for a strong Thursday. Places that expanded too quickly are pulling back. Others are simply closing their doors, sometimes with notice, sometimes without, leaving behind empty taprooms and a handful of regulars who did not realize their last visit would be their last. It is happening across the country, and it is happening here in Ohio, and every time it happens, something more than a business is lost. A gathering place disappears. A routine is broken. A small piece of local identity goes with it, which is why the conversation cannot stop at oversaturation alone.

Oversaturation is part of the story, but it is not the whole story. Yes, there are more breweries than the market can comfortably support, and yes, not every one of them was built to last. But reducing this moment to simple supply and demand misses the deeper issue, which is that these places only survive when people treat them as part of their lives rather than as occasional novelties. A brewery cannot thrive on curiosity alone. It needs consistency. It needs regulars. It needs the same ten to twelve teams showing up on a Thursday night, not because it is new, but because it has become theirs, and that is exactly why the room matters.

And that is why places like Starflyer matter so much to me, because what I am seeing there is not just a successful trivia night or a well-crafted pint, but the early stages of something that has a chance to last—a room that is building habits, building relationships, building the kind of loyalty that can sustain a business when trends shift and markets tighten. In an era where so many breweries are quietly fading, that kind of momentum is not just encouraging—it is necessary, and it naturally raises the question of what comes next.

And that is precisely why what is happening at Starflyer matters to me beyond the obvious, because it is not just a good room having a good run on a Thursday night, but a small, living example of what still works in a landscape that is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate. If breweries are now competing not only with each other but with convenience, with shifting habits, and with entire nights spent at home that never require a second thought or a second dollar, then the answer cannot simply be “make good beer and hope people come.” Good beer is no longer enough on its own. It has to be part of something larger, something connective, something that gives people a reason not just to visit once, but to move, to explore, to return, and that is where this stops being observation and becomes intention.

That is why I have been making noise—intentionally, persistently, and, I am sure at times, inconveniently—about Canton and greater Stark County needing a brewery trail or passport of their own. Because what trails and passports do, when they are done well, is transform a collection of individual destinations into a shared experience. They give shape to movement. They turn “we should go out sometime” into “let’s go here next.” They create momentum where there might otherwise be hesitation. I have seen it work across this state. I have lived it. I have followed the stamps, chased the completions, driven the extra miles, and discovered places I would never have found otherwise because someone, somewhere, understood that people often need a nudge to turn intention into action.

This is not a niche vanity project for people who own too many brewery T-shirts, though I will freely admit that I am, without apology, one of those people. This is economic development in its most practical, human form. It is community-building that does not require a committee to explain why it matters. It is a way of encouraging people to move through the city instead of staying in one place, to support multiple local businesses in a single evening, to see Canton not as a series of disconnected stops but as a network of experiences that reward curiosity and participation. It creates cross-pollination. The person who comes for one brewery stays for another. The group that starts the night with a flight ends it with dinner down the street. The dollars stretch further, not because people are spending more recklessly, but because they are staying out longer, moving more, engaging more, and importantly, this is not an untested idea—it is a proven one.

I have been working to convince the Canton Chamber of Commerce and the larger Stark County Chamber that this is not theoretical. It is not speculative. It is not a gamble. It is a model that has already proven itself in cities across Ohio, from Columbus to Cleveland to Dayton and beyond, where brewery trails have helped sustain interest, drive foot traffic, and give smaller or newer establishments a fighting chance to be discovered. They are listening. Interest is growing. Conversations are happening. And that, in itself, is encouraging, because it means there is at least a recognition that what is at stake here is not just beer, but the ecosystem that surrounds it, because ultimately, this is about more than breweries themselves.

And that, in the end, is why I am standing behind a microphone on Thursday nights in downtown Canton. People sometimes ask me why I still do weekly gigs, why the owner of a DJ company is still out there hosting trivia in a brewery when he has already built a successful business elsewhere. The answer is not complicated, though it is perhaps more sentimental than I once would have admitted. I do it because someone has to protect the room. Someone has to be the adult in the room, yes, but also the steward of it, the person making sure the lights, the audio, the pacing, the questions, the atmosphere, and the energy all align in such a way that everyone else can simply enjoy themselves. Whether I am acting as the emotional architect of a wedding reception or the host of a weekly trivia night, the mission is the same. Build the conditions for joy, and then get out of its way.

Trivia. Taps. Triumph 🍻🧠✨

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