If you have never spent a winter in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, it is hard to explain why a town would throw a festival just because winter ended. If you have, no explanation is needed. The Festival of the Angry Bear is Marquette's way of coming out of hibernation, and this year we joined the crowd: craft beer in hand, live music in the background, and a plan to eat something from every food truck we could find.
A festival about waking up grumpy
The Festival of the Angry Bear is hosted by Ore Dock Brewing Co., the brewery at the center of downtown Marquette's beer scene. The name fits the theme: the bear waking up from a long winter, hungry and irritable, which describes most Yoopers by April. The whole event has a neighborhood feel. This is not a giant commercial beer fest with wristband lines a block long. It is a community coming outside at the same time, blinking at the sun, holding a beer.
Disco Dogs and The Bootstrap Boys
Our first stop was Disco Dogs, a local hot dog operation with more personality than a hot dog stand has any right to have. Fed and caffeinated by beer, we settled in for The Bootstrap Boys, whose country set turned the street in front of the stage into a dance floor. Live music outdoors, in a coat but without gloves: that is what early spring victory sounds like in the UP.
Smelted Wood Fired Pizza
The eating continued at Smelted Wood Fired Pizza, a truck pulling fresh pies out of an actual wood fired oven. Watching your pizza go into a flame-filled dome and come out blistered two minutes later does not get old, and the pizza backed up the show. Between the two of us we left almost nothing on the plate, and the only argument was over the last slice.
DaH Pretzel Guys
We finished with DaH Pretzel Guys, because a beer festival without a giant soft pretzel is incomplete, and because the name alone earned our business. If the "DaH" is lost on you, spend some time around Yooper accents and it will click. The pretzel was the right call: warm, salty, and exactly what you want a few beers into an afternoon.
Why this festival stuck with us
We have been to bigger festivals with bigger headliners, and we remember them less clearly than this one. Everything at the Angry Bear was local: the brewery, the trucks, the band's crowd, the people we ended up talking to in line. Marquette keeps pulling us back for reasons like this, and if you are anywhere near the UP when Ore Dock runs it again, go hungry. That is our only real advice.
You can see the whole afternoon, pizza oven included, in the vlog. Watch it on YouTube. We also send a short weekly newsletter about where we are and what broke this week. The signup form is on our newsletter page.