I sat on the side of a hill in City Park with a bunch of friends and watched a posse of little kids playing with a single red balloon. They danced barefoot on the grass with the balloon, skipping around it and batting it into the air to keep it afloat.
Dozens of people milled around. Some jamming with the DJ spinning tunes in the gazebo. Some holding plastic cups of dark beer with a foamy head. People kicked off their shoes and sat on blankets. There were girls in sundresses and guys with flannel shirts tied around their waists. There were babies in strollers clapping their hands and dogs on leashes hoping for happy accidents.
People chatted with friends and strangers while standing on line for cold adult beverages and empanadas. No one seemed to mind the wait. The only people I saw with iPhones were probably texting their friends to get their butts over there.
In other words, it was another idyllic Park City summer evening hosted by Offset Bier. The craft brewery has so far this summer put on three parties. Charging a nominal entry fee, the event keeps it real with beers for only five bucks, entertainment and affordable options from local food vendors — The Pretzel Connection, Tina’s Bakery, Red Bicycle, to name just a few. It feels about as local as it gets.
And for Offset Bier founder, owner and “doer of all the things” Conor Brown, that’s a gold-medal win. When he opened Offset in 2020, his idea was to create a counterbalance to Main Street — a place that would offset the tourist scene.
“I looked around and thought, nobody is opening a business for locals,” he said.
Conor, who moved to Park City from Vermont in 2006, purposely located his business in the Prospector neighborhood to keep it affordable for him as well as his patrons.
“I wanted Offset to be a place for people to get together after mountain biking, skiing, all the things we do here,” he said. “I’d love to have a place where cell phones don’t work. Where like-minded people can be together in an open-minded, free-thinking way.”
At the same time, he wanted to offset people’s expectations for what a craft brewery could be. Beyond serving great beer, Conor aims to serve opportunities for people to gather in ways that are healthy physically and mentally. That includes supporting the activities they love — skiing, biking, running, and yes, even finding love.
In fact, I suggested it as a meeting spot for a first date one night in early summer. I told the guy it would be super chill and we’d be able to hear each other talk. When we arrived at the bar, there were about three other people in the taproom. The taproom pooch Lucy, a 14-year-old rescue with grey eyebrows, lazed on the floor while the guy and I chatted.
All of a sudden, dozens of people in running clothes started pouring in. They set up party decorations, lit candles on a cake and, SURPRISE! we were smack-dab in the middle of some girl’s 30th birthday party.
But that’s the whole point of Offset — to be a kind of living room for locals. In that way, it’s become a so-called third place, that coveted space in people’s lives that exists somewhere between the first place, home and the second place, work.
Third places include cafes, coffee shops, clubs, gyms, parks, libraries, barber shops and the like. They’re the places that make us feel connected, that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves. Like an Irish pub, third places are a microcosm of daily life, reflecting how we are alike — and different. Just like that old advertising poster that touts “Guinness is good for you,” places like Offset are as good for the individual as they are for the community.
So what does it look like when a business becomes an organic part of a place like Park City? At Offset, it means offsetting waste by donating spent grains to a local farmer who in turn uses them as feed for his pigs and cows. It means offering ways to socialize in real life — the brewery sponsors a run club and mountain bike nights in the summer and uphill travel nights at Park City Mountain in the winter. And as Conor instructs his servers to “kill people with kindness,” it means no buttheads.
But mostly, it means giving locals a chance to mix and mingle with other locals in a low-key, unpretentious environment that’s way more reflective of our daily life than a bunch of drunk bachelorettes in white plastic cowboy boots and sequin hats tripping up Main Street in some sort of caricature of life in a mountain town.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just not how we really are. Which is something simple and true — a mutual love of people and place. The collective knowledge of how beautiful this place is. And how lucky we are to call it home.
It’s a little later in the evening in the Party in the Park, and the kids with the red balloon have disappeared. Now there’s one little boy standing all by himself with the balloon. He swats at it a couple of times and then just stands there, unsure of what to do next.
Another kid with ginger hair wanders over, pulling up his shirt and patting his Buddha belly, in some kind of unspoken toddler greeting. He picks up the red balloon and together, the two of them bat it up to the sky.
Kate Sonnick is a freelance writer, creative director and fan of Glossier IPA. You can buy her a beer at the final Offset Party in the Park of the season on Sept. 13.
