Fullsteam Brewery

I clearly do not get out much anymore, for what caught my attention as I slowly drove in the dark along Geer Street behind the outfield wall of the old Durham Bulls ballpark and headed uncertainly toward Rigsbee Avenue was a colorful neon sign that read--what did it read? Fullsteam? That was where I was headed, after all, and I knew that Fullsteam, which I had never been to, was in the vicinity. I stopped the car and took a harder look at the sign. "Motorco," it read, looking rather snazzy, its multichromatic luminescence brought into exorbitant relief against the general darkness of the evening, and in that moment it symbolized for me all that has been developing in Durham over the past few years--putting a place of entertainment where a place of business had been. The patrons in Motorco--I could see them through the large windows of the illuminated bar--looked young, and I thought in that moment that cities are for the young. They are for the young because the young have not had time to see them change. Motorco will always be there! Or so I imagine is the thinking, subconscious as it may be.

To say that Fullsteam is a place of entertainment occupying what was once a place of business is not entirely accurate. After all, the brewery is a place of business, and not that different of a business than the business that used to occupy the building. As I usefully discovered on Endangered Durham, Fullsteam occupies the back half of a building that used to house an RC and then a 7-Up bottling company. So beverages are in its blood.

I was surprised--pleasantly--by Fullsteam. Rather than a cramped, it is a cavernous space with enormously high ceilings and a polished concrete floor. The space is divided into two areas--four really, when you include the very front section of the bar, which has a ping pong table and four or five pinball machines, as well as a floor-to-ceiling panel consisting of controls that were once used to operate an electric bus system, and the room in which the brew kettles do their thing (it bears repeating that this is a bar and brewery). The main room contains eight or so wooden picnic tables, spaced generously apart, and a stage in one corner (on the night I was there, Chapel Hill guitarist Justin Johnson was performing). On the other side of the main room, and separated from it by a wall and glass doors, is the bar proper. The bar has seating for around eight people.

There were a dozen or so beers on tap, including several beers brewed, of course, on the premises. Fullsteam also serves food. On Thursday night there were barbecue sandwiches and tamales. Both were delicious. Indeed, the barbecue sandwich was one of the best I've had and reminded me very much of the barbecue I grew up eating in Memphis.

Fullsteam has an excellent website that explains the brewery's unusual--and exciting--mission. I can't wait to go again.