I’ve made my appreciation for SweetWater’s beers clear here in the past. As a reliable, but inexpensive, regional option from my graduate school days in Nashville, it was a tidy $2.50 pour at a few different happy hours across Music City. And though drinking SweetWater Blue earned mockery from my father to this very day (it’s beer and blueberries, what’s not to like???) the brand has retained a place inside the happier recesses of my brain.
SweetWater 420 helped kick off a love of hoppy beers, even if it took some time to get over the bitterness. Now the brewery has a new round of heavy pale ales that promise an easier sip. SweetWater Gummies are double IPAs that promise big fruit flavors and a potent kick at 9.5 percent ABV. These year-round offerings suggest low bitterness despite the style from which they’re birthed, a nearly crushable flavorful beer that’s more than capable of knocking you on your ass.
Did SweetWater walk that tightrope successfully? Or is Gummies just a clever marketing ploy? Let’s find out.
SweetWater is like Firestone Walker or Elysian or Three Floyd’s to me; it’s a circle of trust brewery.
It may not have the same cachet of those more notable brewers, but SweetWater has been a staple of my drinking life since graduate school in Nashville and $2.50 pints of Blue and 420 at the Flying Saucer. The brand has expanded since then, and while it’s always tough to find up here in the saturated boozing landscape of Wisconsin it’s always been a worthwhile find. As such, it’s landed inside the circle of trust; if I’m somewhere where there’s no real local beers on tap but there’s one of these nationally distributed brewers (like, say, an airport), they’re getting the call.
The question is whether the brewery still has the magic as it branches into new territory. SweetWater introduced two new beers this spring — a West Coast IPA to attract folks who like hoppy citrus and a lager to cover a more traditional light beer market. I drank them because that’s my job sometimes, and I fully appreciate how lucky that makes me.
Here’s what I thought — along with a bonus look at Hendrick’s newest gin offering.
It took 28 years for Martin Guigui to bring Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton’s story of breaking the NBA’s color barrier to cinema.
What started for Martin Guigui as an attempt to learn and tell an important story that had been lost to time turned into a decades-long exploration of the award-winning filmmaker’s own approach to art.
When Sweetwater hits theaters April 14, it’ll be the culmination of not just the painstaking research and and pulling of industry teeth Guigui did over 28 years, but also of the country evolving to a place where it’s ready to embrace the film with the level of empathy the writer and director desires.
Born in Argentina and raised in New York City, Guigui first became aware of Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton in the 1990s, and he knew immediately he wanted to bring Clifton’s story of breaking the NBA’s color barrier to cinema.
“The culture that I grew up with, where I come from, my DNA, there was this global understanding that sport and music brings us together,” the 9/11 writer and director said. “Sweetwater Clifton exemplified a lot of what I believe in, what I jump out of bed to experience in life everyday.”
A member of the Harlem Globetrotters in the 1940s, Clifton was one of the best players on a team that revolutionized basketball with an entertaining, up-tempo style of play that included dunks, incredible ball-handling and a team that might have been the best in the world.
Everett Osborne stars as “Sweetwater” in writer/director’s Martin Guigui’s SWEETWATER, a Briarcliff Entertainment release. Credit: Ian Fisher/Briarcliff Entertainment
The Globetrotters twice defeated the world champion Minneapolis Lakers of the NBA, which ultimately kickstarted the New York Knicks’ pursuit of Clifton against the wishes of other league owners. In 1950, they finally pried him away from the Globetrotters, making Clifton the first Black player to sign a contract with an NBA team and spurring league-wide integration the same year.
“This is a message that says, ‘Let’s evolve. Let’s move on. Let’s learn more. Let’s do it together,” Guigui said. “And let’s make sure that we share that with as many hearts, as many souls as possible. And cinema is such a powerful medium so often misutilized. I thought, let’s also make it entertaining. I want this to have all the things that I love in life.”
But first Guigui had to find all the information necessary to make that possible.
When he started on this journey, the internet wasn’t what it was today and the story of Sweetwater Clifton wasn’t as documented as that of Jackie Robinson and Major League Baseball. The NBA was only five years old at the time of integration and not nearly as popular as MLB of that time.
Guigui needed to find and talk to all the right people — which eventually included Red Auerbach, Wilt Chamberlain, Meadowlark Lemon and the families of Clifton, Globetrotters founder Abe Saperstein and former Knicks coach Joe Lapchick. He also had to convince the right people in film studios and production companies this was a story worth telling, and then fight to tell it how he believed it needed to be told.
All of his work over the years turned into a nearly two-hour film that brings to life some important figures in the history of basketball, and a project more special to Guigui because of the journey it took to reach the finish line.
“It was by far one of the most inspiring and fulfilling and impactful, challenging journeys that I’ve ever had in my entire life.”
The “Sweetwater” star dedicated his life to becoming a basketball player before he ended up portraying one on camera.
If things went the way Everett Osborne had planned, he wouldn’t be making his motion picture debut on April 14.
Instead of playing the title character in the upcoming biopic Sweetwater and introducing the world to the important story the Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton — the first Black basketball player to sign a contract with the NBA — Osborne would still be playing professional basketball himself.
“My basketball journey was something I dedicated my whole life to,” Osborne told FTW. “I threw my whole self-identity, I sacrificed, put my whole soul into something I really loved.”
Playing ball for a living was always the dream, and Osborne had achieved it. After finishing his college career at UT-Rio Grande Valley, he played in New Zealand and Australia.
(L to R) Carey Elwes stars as “Ned Irish” and Everett Osborne stars as “Sweetwater” in writer/director’s Martin Guigui’s SWEETWATER, a Briarcliff Entertainment release. Credit: Tony Rivetti Jr. SMPSP/Briarcliff Entertainment
Then, the coronavirus pandemic struck, and his dream was over.
“Literally the world shift, and I had to let it go. Which is heartbreaking. I went through a whole identity shift,” Osborne said.
He called his transition away from basketball “traumatic,” comparing it to a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. It’s an appropriate comparison, because whether he knew it or not, he had been preparing his entire life for what was to come.
Acting isn’t something that just happened upon Osborne. It’s something he had been doing all along from childhood, starring in commercials and different television roles. He just didn’t see it as a future career for himself. Until it was.
“Denial ends up becoming the path of destiny,” he said. “I had to let a lot of stuff go from the basketball world and absorb a new world. My true passion, my true purpose had been there all along. It was a treacherous journey, but it became beautiful.”
Osborne was at his grandmother’s house when director Martin Guigui notified him he landed the role in Sweetwater. That was the first place he had ever shot a basketball.
