#55: Shahin Khojastehzad II | Novare Res Bier Cafe

The apology tour continues! This week, it's another conversation with Shahin Khojastehzad, co-owner of Novare Res Bier Cafe in Portland, ME. A hell of a lot has changed since our earlier episode with Shahin from almost exactly a year ago. We get right into the second-most obvious (behind sound quality) of those shifts, and get into what life has been like for Novare in the COVID era. Unlike breweries, bars, especially less food-focused ones, were left with little in the way of alternative ways of continuing operation during the shutdown. Shahin attributes good ol' "Persian Hustle" as the driver behind Novare's quick adaptation to the pandemic, immediately opening an online store, selling off their vast cellar inventory, and morphing into "Novare Bodega", all despite the constant hurdles of break-ins, fractional revenue, and unsolicited defecations. 
Aside from dealing with COVID over the last few months, systematic racism has rightfully occupied a large chunk of our collective headspace, and we dive into Shahin's many, many experiences with racism, from escaping Iran with his family as a child, to being profiled by authority his entire life, to becoming a de facto voice for diversity within Maine's extremely homogenous beer scene. 
It was a privilege to get to go deep on some of the less comfortable topics the beer industry and society at large is dealing with at the moment, and if there's any overarching takeaway from the episode, it's that good things come from communication. ................................................................Music: "Mountain Climb" by Jake Hill