Ghost Town Brewing - Laurel Biergarten & Kitchen

The Laurel Biergarten felt like a fever dream from the first moment I set foot off the bus. A spinning neon sign sliced the sky like a beacon for the deranged, and a grinning plastic skeleton leered down from the rooftop — a warning to the sober, perhaps, or a promise to the damned. Either way, I was home.

The patio stretched out like some twisted suburban fantasy — row upon row of picnic tables under cartoonish umbrellas, a mural of skeletal knights and tentacled beasts towering over the beer garden like a hallucination born of too much mezcal and daytime television. This was no sanitized brewery taproom with exposed brick and Edison bulbs — this was where the wheels came off. The kind of joint where midlife crises and bad decisions collide under the forgiving glow of string lights. A place where a man with a mortgage and a failing marriage could bring his 22-year-old “yoga instructor” girlfriend and pretend for a moment that time had not already claimed him.

I started, as any pilgrim might, with the Oktoberfest — golden, crisp, a reassuring first step into chaos. The pilsner followed, bright and sharp as a slap to the face, a palate cleanser for the soul. And then came the IPA, the main event, a resinous, tongue-scouring assault that tasted like defiance. Each pint brought the scene into sharper focus — the unsteady laughter, the low murmur of conversation, the faint scent of burnt pretzels and damp grass — all of it pulsing together into a drunken heartbeat.

Ghost Town isn’t trying to impress anyone. It doesn’t need to. It’s a skeleton on a rooftop, laughing at mortality while the world below pretends to still have its shit together. It’s absurd and beautiful and profoundly human — the kind of place where you go to drink, to forget, to feel alive again, even if just for a few pints before the ghosts come calling.

Offering a spacious indoor picnic-style seating for good grub and great beers, Ghost Town’s MacArthur spot makes a great place to spend an afternoon enjoying the company of friends. Worth a visit.