A Party Awash in Beer, Music, High Spirit

About this time of year in Munich, people are starting to think in terms of endurance.

How long can I polka before I drop? How much bratwurst can I ingest? How much singing can I do before I lose my voice? How much beer can I drink? Just how much free-wheeling fun can a human being have?

At the Oktoberfest in Munich, a lot. But if you don’t want to pony up a couple of thou to Lufthansa, and you still want to dance to Bavarian brass bands, stuff yourself with a lot of German sausage and sauerkraut, fill up on German beer and rub elbows with dozens of people dressed in dirndls and lederhosen, then October (and late September) in Orange County may turn out to be your favorite time of year.

In the early fall, the German tradition of Oktoberfest is celebrated each week in a big way in two appropriately large locations: the Phoenix Club in Anaheim and Old World in Huntington Beach. Scheduled toward the end of each week, the celebrations at both locations are authentic, colorful, brassy, uninhibited, often loud and always congenial.

Oktoberfest began in the Bavarian city of Munich about 150 years ago, the result of a happy marriage between a king of Bavaria and a princess of Saxony. The union was so blissful and the occasion so full of celebratory potential that the king invited everyone from miles around Munich to a huge party that lasted 10 days. Further, he declared that similar celebrations should be held in that city during each successive October.

The Bavarian people, naturally, were entranced with the idea, so each October in Munich the entire city is awash in beer, music and high spirits.

And, in a tiny corner of Anaheim--a city settled originally by German immigrants--the Phoenix Club, a German-American social and cultural club, carries on the Oktoberfest tradition. This year, each weekend from Sept. 16 through Oct. 29, the club opens its doors to the public and features German brass bands, traditional food and drink, beer drinking contests, singers, dancers and games and tests of skill.

The Friday-through-Sunday festivities feature Bavarian brass bands (indoors in the dance hall on Friday and Saturday, and outdoors as well as indoors on Sundays). On various days there are sausage-eating and beer-drinking contests. On the open back grounds of the club, air rifle target shooting and archery are offered, as well as children’s carnival rides. A resident schuplattler dance group also makes frequent appearances, performing a traditional shoe-slapping dance.

Food is varied and abundant. Apart from the beer, wurst, pastry and roast chicken, perhaps the most impressive offerings are the pea soup, cooked in a vintage portable “field kitchen” double boiler in near-80-gallon lots, and (Sept. 25 and Oct. 9) a barbecued ox, weighing 600 to 800 pounds, roasted on a huge spit and carved into sandwich-size slices.

In Huntington Beach, a similar celebration will begin Sunday and run through Nov. 13 at Old World, a German-American shopping complex that features a German restaurant and beer garden.

Like the Phoenix Club, Old World imports for the occasion a brass band flown from Germany or Austria, which plays in the covered outdoor beer garden on a raised stage and frequently exhorts the crowd to further beer drinking and snake dancing between the picnic bench tables. Grilled chicken, barbecued pork, wurst, potato salad and apelstrudel are served, along with the ubiquitous German beer.

Also, like the Phoenix Club, Old World stages beer-drinking contests, as well as a yodeling competition for amateurs.

A recent but wildly popular innovation--yet another idea imported from Germany--is the chicken dance, a kind of pantomime in which the celebrators in the beer garden or hall stand and flap their elbows and shake their behinds in time with the music, in imitation of the movements of a chicken. Representatives of both the Phoenix Club and Old World said it is their most popular dance number each year.

“Everybody loves the Chicken Dance,” said Siegi Schuster, the vice president of the Phoenix Club. “It’s easy to do, and people take to it right away.”

In fact, said Dolores Bischof, the co-owner of the restaurant and festival hall at Old World, that facility’s motto for this year’s Oktoberfest is: “Let’s not chicken out. Join the celebration.”

OKTOBERFEST IN ORANGE COUNTY AT A GLANCE

Where: Phoenix Club, 1566 Douglas Road., Anaheim. Old World, 7561 Center Ave., Huntington Beach.

Days and hours: Phoenix Club--Fridays and Saturdays, 6 p.m. to about 1:30 a.m.; Sundays, 11 a.m. to about 1:30 p.m. Old World--Wednesday and Thursday, 7 to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 6:30 p.m. to 1 a.m.; Sunday, 2 to 9 p.m.

Admission: Phoenix Club (for non-members)--Friday, $2.50; Saturday, $5; Sunday, $3. Old World--Wednesday and Thursday, free; Friday, $6, Saturday, $7; Sunday, $3.50.