Rogue Nation - Publisher's Note
A bartender, cab driver and low-level laborer most of my life, I was treated with class and dignity, hallmarks of Rogue Nation.

Join us as we 'Dare, Risk, Dream' with Rogue Ales
By Dell Franklin

The Rogue Voice has found a second home in Oregon. Jack Joyce, founder and president of Rogue Ales, the nation’s largest microbrewery based in Newport, Oregon, found our paper amusing, inspiring and in character with his own Rogue Nation image, philosophy, and quality beers. So he flew me up to his home turf near Portland to find out just how joyously deranged I really am.
Before meeting Jack, though, I retouched base at the Portland Airport with that city’s foremost rogue and outrageous character, Frank Peters, a still strapping, 63-year-old blond hunk, world-class senior basketball player, notorious degenerate and womanizer who currently owns and operates a crew of 15 girls at his Grand Cafe nightclub on the wrong side of the Willamette River that separates it from the more opulent downtown. Peters, who held a single balloon to welcome me at the airport after a 43-year separation, sometimes carries around a book entitled “How to Deal with Your Oversized Penis” and makes sure to place it over his snoozing face whenever he flies somewhere.
Peters, who once played for and managed the Portland Maverick baseball team, ran for mayor on the outlaw platform, (he received around 20 votes), and his nightclub sports hundreds of framed and life-sized photos of himself. After a few drinks at his bar, he took me on a tour of strip clubs (something unheard of in San Luis Obispo County). In the morning I helped Frank count the booty from the legalized slot machines in his establishment, and later I was picked up out front by Jack Joyce of Rogue Ales. I was dressed in my business apparel—shorts, athletic T-shirt, flip-flops. Jack, who was a lawyer for 15 years and an executive for Nike for six years before opening his brewery in 1988, was dressed pretty much the same, after coming from the YMCA gym. Another good sign was his car: like mine, it was rather dated, dusty, and cluttered with his life and business.
He showed me a brief tour of downtown Portland, a gorgeous place, reminding me of San Francisco, but somewhat like Milwaukee in that it had very old drinking establishments on every corner. Jack has his own pub (Rogue Nation) in a Soho-like area just off from the main downtown.
Otherworldly beers pour from his spouts while his kitchen dishes up first-rate pub cuisine. Above, are of offices for his young staff of go-getters, the heart of his business.
A bartender, cab driver and low-level laborer most of my life, I was treated with class and dignity, hallmarks of Rogue Nation. I suppose, with Nike, image is everything, but with Rogue Nation, substance and attitude is everything, combined with their image of “going against the grain and creating their own image.” You have to feel something in your gut, and I felt it, and so did they.
Rogue Nation and Rogue Ales will, in the future, be part of the Rogue Voice, and visa versa. They will advertise with us and hopefully lend us a little badly needed business guidance, for we are new in this milieu and hungry to learn from experienced mentors like Jack. We will try and enlighten locals as to the superior quality of Rogue Ales, which sports the same pledge to individuality, personality, and boldness as our journal. For more information on Rogue Nation, visit www.rogue.com and click on the “Rogue Nation” link.
Hopefully, this labor of love will become more than a small county rag, but will find a larger audience in pockets of Oregon and Washington and Northern California (we already send copies to City Lights Book Store in San Francisco), and wherever Rogue Ales sells beer — in 48 states and eight countries. Before I headed home, Jack handed me a few bumper stickers, which say it all: “DARE, RISK, DREAM.” We’re going for it. Join us. §

BEER BANNER The Rogue Nation flag is available from Rogue Ales. Visit www.rogue.com for more information.