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You all missed a helluva party last night (or perhaps you went to the party, in which case we don’t need to tell you how helluva it was). But you can still get in on the action — this year’s Summer Guide is on the streets and floating around these glorious internetral tubes. Here’s the intro, just to get your mouth watering:

When historians look back on what will transpire over the next few months, they will no doubt do so fondly. You will tell your children the story of this summer, they’ll tell their kids, the legend will only grow. You are lucky, my friends, to be alive for what we are about to share.

The Summer of Lush.

Maybe it’s that the snowbirds are gone. Maybe it’s global warming. Maybe the red tide crept in early this year. Whatever the cause, it’s undeniable: Lush is in the air. You can feel it. Go ahead. Stop reading for a moment. Close your eyes and inhale. That’s right, breathe it in.

So good. So right. So lushious.

This summer, neighbors with gather over barbecues and brewskis, enticing the lonely guy on the end of the block to finally leave his house. Out-of-school college kids will invade the now-vacant beaches, holding a continuous, four-month party fueled by hormones and jungle juice. Artists will be inspired, phones will be drunkenly dialed, somewhere, somebody is going to run into a pole and put the video on YouTube.

The bay will turn to wine. Merriment will fill the streets. Commissioners will hold meetings over margaritas. Black and white, rich and poor, old and less-old: All will be powerless against this summer’s magnetic, liquid pull.

The Summer of Lush will bring us together, Sarasota. Get ready.

We at Creative Loafing headquarters have known about this impending phenomenon for some time, of course. Diligently keeping the secret to ourselves, we’ve concocted this issue in honor of what is about to go down. The Summer of Lush is bigger than CL — it’s bigger than all of us, really. The Drinking Guide is merely a tribute to its power.

Inside you’ll find four epic pub crawls, daring attempts at homemade brewing, five ways to avoid EVER getting behind the wheel with alcohol in your system, a tip-sheet on the perfect libation for every imaginable occasion and a host of memories from CL writers of their first — and worst — moments with the drink. We’ve even got a page worth of odes to our favorite nonalcoholic beverages for the responsible among us, all four of you.

Raise your glasses, Sarasota. It’s gonna be one helluva wet hot summer.

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