h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What is all this talk about theater-techie's and coffee?

During my experience with the aforementioned specie (which at last count was some 34years) the most popular imbiblication was, by all accounts, the ubiquitous 'Pint of Beer' — never coffee - which no doubt accounted for the predominance of large, fleshy protuberences hanging over their belts, and slight cherry-red glows emanating from the mid-point of their faces during dimly-lit scene changes.

The reason for the beer was, I'm led to believe, due to the mild aneasthetic effect it induced, which was extremely useful during those "hell-weeks", or 'production-weeks' to use a more correct tag.
It also had the beneficial effect of allowing a so-induced member of that specie to 'kip' (sleep) at any possible moment and in literally any location or position it found itself; sometimes with strange repercussions. Viz.,

During a particularly long and arduous tech' rehearsal I by chance happened to ask the stage-manager for some grey-tape — my working-light was on the blink — no pun intended — and I didn't like to annoy the lighting guys at what was for them a particularly traumatic time -Rigging and Patching — so I thought that I would fix it myself; whereupon the SM proclaimed loudly — "DIRECTOR WANTS THE GREY TAPE!!".
Shortly afterwards a very-large, rotund, dirty and fierce-looking 'Flyman', dressed in very washed-out black clothing, lumbered towards me with his knuckles scraping the carpet.
He came to rest no more than 3" from the end of my nose and declared in a high, squeaky voice — "You want suffink".

I got my "Great Ape" — who incidentally was always called "The Gaffer" by the other Flymen.

Oh dear…… where was I? ……
(I do tend to ramble sometimes, so if it gets annoying… someone please tell me to shut-up)
O yes… coffee……
I must admit lately to over-indulging in coffee during these hellish times … but that's probably due to an aged bladder … but I still see the cans piled 'out-back'… though I never see them actually being drunk anymore… strange, isn't it.

Techie's must be getting cleverer… what a terrifying thought that is.

thank heavens, I finally found the theatre people around here.
regarding the popularity of coffee vs booze among techies:
I think coffee (& it's carbonated counterpart, mountain dew) remains the beverage of choice among techies due to A: the late nights or, more often, 72-hour work days involved in theatre & B: the increasingly young age of people working in technical theatre. Thus making beer less accessable. I swear the tour crews coming through our local auditoriums get younger every year.
As for never seeing anyone drinking despite the evidence of empty beer cans - while working local crew for a recent musical tour, I caught the 20-year-old master electrician hiding behind the road boxes pouring the prop rum into his 2-liter of Pepsi. Guilty of the same thing myself. I gather this goes on alot more often than the TDs, Directors, and Producers out there would ever care to know.

Beer? Mt. Dew? Can we say sick. The stimulant of choice in utah happens to be pepsi or coke which ever is closer to the auditorium at the time.

But prop rum is either water and glycerin for white rum or water and burnt sugar for dark rum. If they were spending money on reall booze heads need to roll and budgets rethought.

OK, maybe things are done a bit different here in Canada. We use the Coke for everyday usage and staying awake. Pre-show, that switches to either coffee or Jolt/Bawls. AFTER the show is when we break out the beer. Except that the crew I work with is a bunch of pansies when it comes to drinking, so it ends up being me and the TD and one of the lighting guys sitting in a back alley at 1:00 AM, right after the show is finished.

But ya, I do believe the fact that all of us are minors has something to do with it....