OAKLAND — Sitting at a picnic table at a waterfront biergarten in Oakland, Terrence Heaps had just wrapped up a story about someone borderline shitting themselves in a Munich taxi when the beers arrived.
“Okay! Now we’re gonna sing the proper German prost song,” Heaps, 43, declared, standing up and hoisting his stein into the air. Roughly 25 men between the ages of 35 and 67, most dressed in lederhosen and traditional Bavarian vests, soon gathered at Heaps’ table. They put their arms around each other and broke into a thundering rendition of the Oktoberfest drinking anthem “Ein Prosit.” Then, they drank.
“That chimes off about every 15 minutes in the tents,” Heaps said of “Ein Prosit,” a cheers to the fuzzy feeling that the Germans call gemütlichkeit. “We don’t have a direct translation. It can be cozy, it can be with your friends. The gemütlichkeit is very special.”
Oktoberfest, the world-famous German beer festival that happens every autumn in Munich, is still months away, but the men who packed Brotzeit Lokal on the Oakland Embarcadero that Saturday in July have been preparing for a while. In fact, they never quite stop. Oktoberfest is a lifestyle for the Hacker Herren, a nationwide men’s social club that assembles every year for beer, brotherhood, and debauchery inside the Hacker-Festzelt, the festival tent that serves Hacker-Pschorr brand beer.
The group was founded in 1992 by Ken Bloom, a now-retired semiconductor salesman who lived in the Bay Area for more than 30 years. Over the decades, more than 600 men have joined Hacker Herren pilgrimages. Bloom estimates that about a third reside in the Bay Area. Even Randy Hahn, the announcer for the San Jose Sharks, is a member. This year, they’ll arrive in Munich with 135 brothers, their biggest crowd yet.
Every few months, the regional chapters descend upon a handful of area biergartens for “training sessions,” where they drink beer, practice not going to the bathroom for hours at a time (sometimes, a necessity in the tent), bond, and drink more beer. Brotzeit Lokal is a popular choice for the local cohort, as is Biergarten in Hayes Valley.
“It’s like training for a marathon,” said Heaps. “If you’re not used to drinking their beer and eating their food, some people can have some… stuff,” by which he meant gastrointestinal emergencies like the guy from his story, whom they affectionately call “Der Stinker.”
The Herren refer to each other by nicknames when they don die lederhose. Heaps, a managing director for a baby product manufacturer as well as the owner of Morucci’s, a deli in Walnut Creek, is the de facto captain of the Bay Area contingent; he goes by “Maverick.” (“Goose” — real name Matthew Greene — was downing his own stein a few tables away, chatting it up with “Frank the Tank,” the nom de brew for Sacramento-based photojournalist Alan Blaich, who looks vaguely like Will Ferrell.)
Stan “The Shepherd” Bochenek, a 57-year-old sales director at a semiconductor manufacturer in Sunnyvale, said the Herren can go years without knowing each others’ real names. “It took me 10 years to know his name was Steve,” Bochenek said of Steve Gutto, whom they call “Sparky.”
Usually, the Herren choose their own nicknames, but “bestowal can happen sometimes,” Heaps said. “It has to be, like, a spirit animal for you.”
Also among the men present that day: “Seven,” “French Silk,” “Moto Guzzi,” and “Mr. Miyagi.”
“It’s a fraternity, but not a frat house,” a new recruit named David Newell said. The bewhiskered 39-year-old goes by “BIL,” pronounced “bill,” which stands for both beard-in-lederhosen and brother-in-law. (He’s married to Bochenek’s sister.) Like any frat worth its weight in booze, the Hacker Herren have esoteric rules and traditions. For example, they anoint a newcomer “Rookie of the Year” and crown them with a traditional Tyrolean hat. Last year, BIL won the title.
They also self-mythologize. The men talk about Bloom, their founder, like the Godfather — although, ironically, another veteran member is nicknamed “The Godfather.” Bloom is called “Hoff,” short for Hasselhoff.
On this day in Oakland, Bloom was away in South Carolina. In his absence, I was introduced to Bloom’s nephew, 53-year-old Cory “Tucker” Smart, who is as “as close as we get to royalty, Hoff’s bloodline,” according to Bochenek, The Shepherd. When they gather for training sessions, they do it, as Bochenek phrased it, “in Hoff’s name.”
“He’s the Hoff, he’s the head honcho,” said Heather Smart, Cory’s wife, who was sitting at a picnic table with Sparky’s wife, Leslie Gutto.
Another rule: Wives are not welcome to join the men in the tent in Munich, except at the very beginning and end of the trip. Heather and Leslie agreed that this doesn’t bother them. “That’s the question I feel like I get all the time, like, ‘You let Cory go to Oktoberfest without you?’” Heather said. “And yeah, without a doubt. I would not be married to the man if I didn’t trust him.” Recently, Hoff appointed Heather to run the group’s Instagram, which she happily does.
The Herren take the brotherhood seriously. New members must be vetted; they can’t be the kind to get too belligerent, lest they ruin the gemütlichkeit. Relatives are usually a safe bet. “Last year, we had 45 sets of father-son teams,” Bochenek said.
In 2021, when the official Munich celebration was canceled due to Covid, the men gathered in Cincinnati for a domestic Oktoberfest, drumming up so much business and spirit that then-mayor John Cranley officially proclaimed September 17 “Hacker Herren Day.” In 2022, they were covered by two German news stations for raising $25,000 to help support their favorite German waiters and staff during the pandemic years. Last year, their massive, recurrent presence in the Hacker-Festzelt earned them a glossy feature in Süddeutsche Zeitung, a major German newspaper.
Beyond the media, the Herren say they fascinate the Bavarian locals, in large part because the Herren seem to have accrued special privileges among the Hacker-Festzelt staff. “We know the servers, we know the people that own the tent, we know the manager of the tent, we know the band, we know the security,” noted Steve Venema, aka “Seven.” Usually, if you leave when the tent is packed, security won’t readmit you, but the Hacker Herren wear matching jerseys that work like golden tickets. “They see your shirt, they let you in,” Bochenek boasted. Why? One brother sitting nearby put it plainly: “We grease the guys!”
Bochenek admitted the special treatment can lead the locals to feel “some angst” toward the Americans. But, he said, “it is such a friendly atmosphere in general.”
(When asked about the Herren’s tipping habits, their waitress at Brotzeit Lokal shrugged. “Yeah, they’re good. They’re fine.”)
That Saturday, at least one new member was inducted into the Hacker Herren’s ranks: Vincent Mussumeci, a partnerships manager at Zoom who recently purchased Heaps’ childhood home in Lafayette. The two had become fast friends. “It’s crazy, I’ve known him less than a year, and now I’m going to Germany!” said Mussumeci, who doesn’t have a nickname yet. “Well, first I gotta ask my wife.”
At that, Leslie Gutto interjected: “Gotta ask your wife? Ah, c’mon, you tell her!”
This remark came about three hours into the training session, when the Herren started showing their more debaucherous side.
At the urging of “Big Shooter,” a towering off-duty San Francisco Police Department officer (real name John Tyler, 51), French Silk pulled out a tiny silver bottle of Wiesn koks, a snortable peppermint powder also known as Oktoberfest cocaine. (It’s legal and doesn’t do much more than “reenergize” you, Heaps explained. I tried it. He was right.) Soon, Heaps and Big Shooter were tapping bumps of it onto the backs of hands, and everyone got rowdier. Mr. Miyagi was slurring his words, muttering something incomprehensible about German history to Moto Guzzi. Goose dared me to Google his name. “You’ll find a Proud Boy and an axe murderer!” Then, he started trying to guess my ethnicity: “You’re Italian, right? Hungarian? Hmm. Turn to the side.”
And with that, I decided it was time for me to head out. With only one beer and a bump of Wiesn koks under my belt, I was a bit too sober to hack it. Just before I left the party, I pulled out my phone: There is, in fact, a Proud Boy named Matthew Greene, though fortunately it was a different guy than the one evaluating my physiognomy. I decided not to ask why he even mentioned it. Moto Guzzi told me the Herren don’t really talk about politics, and far be it from me to disrupt the gemütlichkeit.
