Of pints, punks and princesses

Mad Bomber Brewing is taking the plunge this year with Punks for a Princess .

The organization started in Rhode Island in 2008 in memory of a 7-year-old girl who died in a freak flash-flood auto accident, as a series of punk-rock concerts to benefit her family and later children with life-threatening illnesses.

For 2013, it added an annual Punk Rock Plunge fundraiser in the Atlantic Ocean on New Year’s Day. Mad Bomber’s Tom Applegate heard about it through a customer, and took his own version of the plunge last year in Lake Coeur d’Alene.

“Now I know why people only do it once a year – it takes that long to forget how awful it really is, and be willing to try it again,” Applegate says.

This time around, Mad Bomber, in conjunction with the Make-a-Wish Foundation , is sponsoring its own Punks For a Princess Polar Plunge, in support of a 6-year-old Coeur d’Alene girl with leukemia who wants to visit Disney World and see the princesses there.

It takes place Thursday at 11 a.m. at Honeysuckle Beach on Hayden Lake. Given our bone-chilling weather, Applegate says, “This year is really going to be terrible. I’m not looking forward to it.”

Then there’s an after-party at Mad Bomber beginning at 1 p.m., with music by local bands Sorority and Switchin to Whiskey starting at 2, and barbecue by Brown Chicken Brown Cow . Along with donations collected during the day, 15 percent of taproom sales will go to the cause.

“I’m not sure it’s the smartest move, as a business owner,” Applegate quipped about the hard-core music. “It might just be me and the bands there after a while.”

But he’s counting on Mad Bomber’s loyal, diverse clientele to come through.  Based on previous benefits for military causes, he said, “It should be a slam dunk.”