moving the app root out of /Public/mason, to /Public/apache/beerdb, did the trick. indeed the problem was leaking settings from the /Public/mason default MasonCompRoot.

note there is a syntax error (missing close-paren) in maybe_link_view:

and it should probably actually be:

now the question remains, MasonX::Maypole or Maypole::View::Mason ... thoughts?