You are hereWAR Ride #31 - You best not be ordering no "Heineken"...
WAR Ride #31 - You best not be ordering no "Heineken"...
The good word for tonight's WAR Ride just got posted, and from the sound of things if you ain't drinking the Pabst Blue Ribbon, then you ain't shit:
It is about time we saluted the Blue Collar worker. Yeah, you work in an office, but you know, you wish you had your name on your shirt. Your khaki pants suck. Your shirt has buttons....all the way down. With sleeves. Sleeves. Pathetic.
Seriously. That College Degree? That Graduate Degree? Can you actually DO anything? Can you plumb? Can you wire a socket without electrocuting yourself? Yeah...you have no real skills. So let's pay tribute to those who have actual marketable skills - the blue collar workers.
PBR should not be the cool 'retro' beer. Hell No! It's the beer of hard working Americans. It ain't drunk in a tight-pants-wearing-Hipster-Bar. It always has been and always will be the beer of hard working blue collar Blue-Blood US Americans. You have no skills. Let's salute those who do.
Meet for the true American Meal - the Hot Dog. Franks (4th and Colorado) at 630. Ride leaves at 730. We will hit Deep Eddy's Cabaret, Doc's Motor Works and the Luster Pearle. Show up with a name on your shirt.
Damn, they got me. I sit in front of a computer all day, work in a server lab environment, and even have an ESD lab coat for when I'm doing that really gnarly computer work that runs the risk of conducting static electricity. Exciting, right? I haven't had a real working job since I figured out I could make more doing a whole lot less, but I'll still drink a beer with those who do. I guess to my credit I DID grow up in the rust belt, which means I was raised on the PBR. No matter your occupation (or even if you lack one), if you want to ride with these guys and get down low class style, meet up at Franks around 6:30pm tonight. Bring lights and water, leave your attitude.
But the reason Pabst has been a hipster beer for about seven years now is partly a result of how badly the company screwed its former workers. The Pabst beer that today's fashion-conscious young folks are drinking is anathema to the very same hardworking people both praised and mocked in this expression of phony righteousness.
In 1996, Pabst Brewing Company closed its brewery in Milwaukee, which at one time had been the biggest brewery in the United States. Of course, they laid off all the workers there. Shortly thereafter, they stiffed those same workers of the pensions they had been earning for years or decades before, and the courts let them get away with it.
So all of a sudden, a brew that was really only popular among working-class Midwesterners was a beer that working-class Midwesterners would no longer drink, because of the company's unfairness to their former workers. The company was forced to seek out a market that was either ignorant of their misdeeds, and/or a market that didn't give a shit about brewery workers and how badly they had been screwed. Starting in 2001, they found that market in the form of West Coast hipsters, epitomized by cycle messengers. The rest is history.
Pabst built on the success of the PBR brand and used some of their profits to buy up almost all the remaining independent "blue collar" beer manufacturers left in the USA. Lone Star, Pearl, Schlitz, Black Label, Old Milwaukee, Stroh's, Olympia, and about 80 other similar brands are now owned by Pabst and brewed under contract by Miller Brewing Co.
So drink the nasty swill if you want, but don't even pretend to be taking part in a working-class tradition. You are in fact doing the opposite, supporting a company that has unmade the livelihoods of countless union workers. (For the sake of disclosure, I'll admit I drink Schlitz, Pearl, and Lone Star sometimes. But I'm not self-congratulatory about it.)
Here's an article with some relevant information on this topic:
http://www.robwalker.net/contents/jm_pabst.html
Chalo
despite it being 6 years old i was unaware of all this stuff. now that highlife is cheaper thats what i drink...
say hello to Slim and try the Red Headed Stranger bacon infused bloody mary's! She invented them, she is quite the mixologist!
Cervisiae gaudiam populorum sunt.
You'll find more graphic designers than grease monkeys at Frank (a brainchild of some dudes at Decoder Ring Design Concern). It's a lot more blue-blood than blue-collar. No man with his own name on his shirt would be caught dead ordering a dog with 'aioli'. But they do have PBR (for 3 bucks). And Lustre Pearl? Seriously? Someone needs a few lessons in working-man's blues... Austin has plenty of working-class bars, maybe a last-minute course correction is in order -- but my jabs are all in good fun, sounds like it will be a great ride.
sounds like a radio commercial...i thought lone star was the beer of bikes..i have never seen pbr at polo or any ride. trying to squeeze into the market?
Blue-blooded is a term used to describe an elite member society, not a laborer. Just sayin'. I don't even have a job.
these places do seem a little soft for the "workin' Man" ride... 'cept for Deep Eddy. They have the cheapest Lone Star in town that I'm aware of, outside of HEB...
callous-handed carpenter here.