One of my favorite local music venues, a bohemian, artsy joint that has always featured interesting, offbeat music, has been sliding down the slippery slope of hipsterism recently, with more and more ironic T-shirts and neckbeards in evidence. Skinny jeans, 80’s couture, cabbie hats, wire-framed glasses. Rich suburbanite kids dressing as if they were out-at-the-heels Soviet-bloc literature teachers “before the Party took over, before the camps”. De rigueur.
Understood. Kids have always tried to express their individuality by conforming to a perceived countercultural norm, which is, of course, an enormous source of irony in itself.
But jesus, ya dumb knuckleheads. PBR?! PB fuckin’ R? This stuff is at the bottom of the barrel! My local joint has recently taken the lovely local microbrew’s tap out so they could put in ANOTHER tap for PBR.
What the fucking fuck? This is taking conforming to low-class, pedestrian bullshit to a new low.
And you’re putting the good stuff out of business. So fucking quit yer bullshit and drink real beer.
I tried some a year or so ago just to see what all the fuss was about. I didn’t finish it. The bartender felt my pain and didn’t charge me for a bottle of good beer.
Yeah - I don’t get it. One of the golf courses I frequent has just started selling Schlitz. I figure Blatz and Falstaff are next in line in the comeback train. :rolleyes:
I moved this from The BBQ Pit to Cafe Society. If the Cafe Society moderators think it’s over the top for this forum, they are welcome to move it back to the Pit.
PBR isn’t too bad. What’s worse is the hipsters who complain that they’ve been drinking PBR for years, but now EVERYONE drinks it so maybe they’ll start drinking Schlitz or Gennessee instead.
PBR is good for what it is–a cheap American lager. Michael Jackson, the dean of American beer snobs, had good things to say about it. It’s usually what I buy when I want something cheap and unpretentious, especially when it’s too hot for anything fancy.
They built up hipster cache by sponsoring local music venues and shows over the years, and generally making themselves known and available in that crowd. I’ve always regarded this as a good thing, as opposed to Stella Artois, which skates by on its hipster cred alone since it’s both shitty and expensive.
They’ve changed the recipe on Schlitz (which way back when was apparently a pretty good beer). I haven’t had it, and it’s certainly marketed towards this demographic, but I’m not judging it (yet) on its 1990s past.
It took me a few minutes and a Google to settle that question. It’s a different MJ.
It really does seem to be a case of the usual, as far as hipsters go. It’s not beer, it’s the anti-beer! That’s why they don’t have stupid commercials with dumb guys and mute swimsuit models. And to be fair, if you’re going to certain parties or events, it’s that or hard liquor.
This is why I love being old and un-hip. No pressure to drink sucky beer, or have it be the only option at the hopelessly uncool parties I attend. I tried a PBR at a party for a co-worker 20 years my junior - crap, last time I drank something like that was when we were still paying older siblings to buy our beer for us.
I buy a case of Old Style now and then but that’s mainly because I figure if it was good enough for my grandfather and father than, damn it, it’s good enough for me. I’m bitter though that they changed the can graphics from my youth so you can no longer keep the kids busy by giving them a can of beer and telling to try and find the frog hidden on it.
I’m not a hipster though and the only people I’d be impressing at home is my wife, my kid and maybe the cat.
As a 20+ year long drinker of Pabst Blue Ribbon, I agree that it sucks that PBR is now almost as expensive as Bud, Coors or Miller, when just a couple of years ago it was around half the price of the major brewers----I started drinking PBR because of the low cost (I am 39) but I find it to be the best tasting mass-produced canned American beer available, and I willl be damned to hell if I will swich brands now just because it has suddenly become hip or trendy. If someone sees me buying a 12 of PBR and thinks I am trying to be part of the in-crowd, so be it—I am not too concerned with some random observers examination of my tastes or motives. Its MY brand, I was in the Pabst vangaurd and if you dont care for it, more for me…
As far as the beer itself, as Doctor J pointed out, Pabst is a basic American lager, and while it is not particularly unique in flavor, it is drinkable and refreshing, and until recently was brewed by an independant brewery, staffed with union workers.
Finally, taste is subjective and everyone should feel free to drink what tastes best to them; I find most American microbrews too filling and substantial to want more than one or two in an evening----That dosent mean I am less sophisticated than you are, or dont enjoy beer as much as anyone else either. I have been fortunate enough to have spent a considerable amount of time in Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic and Belgium on several different occasions. These are some of the foremost beer-drinking countries/cultures in the world. I can attest that the type of beer being drank in the average taverns and bierhalls of Dresden, Pilzen or Rotterdam (Belgium is a bit of a different story) is much more similar in taste and style to Pabst Blue Ribbon than it is to Sierra Nevada or a Fat Tire (both fine American ales)
Beer is something I am quite familiar with, I have enjoyed it in many countries around the world, in a multitude of styles and varities. Pabst is my go to brand here at home, (though I drink a wide selection of brands depending on the occasion) and I wont be swiching now, simply because it has suddenly become trendy.
I think it’s fairly simple. PBR is (was) cheap. College kids drink PBR because they are broke. “Hipsters” were originally just college kids. So now new Hipsters drink PBR because that’s what they heard hipsters drink whether or not they can afford much better.
Of course, this is basically a stereotype. I have plenty of friends who would be considered to be hipsters who spend most of their time finding the best micro-brews and foreign beers. They wouldn’t be caught dead drink PBR or any national brand.
Genny is popular among the hipster crowd in Buffalo, believe it or not. Genny is something of a local beer there, but it has a reputation as an “old man beer”, embraced by a blue-collar crowd but that’s about it.
At a new urbanism conference a while back, I attended a seminiar on “creating authentic places”, intended to teach us how to attract hipsters to a neighborhood. Hipsters are really into “authenticity”, with a definition of the word meaning gritty, non-commercial, and not embraced by the middle-class masses. Too much marketing, too much refinement, too much quality, and the hipsters flee from it, with a few exceptions (Apple computers, for one). Developers building in Williamsburg and up-and-coming hipster havens who are marketing at hipsters have to be careful not to make their projects too nice, no matter how much disposable income potential buyers may have or how rich their parents may be. HGTV-style kitchens with granite countertops and stainless front appliances will send hipsters running.
Which gets back to … why PBR? It’s not upscale (imports and domestic craft beers), and it’s not something that appeals to the lowest-common denominator middle class (Budweiser, Miller, Coors). It’s not marketed. It’s cheap. It’s “authentic” in the sense of being gritty and “real”, but not necessarily high quality. It’s a form of anti-snobbery.
EDIT: a sideshow featured a project catering to hipsters. A basic fridge was shown, featuring low-end store-brand products and PBR on the shelves.
