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1

Well, you have to give credit to PBR for a couple of things.... It is now the largest American-owned brewery, it is actually getting people to promopte it by producing art by themselves and not through giant ad agencies, and that they are keeping a sense of humor about the fact that they know they are a cheap crappy beer.

Posted by P to the J | August 6, 2008 10:08 AM
2

Screw art contests. No!Spec.com

Posted by Emily | August 6, 2008 10:10 AM
3

Is that Ejak Harrington's work from last year's contest?

Posted by Mikki | August 6, 2008 10:11 AM
4

The ultimate artwork inspired by PBR would be a pile of sick. It's the worst beer in the world, sweet, yeasty not in a beer way but in a moldy-bread way, sour, and flaccid.

Posted by Fnarf | August 6, 2008 10:11 AM
5

Yeah! Art should not be competitive! All artists should die in poverty in a puddle of their own vomit and urine.

Posted by P to the J | August 6, 2008 10:14 AM
6

It was my understanding that PBR became cool precisely because they didn't try to promote it as cool. They have since been very careful about not trying to capitalize on its newfound hipster cred in any visible way because that is precisely when the hipsters will abandon it -- a big ad campaign saying "hipsters love us!" would ruin everything. Maybe they figure promoting art is still below the radar enough to avoid this effect.

Posted by flamingbanjo | August 6, 2008 10:17 AM
7

So that explains all the free PBR gear I've been getting as prizes recently.

Interesting.

I'd rather have a Kokanee, though.

Posted by Will in Seattle | August 6, 2008 10:29 AM
8

PBR is teh rox. Only someone with no education or tongue for beer would say it's the worst beer ever. Hello?! How many micros exist?

The worst beer of all time has got to be Sam Adams Summer Ale.

Posted by Mr. Poe | August 6, 2008 10:37 AM
9

I once stenciled

Pretty
Bad,
Really

On my roommate's empty PBR boxes. Does that count?

Posted by Jake | August 6, 2008 10:41 AM
10

pbr is the worst beer a hipster would drink... i think it's illegal to be in possession of sam adams on the hill

Posted by girlgerms | August 6, 2008 10:43 AM
11

There is a kickass PBR art mural on the side of a building on 15th by the Ballard Greasemonkey featuring a guy with PBR cans for teeth.

Posted by jackie treehorn | August 6, 2008 10:47 AM
12

from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/review/Manjoo-t.html :

Consider Pabst Blue Ribbon. Beginning in the 1970s, the cheap beer that had long been synonymous with the blue-collar heartland began a steep decline, with sales by 2001 dipping to fewer than a million barrels a year, 90 percent below the beer's peak. But in 2002, Pabst noticed a sudden sales spike, driven by an unlikely demographic: countercultural types — bike messengers, skaters and their tattooed kin — in hipster redoubts like Portland, Ore., had taken to swilling the stuff. When asked why, they would praise Pabst for its non-image, for the fact that it seemed to care little about selling.

Traditionally, a company that spots a sudden market opportunity responds by gearing ads toward the new customers. But Neal Stewart, Pabst's marketing whiz, had studied "No Logo," Naomi Klein's anti-corporate manifesto, and he understood that overt commercial messages would turn off an audience suspicious of capitalism. Thus the company shunned celebrity endorsements — Kid Rock had been interested — and devoted its budget instead to murketing, sponsoring a series of unlikely gatherings across the country. Like "some kind of small-scale National Endowment for the Arts for young American outsider culture," Pabst paid the bills at bike messenger contests, skateboarder movie screenings, and art and indie publishing get-togethers. At each of these events, it kept its logo obscure, its corporate goal to "always look and act the underdog," to be seen as a beer of "social protest," a "fellow dissenter" against mainstream mores.

Pabst's campaign was designed to push beer without appearing to push it. To the extent that it conveyed any branding message at all, it was, Hey, we don't care if you drink the stuff. To people sick of beer companies that did look as if they cared — don't Super Bowl ads smack of desperation? — Pabst's attitude seemed refreshing and inspired deep passion in its fans. Many customers did more than just buy the beer. Walker speaks to one who tattooed a foot-square Pabst logo on his back. Pabst's low-fi marketing is "not insulting you," the fellow tells Walker.

...

Members of a hyper-aware generation often hailed for their imperviousness to marketing are actually turning to brands to define themselves. Want to protest a "corporate" beer? Well, get a Pabst tattoo!

In reality, Pabst Blue Ribbon's anticapitalist ethos is, as Walker puts it, "a sham." The company long ago closed its Milwaukee brewery and now outsources its operations to Miller. Its entire corporate staff is devoted to marketing and sales, not brewing. "You really couldn't do much worse in picking a symbol of resistance to phony branding," Walker writes. But P.B.R.'s fans don't care. In the new era of murketing, image is everything.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/review/Manjoo-t.html

Posted by stinkbug | August 6, 2008 10:48 AM
13

The best thing I can say about Pabst is that if you mix it half-and-half with water it is drinkable.

Posted by Greg | August 6, 2008 10:54 AM
14

its cheaper and better than almost any other american lager, which may not be saying much but for the price point it is definitely better than any other in it's category.

further, it's good in brass monkeys.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | August 6, 2008 10:57 AM
15


PBR marketing has always had an avante-garde streak in it. I remember back at the dawn of punk, they changed there advertising system to an edgy-geeky Devo style campaign.

My friend and I used to mock them by walking around in stiff poses and squawk "PABST!" at each other. We also wore skinny ties.

Posted by John Bailo | August 6, 2008 11:00 AM
16

Saying PBR is a horrible beer is like saying Drop Dead Gorgeous is a horrible movie. You're absolutely wrong, but if you're saying so, you'll never be able to see why you're wrong. You should also be shot in the face.

Posted by Mr. Poe | August 6, 2008 11:02 AM
17

PBR is beer for people who'd rather be drinking milk. It's the lactic acid. It's worse than MGD -- well, it might actually BE MGD. It can't compare to Budweiser or High Life -- lawnmower beers with crispness and a little flavor.

Don't talk to me about microbrews. There are no good microbrews in the US. There are a handful of cask-conditioned ales that are a step in the right direction, but because the brewers don't really understand live beer (and the bars that serve them REALLY don't understand them), and don't put their heart into them, they're usually worse than the standard fizzy keg crap they put out.

Posted by Fnarf | August 6, 2008 11:16 AM
18

puh-lease fnarf, you're bordering on WiS anti american lunacy with this beer talk.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | August 6, 2008 11:30 AM
19

Puh-lease, BA, did you not see the words "Budweiser" and "High Life" up there?

And anti-Americanism isn't really the essence of WiS's crimes against humanity. It's the stupidity. Notice that he's promoting Kokanee.

Posted by Fnarf | August 6, 2008 12:01 PM
20

There is nothing wrong for getting corporations' money to make more art.

Posted by hohoho green giant | August 6, 2008 12:02 PM
21

This mural is in Ballard or Fremont or something, yes?

Posted by hohoho green giant | August 6, 2008 12:03 PM
22

@18 - he's right, tho. I don't really like beer, but Kokanee at least is made by union labor and tastes ok. And it's not watered down like a lot of the stuff here.

Posted by Will in Seattle | August 6, 2008 12:19 PM
23

I sometimes like to drink PBR, no matter how much symbolism you weigh it down with, or how much you claim it marks you as a certain kind of person if you order it.

Didn't PBR become hip when Kyle McLaughlin in Blue Velvet was speaking in awe of Laura Dern's father for drinking, "Ah! The king of beers!" And so on to PBR. I thought the joke there was how many preconceived notions people attach to something as simple as a beer.

Anyway, I usually get Guinness or Bitburger, but sometimes those are too much. Too rich, too ostentatious, too overwhelming. PBR is just plain beer that doesn't give me a headache like Bud.

I have to say, on this art contest, that I miss the ages past when monied and commercial interests never meddled in art.

Posted by elenchos | August 6, 2008 12:20 PM
24

@23,

Um, no. Frank Booth was most definitely not Laura Dern's character's father. The actual exchange:

Frank Booth: What kind of beer do you like to drink, neighbor? Jeffrey Beaumont: Heineken. Frank Booth: Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!
Posted by keshmeshi | August 6, 2008 12:45 PM
25

Fnarf, what is your problem? Just because there aren't brewers in the Seattle area who cater to your particular taste for CAMRA-agenda-promoting beers made by two guys in their garage and served (at 19 +/- 1/2 degrees C) out of a gravity-fed wooden barrel with an 18th-century pewter tap, you need to pan the entire U.S. brewing scene? Please, let up on the snobbery a little bit.

There are good beers made locally. Fuckin' Long Hammer, for one. Hale's Cream Ale and Red Menace, too. Pyramid? Big Time frequently has good stuff in the works. Have you heard about Laughing Buddha? If you can't find anything to like in Seattle, let alone the entire United States, maybe there's something wrong with you, not the beers.

Posted by Greg | August 6, 2008 12:48 PM
26

@24

I know that; I didn't say he was. It started with with the her father and the king of beers and later went on to Booth and PBR.

Posted by elenchos | August 6, 2008 1:26 PM
27

Hale's is ok.

Posted by Will in Seattle | August 6, 2008 1:29 PM
28

It has been years since the Pabst Brewing Company brewed its own beer. PBR is a conglomerate of brands, and the majority of their beer is actually produced by MillerCoors (formerly the Miller Brewing Company).

The PBR marketing campaign is the stuff of grassroots legends. Their initial target market, Portland, was ripe for the picking, and embraced the faux blue collar brand with zeal. There are lifestyle agencies all over the country still trying to replicate that success.

I've logged some time in Milwaukee, and spent a few really fun years working for Miller High Life. The beer game is pretty fascinating, especially when you look at how eager consumers are to believe the hype.

Pabst Blue Ribbon is a marketing wet dream. It is not a great American Brewery, and hasn't been, for some time.

Posted by kerri harrop | August 6, 2008 1:32 PM
29

@26,

Her father drank Bud. That's what Beaumont called the King of Beers.

Posted by keshmeshi | August 6, 2008 1:57 PM
30

Fnarf may know a lot of stuff about a lot of things, but it's apparent his taste in beer is not to be trusted.

And how is it you "understand" live beer but the brewers that make every beer in America are all uniformed on the subject?

High Life I can stand, but Budweiser? It's just the foulest beer I've had. Wait, maybe MGD with it's sawdust aftertaste is worse.

Anyways, there is a brewery called Upright Brewing going in the Leftbank Project in Portland you may find interesting.


"I recently called Ganum to get some more information. He told me he plans on crafting beer in the rustic, French and Belgian "farmhouse style." He'll be using two open fermentation tanks and a distinct house yeast. Ganum's strain of French yeast—with possible Belgian origins—is expected to produce beer with "a nice mix of spicey flavors and earthiness and mustiness."

Ganum blanches at the idea that his products will be straight-up, Belgian style brews. "The beers in the brewery are going to be atypical of Portland and America itself," he explains. He doesn't seem too concerned about the difficulty of producing beer through open fermentation (there are only a couple breweries in Oregon doing it) having learned the methods with Brewery Ommegang in Copperstown, New York.

Along with the openly fermented rustic brews, Ganum will also have a conical, closed fermentation tank for special batches of smoked and fruit beers."

Posted by PdxRitchie | August 6, 2008 1:59 PM
31

MGD, like PBR, is lactic. It's fermented wrong. It gives it a sweet, milk-like taste. MGD is, in my opinion, the worst beer made anywhere in the world, and PBR is almost identical (I probably couldn't tell them apart blind). Budweiser in comparison is crisp and clean. Not the perfect beer; like I said, a lawnmower beer, for a hot day like today. It has to be colder than hell, too.

American microbrews, like Hales, almost all have ridiculously floral hops that make them taste like perfume, and they're too thick and malty, sugary even. American microbrews, like most American wines, are also chemist's concoctions, full of all sorts of adjustments to cover the lack of skill in pure, natural brewing.

What Ganum is doing sounds intriguing; it sounds like they're making real beer. It's a promising development. I think eventually American brewers will figure it out; it's only been 25 years that they've been working at it anyways.

Greg, your diatribe is amusing, and not far from the mark, but really, "18th-century pewter taps"? Try 21st-century steel, kept scrupulously clean. Gravity-pull taps are not tweely historical; they are a perfect technological solution.

Posted by Fnarf | August 6, 2008 3:52 PM
32

Yes, keshmeshi, you ignorant slut. Laura Dern's father (Bruce Dern) drank Budwiser, which is the King of Fucking Beers. Which is what everyone, including Beumont, calls Budwiser, because that's what it is called. Which is exactly what I said in the first place. There was no reason whatsoever for you to have opened your big yapper.

Just stop it. Stop it.

Posted by elenchos | August 6, 2008 4:18 PM
33

That's what I think of Belgian beers, taste like perfume.

Anyways, I forgot to link to Blogtown where I got the Ganum story from.

Blogtown, blogtown, blogtown.

Posted by PdxRitchie | August 6, 2008 5:26 PM

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