WHO EVEN KNEW IT HAD GONE OUT OF STYLE?

Pabst Blue Ribbon: Another Winner: Retro Chic Suds Hit With Hip Young Adults (Bret Schulte, April 20, 2003, The Washington Post)

America has discovered a new beer, one that seems right for a country facing bad times.

Pabst Blue Ribbon, a forgotten if not forsaken brand, once the solace of the beleaguered working man, and, regrettably, a beer often associated with what people in polite company call "trash," has staged a surprising comeback. The resurgence is mostly among young adults, led by colleagues such as snowboarders and indie filmmakers.

Perhaps it's a sign of the times, or a remembrance of the way it was, or a toast to blue-collar virtue. However you pour it, PBR is America's new beer for a simple reason: It is not new at all. [...]

Of course, no amount of hipster or counterculture endorsement is going to resurrect Pabst to its former glory, or even bring it to levels competitive with Coors, Miller and Anheuser-Busch.

Steinman classifies PBR as "sub-premium," a real category among beer producers but one that also reflects the attitude of many American beer drinkers, an attitude that is unlikely to change as the beer proliferates among Establishment dropouts. And nothing is so tenuous as a youth fad, particularly one embraced by the ever-vigilant American iconoclast, who is likely to bail once he suspects corporate America has found him out, not to mention the media. If PBR becomes too visible, too much of a commodity, then it will lose its newfound support. (Note the brief and swiftly exploited revival of swing music in the 1990s.)

As Steinman points out, a sprinkle of sales doesn't mean a watershed is soon at hand. "The Pabst Brewing Company as a whole is still declining at a substantial rate," he says. "Pabst Blue Ribbon is a small component at this time. It's not their biggest brand." That distinction belongs to Old Milwaukee, not exactly a contender either. And the ground Pabst has lost since its heyday near the end of the 19th century will never be recovered.

In the 1890s Pabst produced the best-selling and most widely distributed beer in the country. It was the first beer to be accepted by the moneyed elite; sales were so brisk that Pabst purchased its own forest and barrel factories just to meet the demand. Today, Pabst products constitute about 4.2 percent of the domestic beer market, while Anheuser- Busch commands about 48 percent.

For now, low-saturation marketing has paid off. Pabst projects an image of casual earnestness. Buy it or don't buy it. Whatever. It is an image shared with today's indie rock scene, indie film scene, skateboarding scene, art and literary scenes. It is the image that, ironically, sells.

While most young consumers buy clothes and cars to make themselves seem as affluent and desirable as possible, the materialism of many of today's counterculture youth is just the opposite. It is meant to reflect the economics of "reality," of working-class thriftiness, of the notion of America at its best, at its most optimistic, at its blue-collar prime. Of course, this is not America. This is Americana -- and an appetite for what was good when things are going bad.

This puts us in mind of one of the all-time great songs:

Rednecks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer

The barmaid is mad cause some guy made a pass
The jukebox is playin' there stands a glass
The cigarette smoke kinda hangs in the air
Rednecks, white socks and Blue Ribbon beer

A cowboy is cussin' a pinball machine
The drunk at the bar is gettin orn'ry and mean
Some guy on the phone says, "I'll be home soon, dear!"
Rednecks, white socks and Blue Ribbon beer

No we don't fit in with that white collar crowd
We're a little too rowdy and a little too loud
But there' s no place that I'd rather be than right here
With our rednecks, my white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer

The semis are passing on the highway outside
The 4:30 Crowd is about to arrive
The sun's goin' down and we'll all soon be here
With our rednecks, white socks, and blue ribbon beer

No we don't fit in with that white collar crowd
We're a little too rowdy and a little too loud
But there' s no place that I'd rather be than right here
With our rednecks, my white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer

With our rednecks, my white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 24, 2003 8:36 PM