Tuesday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1961. The very-red ad shows a greasy-haired bartender in uniform, handing you a glass of Budweiser. There’s a bowl of popcorn on the bar and a Bud lamp on the wall behind. The ad is part of A-B’s long-running “where there’s life … there’s Bud” campaign, showing their beer in a variety of settings. One thing I’m starting to notice is how unusual the glassware is in so many of the ads of this time period. I’m so used to the ubiquitous pint or shaker glass, but I can’t say when it became the standard bar glass. I spent a lot of time in bars as a kid in the late 1960s and 1970s (I had an alcoholic stepfather) and I can’t say I remember there being much in the way of unusual glassware, though I was young and not paying that close attention, so there’s that to consider.
I turned 18 in 1967 in MD – so bar drinking during my college days was in DC (or in the afternoons @ the Varsity Grill just off the U of MD campus, where they never carded during the daytime & the free in-shell peanuts were never-ending). VG sold drafts by the pitcher or in 12-oz stemmed “bowl” glasses; the college-kid bars in DC had 12-oz thick glass mugs for drafts. I never saw beer served in a pint glass until the 80’s – the 1st Anchor Steam I ever had (at a hofbrau in Oakland that’s now Luka’s) was in a 12-oz mug – cost me half a buck in late ’78/early ’79. My guess is that stateside, the only place you’d find fancy glassware before the mid80’s was in upscale bars & restaurants – the “chaser” beer served in bars came in the 6-oz highball glass.
1967-78 in DC area (well before I became a beer geek), the only place I ever got beer in something “fancy” was at the Old Stein in DC (gone but resurrected in Edgewater MD), which served its tap brews in ceramic steins (no hinged lids), & had the oddest pricing I’ve ever seen – the SMALLEST size (either 1/3 or .4 liter) was the cheapest per-ounce price. German Lowenbrau was the best-seller (I was there before Miller got the US rights & f’d it up).