The sixth Guinness poster by John Gilroy is another of the many ads that are in a zoo. In this one, one of the most famous, an ostrich has swallowed a pint glass whole and it’s visible in his long neck. The tagline is perhaps one of the most common, “My Goodness, My Guinness.”
Virtually the same ad has also appeared in a slightly different aspect ratio.
Here’s one more video from SF Beer Week, this one by The Brewing Network shot at the Celebrator 22nd annual Anniversary Party at Trumer Brauerei in Berkeley that closed SF Beer Week. Justin Crossley and his crew from the Brewing Network set up a video camera and interviewed several of the participants in SF Beer Week, including yours truly. Thanks, Justin. You can also see his photographs from the event at his blog post.
Celebrator 2010 SFBW Wrapup from Justin Crossley on Vimeo.
For earlier SF Beer Week videos, see my previous post.
Ouch, according to St. Louis Today, Anheuser Busch InBev has announced layoffs of 90 key people, including four vice-presidents. Some of the people let go “included workers responsible for handling every facet of the brewer’s national sales.” Though the layoffs were spread among 25 states, HQ in Missouri lost the most — 17 — and California lost 12, the second highest number by state. An inside source told the St. Louis newspaper they believe about 450 U.S. jobs will be cut over the next few months. Current President, Dave Peacock, told reporters that the cuts were designed to make ABIB “optimally organized and as efficient as possible,” as meaningless a bit of gobbledygook business-speak as I’ve heard in quite some time. Wasn’t this exactly what InBev said they would not do when they were courting the sale? But cost-cutting is classic InBev behavior, as we saw before the sale and have continued to see afterward, too. It comes as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to their actions, and not their homilies, for the last several years. Now, with more cuts coming, you have a workforce that’s scared for their own jobs, not exactly the work environment anyone would enjoy. Maybe it will make some perform better, work harder, to save their livelihoods but in the end all it does is breed resentment and will likely be ABIB’s ultimate undoing, at least until the next bigger corporation swoops in and buys them.
Friday’s ad is Italian but doesn’t appear to be for a specific beer, but rather seems to be more of a PSA for beer generally. “In tutto il mondo” translates as “worldwide” so the poster, which shows a glass of beer where a world globe might be, reads as “Worldwide Beer.” The poster was created by E. Arvati, but I don’t have any information on him or her beyond that. But as I have an obsession with globes, too, I’ve always liked this particular image.
Thursday’s ad is for Tuborg Beer and was published in 1960. It features a beautiful-looking nearly empty gold-rimmed pilsner glass with lace on the insides. The text reads “A-H-H-H! HEARD THE WORLD OVER … AFTER A GLASS OF TUBORG!” Tuborg used to be a stronger brand in the American market when I was a kid, and was part of United Breweries in Denmark before being acquired by brewing giant Carlsberg in 1970, ten years after this ad ran.
Wednesday’s ad is for O’Keefe’s and was done around 1900, years before Miller put on a woman in the moon. O’Keefe’s was a Canadian brewery that in 1916 was purchased by Carling, and later merged with Canadian Breweries in 1930. In 1969, it became Carling O’Keefe again but merged with Molson in 1989. The ad is typical of the turn of the century, when ads were often low-key with grand illustrations showing idealized beauty. “Pilsener Lager” I understand, but “Special Extra Mild Ale” is a bit of a head-scratcher. Extra Mild makes about as much sense as Imperial Mild, and now we’ve seen both.
Sierra Nevada Brewing, of course, is celebrating their 30th anniversary this year in grand fashion. Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman is doing collaboration beers with some of the true pioneers of craft beer: Fred Eckhardt, Fritz Maytag, Jack McAuliffe and Charlie Papazian. The 30th anniversary website, Sierra 30, has a great little video of the pioneers with an overview of the collaborations.
There are several videos up now from events during SF Beer Week. I heard from Steve Atkinson this morning that he has three up at his Beer Videos YouTube Channel. There are also three more at the SF Beer Week YouTube Channel. Steve Shapiro, from Beer by BART, also has a cool one up on YouTube of people on camera explaining why they love SF Beer Week. If you know of any more that are online, let me know and I’ll add a link here.
It’s not just any Tuesday, but Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday — Mardi Gras — so today’s ad is for a New Orleans beer, Jax. It’s a celebrity ad, with actress Dorothy Dandridge hawking Jax Beer. Dandridge was the first African-American woman nominated for an Academy Award and Halle Berry played her in the award winning HBO biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. Using the tagline “Get the Light Idea!” That’s followed by “Drink Mellow Jax Beer.” You rarely see mellow used as a positive attribute these days, which is a shame, I think. I’m not sure when this ad is from, though Dandridge passed away in 1965, so it’s most likely it was before then. It was brewed by Jax Brewing Co. until 1956, when the New Orleans’ Jackson Brewing Co. bought the brand and brewed it there (the old brewery is now a shopping mall) until 1974, when Pearl Brewery bought them out. Since 1985, Pabst has owned the brand, but as far as I now, is not brewing it anywhere. Happy Mardi Gras.
The last big event during SF Beer Week was the Celebrator Beer News 22nd Anniversary Party, which was held at Trumer Brauerei in Berkeley, California. It felt good and appropriate being back in a brewery for the event, after two years in the cavernous Marriott Convention Center. There was a great turnout, all in a celebratory mood. Over thirty breweries were pouring their finest beers for four hours on a beautiful February Sunday evening.
Lars Larson, from our hosts, Trumer Brauerei, with Homer Smith from the Oak Barrel and Shaun O’Sullivan from 21st Amendment.
It felt like a fitting end to ten days of events for what to all accounts seems like a very successful 2nd SF Beer Week. Although a lot of hard work by quite a large number of people went into the festival this year, it feel like it ran far smoother too, thanks to great work by everyone, and especially Rich Higgins, Meg Gill and Dave McLean, who spearheaded a lot of the effort this year.
Me and Tom Dalldorf (photo by Mike Condie).
Below is a slideshow of the Celebrator anniversary party. This Flickr gallery is best viewed in full screen. To view it that way, after clicking on the arrow in the center to start the slideshow, click on the button on the bottom right with the four arrows pointing outward on it, to see the photos in glorious full screen. Once in full screen slideshow mode, click on “Show Info” to identify each photo.
Below are a few videos of random happenings at the party.
One interesting impromptu phenomenon that occurred Sunday night was that I kept noticing a seemingly random number of people who had dressed more dapper than most (excluding the people in costumes). At some point in the evening, they all came together and broke into song with the Trumer brewery as a picturesque backdrop. Below is a video of one of their acapella numbers.
Late in the evening, with less than an hour to go before closing time, someone started throwing coasters high into the air and it became epidemic with almost everyone there joining in. I felt sorry for the clean-up crew, so I didn’t participate, but I did capture a few minutes of the melee on video.