Friday’s ad is for the Stegmaier Brewing Company, the Home of Gold Medal Beer, from maybe the 1950s. It’s a postcard overview illustration of the brewery in Pennsylvania. I love these.
Beer Birthday, Part 56: Jay Brooks
Today is my 56th birthday, and even though it’s still early in the day, as in previous years I’ve again been overwhelmed by an embarrassment of friends and colleagues wishing me a happy day via e-mail, Twitter and Facebook. My sincere thanks to one and all. Since it’s usually me posting embarrassing photos of friends and colleagues, for the sixth year in almost a row (I think I skipped a year), here’s some more priceless artifacts of me from over the years.
Striking a pose for my two grandmothers in 1961.
When I was five, my Mom remarried. The reason I look so happy in this photo, or so the story goes, is that she just told me I wouldn’t be accompanying them on the honeymoon, and apparently I was not thrilled at this news.
Another birthday, this one a mere 45 years ago, when I turned 11.
Visiting Cooperstown, in front of the display for Lou Gehrig, my favorite old-time player, and rocking my Orioles windbreaker (big fan of Brooks Robinson and the Birds as a kid) and some super spiffy stripey slacks.
The playboy of the western world (at least in the mind of my 14-year old self).
In my room circa 1976, with our dog Devie wearing my headphones. I’m not sure what she was listening to.
Channeling Jay Gatsby.
High school graduation day with my Mom.
During our escape from the Bike Museum during a press trip to Belgium a couple of years ago. The photo was taken with my camera by Derek Buono from the Beer Magazine.
There’s many more where these came from, for a good laugh just check out the photos from the last five or so years at Beer Birthday Redux: Jay Brooks, Beer Birthday Again: Jay Brooks, Beer Birthday: Jay Brooks, Beer Birthday: J (Yes, Embarrasing Myself This Time) and Beer Birthday Overkill, from 2009, when I posted a bunch encompassing my first 50 years on planet beer. Oh, and thanks once again to everybody for the generous birthday wishes.
The Brewhog Saw His Shadow Again, 6 More Weeks Of Winter Beers
Over in Gobbler’s Knob, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, Phil the Groundhog — a.k.a. Brewhog — raised up his head this morning and looked around, and this year saw his shadow everywhere he looked for the second year in a row. You know what that means. It’s six more weeks of drinking winter beers this year. Or something about a late spring, I can’t keep it straight. You can see a video of Punxsutawney Phil here. And there’s more information about Groundhog Day at the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club.
Beer In Ads #1348: Cool It With The Friendmaker
Sunday’s ad is for Reading Premium Beer, my hometown beer, from 1969. It’s an interesting package they’re selling, 16 oz. pint size bottles in a six pack, but notice they refer to them as “glass cans.” In the 1950s they adopted my favorite ad slogan of all-time: “The Friendly Beer for Modern People.” In this ad, they extend that by referring to their beer as “The Friendmaker.”
Beer In Ads #1228: Its Heart Belongs To Europe
Friday’s ad is for Imperial Pilsener, from 1976. Imperial Pilsener was made by the Hofbrau Brewing Co. from Allentown, Pennsylvania. It’s interesting to see a beer using “imperial” in its name in the 1970s. Using the tagline “Its heart belongs to Europe,” it seems less like they’re using it to denote strength than an air of European-ness.
Beer In Ads #1227: Real Quality Beer For 100 Consecutive Years
Thursday’s ad is for Iron City Beer, from 1960. Despite a clock in the background, they seem to have a funny idea about time. Actually, even funnier, that clock looks like it marks both the days in a month and the hours in a day; a clock and a calendar. The ad claims “Real quality beer for 100 consecutive years,” but that seems to ignore those pesky 13 years when no one was supposed to be brewing beer.
Pennsylvania Anti-Privatization Propaganda
I’ve considered myself a Californian since 1985, when I moved to the Golden State. But I was born and raised in Pennsylvania. On my Mom’s side, my family first came from Berne, Switzerland, to the Reading area in 1745. I have a relative who participated in the Revolutionary War and another who fought at Gettysburg, and whose name is enshrined on the Pennsylvania Monument there. As a result, I tend to feel a connection to the Commonwealth and try to keep a closer eye on what goes on there.
The Keystone State is a peculiar one, especially when it comes to alcohol. State Stores there enjoy a monopoly on liquor and wine sales, and beer is sold only by the case (with some expensive exceptions) in heavily regulated and licensed beer and soda stores known as “distributors.” When I turned 21, in 1980, the state still didn’t have photo driver’s licenses and I remember having to fill out a form and attach a photo so the state could create my PLCB photo card, whose only purpose was to buy a drink, in effect a drinking card. The drive to change the state’s weird, and antiquated, alcohol laws has been a topic of conversation literally since I was a child, and I can recall my parents debating its merits. They were in favor of privatization, as apparently a majority of Pennsylvanians still are.
But efforts to privatize Pennsylvania’s alcohol trade and get rid of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, or PLCB, always seem to stall, and nothing ever seems to change. Watching from afar that seems as true today as it did when I still lived there. Everybody I know hates the system the way it is, but no one’s been able to change that due to what I can only assume are powerful forces who want to keep the status quo the way it is. But over the last few years, momentum appears to be building again to bend the state’s laws toward the will of the people and privatize the sale of beer, wine and spirits.
And they must be making some progress, because a few days ago I saw this:
It’s easily one of the most obnoxious, dishonest and insulting pieces of propaganda I’ve ever seen. Right out of the gate they insult every other state where alcohol is sold in grocery stores and other places where people already do their shopping, a.k.a. the civilized world, when they state that it “would be so dangerous for kids.” Hey lady (scriptwriter, really), I’ve got news for you. We can buy beer in all manner of stores throughout California, and my kids are just fine, thank you very much. There’s so much dishonesty in the ad that it’s almost not worth going through it point by point. But the capper is how they end it, by saying “it’s about greed, pure and simple.”
What’s so dishonest about that is that the ad is indeed about greed, but the greed of the people who made the ad who want to keep the status quo, and the money flowing to them. The ad was created by the UFCW PA Wine & Spirits Council (a front organization) and the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 1776 (UFCW 1776) (and was produced by Strategic Communications). As I’ve written many times before, one of the most pernicious tactics of these campaigns is invoking “it’s for the children,” when it’s really not about that at all. But this one takes it to a new low with their new catch phrase: “It only takes a little bit of greed to kill a child.”
You might ask what kind of a person would come up with something like that? It’s most likely UCFW 1776’s “president for life” Wendell W. Young IV, who apparently has made a career out of this sort of thing, as detailed nicely by my friend and colleague Lew Bryson in Wendell Young lies and I can prove it on his blog all about Why The PLCB Should Be Abolished.
As he points out, the ad is so ham-fisted and absurd that it’s made the state a laughingstock, with news reports lambasting the ad from Forbes to the National Memo, which declared it the “craziest political ad of 2014.” Also, the Commonwealth Foundation points out how the statistic about North Carolina’s children dying at a rate of one per week is false. The Foundation also has a good overview of the Principles of Liquor Privatization.
But it’s another example in the ongoing sad saga of just how far people will go to push their self-serving agendas, something anti-alcohol groups are amazingly good at doing. At some point, the creators of this, the sponsors and people paying the bill all looked at this ad before airing it to the public and never once concluded it went too far, might be over the top or played fast and loose with the truth. And that, I think, tells you everything you need to know about the hearts and minds of the UCFW 1776. It really does only take a little bit of greed, doesn’t it?
Beer In Film #67: American Beer Blogger
Today’s beer video is the short version of the pilot for Lew Bryson’s American Beer Blogger, which had its television debut on this day two years ago. The Green Leaf Productions show won an a regional Emmy in 2012 in the Mid-Atlantic Emmys’ Entertainment Program/Special category.
The Brewhog Saw His Shadow, 6 More Weeks Of Winter Beers
Over in Gobbler’s Knob, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, Phil the Groundhog — a.k.a. Brewhog — raised up his head this morning and looked around, and this year saw his shadow everywhere he looked. You know what that means. It’s six more weeks of drinking winter beers this year. Or something about a late spring, I can’t keep it straight. You can see a video of Punxsutawney Phil here. And there’s more information about Groundhog Day at the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club.
Beer In Ads #1013: There’s One Great Beer That Costs You Less
Tuesday’s ad is for Reading Premium Beer, from 1972. Reading Premium was my hometown beer, but closed in 1976, when I was a junior in high school, more’s the pity. This ad was just four years before they closed their doors, and it must have been an ad of desperation, trying to compete on price against seven brands far more established then they ever were. But at last they were still using my hands down favorite slogan of all time: “the friendly beer for modern people.”
