Honest Pints... of Pabst

Well, they didn't use the term Honest Pint, but I like the anti-cheater pint sentiment, even if it is just to make sure you get a full pint of PBR.  I was a little surprised to see this sign up outside a neighborhood bar, but I'm glad news of the cheater pint menace has gone mainstream.

Here's an old post with photographic evidence that a cheater pint plus a reasonable amount of head on the beer is really just a 12-ounce pour.

Join your Pabst-drinking hipster brethren in saying "no" to cheater pints!

Recent Raffle Winnings

A couple weeks ago I went to see my daughter's junior roller derby bout at Oaks Park.  I bought some raffle tickets to support... well, not sure what it was supporting, but it must have been the grown-up roller derby and not the kids because the prize was a bag of Pabst swag:  the T-shirt, socks, and mittens (!) in the picture, along with some other junk like koozies and stickers.  Oh yeah, and a tube of New Belgium lip balm.  Classy.

The next weekend when the Beermongers held their charity glassware swap, I bought a raffle ticket, hoping to win the magnum of Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous CDA.  Didn't win that, but I did win the pretty pink bottle of Rogue Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple beer.  I had been wanting to try that, but I was unwilling to spring the $13 or $14 bucks it's going for.  So it was nice to win.

I was on such a streak that I could hardly believe it when I didn't win any of the old Celebrations in the raffle at Woodstock Wine and Deli's Celebration vertical last weekend.  Oh well. I did win some money at poker later that evening, so maybe I'll find a way to win something this weekend and keep the streak alive.

Speaking of roller derby, isn't it a shame that such a Portlandish activity is owned by Pabst and New Belgium instead of a hometown brewery?  Those were the only beers for sale at the Oaks Park Derby Barn -- at least the tasty Ranger IPA was one of the choices -- maybe because they're in cans, but surely a keg of something local could be brought in.

Blast from the Past

When I was 7 years old, the big excitement was to bike over to the Quik Trip or the Git-N-Go to buy a pack of Topps Wacky Packages -- stickers that lampooned various national brands of consumer products. The baseball-card company sold these hilarious stickers with pink rectangles of their brittle, tasteless chewing gum. The bad attitude was right on the money for television-addled kids our age.

A couple months ago I found a picture book at Counter Media showing all seven series of Wacky Packages stickers published in 1973 and 1974. Turns out that the instigator of the Wacky Package project at Topps was Art Spiegelman, who went on to more intellectual glory as the author of the graphic novel Maus. In the preface to the Wacky Packages book, Spiegelman reveals that he recruited other comics authors to make up gags for the stickers, including Bill Griffith, the author of Zippy the Pinhead.

The only beer Wacky Package that came out in the 70s was the Blast Blew Ribbon sticker pictured here. Today it would be surprising if collectors cards for kids had even one joke about alcohol, but the reason I'm surprised there is only one is that there were no fewer than nineteen stickers mocking brands of cigarettes or cigars -- not to mention a breakfast cereal called Super Cigar Crisp, with a cartoon bear puffing away on the box. It looks like Topps has been selling Wacky Packages again the last few years, but I'll bet the alcohol and tobacco references are now taboo. The book does come with a Schmutz Beer sticker from back in the day that was never released, as well as a variant of the Blast Blew Ribbon one shown here.

It's one of the ironies of Portland that Pabst is so popular here. Do you suppose the sticker is correct, that the original flavor used to taste different?

Really Not Intended for Consumption

It happened before April Fool's Day, but someone out there came up with another prank to make fun of the Ebay beer auctions: a wax-dipped Pabst Blue Ribbon longneck for sale. When I wanted to sell my collectible Abyss bottle, I had to drink its contents to comply with Ebay rules; this guy decided instead to sell something where he could credibly claim that the bottle was worth more than the beer. Photo credit: the picture here is brazenly lifted from the auction post.

It looks like he'll fare a little better than I did on the money end of things, with $9.50 plus $20 shipping. He's got the ALL CAPS auction idiom down, with flashing sirens, dancing babies, dancing bananas, and waving U.S. and Iraqi flags -- buy this bottle or the terrorists win. He notes that PBR won the GABF 2006 Gold Medal for American Lager, but must not have noticed that just a couple of weeks ago Pabst took the gold at Portland's 2008 Spring Beer and Wine Festival. Maybe they should start holding the SBWF on April Fool's Day.