PBR--The Beer For Hipsters

As everyone knows, certain beers have a way of "coming back" after some time in the wilderness. A good example of this is Pabst Blue Ribbon, which was created by the Pabst Brewing Company in the late 1800s, and won it's blue ribbon for best beer at the 1893 Colombian Exposition when it's closest runner-up was a jar of goat piss with sugar sprinkled on it. Pabst came of age at a time when mass breweries were the coming trend, and beer drinking Americans (mostly from Northern and Central Europe) wanted light pilseners. Over time, Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) became known as a working class beer, more likely to be seen in the hands of a trucker or construction worker than a paper pushing office jockey. In the film "Blue Velvet", Dennis Hopper's psychotic character (which I think was really just Dennis Hopper being himself!) demanded a PBR, and it was played for laughs.

Then in the past decade, PBR went through a resurgence. City-dwelling hipsters started drinking it, both because it was cheap and because it was "ironic". Hipsters love irony! Look how ironic they were, drinking the same beer that Lunchpail Joes were drinking down on the loading dock! Ha ha, do you like this wallet chain I have too? And suddenly, PBR was available everywhere--you could even see it at college parties, and bars catering to the white collar crowd.

But like all fads, PBR may be supplanted by another, since it'll no longer be "ironic" and "cool" to drink a beer that is so ubiquitous--after all, they didn't take up Budweiser or Coors because these beers were already widely available. PBR had "street cred" and that's what made it a staple for the hipster crowd. What's likely to be the next big thing? My prediction--Miller High Life. You heard it here first! Unless of course you heard it somewhere else first. But you still heard it here.