<TABLE class=sectionhead style="BORDER-BOTTOM: #e1e1e1 2px solid" cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=660 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD height=27>Life </TD><TD class=dateline noWrap></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- begin middle column --><TABLE style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; WIDTH: 575px" cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 4px"><SCRIPT src="http://images.chron.com/CDC/elf/js/fotogallery_story.js" type=text/javascript></SCRIPT><SCRIPT type=text/javascript> /*<![CDATA[*/ galleryPhotos[0] = ""; galleryPhotos[galleryPhotos.length]=new PhotoTemplate("http://images.chron.com/photos/2003/07/21/11852707/311xInlineGallery.jpg","", "Pabst Blue Ribbon was practically a dead brand until it became trendy with hipsters, and popularity has spread making it a "cool" beer despite no advertising.","RALPH LAUER", "FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM"); totaltemplate=galleryPhotos.length-1; titletemplate=""; /*]]>*/ </SCRIPT><!-- gallery title caption byline credit --><!--
-->Pabst Blue Ribbon was practically a dead brand until it became trendy with hipsters, and popularity has spread making it a "cool" beer despite no advertising.
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June 29, 2008, 3:15PM
Reputation makes or breaks a cult beer
Popularity, trendiness help a brew earn label
By TOM FERAN
Newhouse News Service
<!-- rbox goes here --><!-- rbox ends here -->Choosing a beer used to be about taste, price, availability and advertising.
Now, like jeans and cars, beer sends a statement — and never so clearly as when it is a cult beer, an ever-changing lineup of brews that acquire a reputation as something out of the ordinary.
Barack Obama knows this. Campaigning in North Carolina this spring, he stopped in a bar in downtown Raleigh. "Where's my beer?" he said, within earshot of reporters.
Then he conspicuously announced his choice as "PBR."
Not Blue — that's what they say in Nebraska. And not Pabst, because those in the know don't need to say the name of a beer that was once famed mainly for being "popularly" or "attractively" priced. Meaning cheap.
PBR is what it's called by regulars and by the hipsters who made it their cult beer of choice. You can blame that on irony — because it was the blue-collar brew celebrated by Johnny Russell in the song Red Necks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer — or on the hipness of David Lynch's 1986 movie Blue Velvet, where Dennis Hopper yells at Kyle MacLachlan about his beer of choice.
Then again, maybe it just was the three-buck Tall Boys.
Regardless, PBR covers the bases in "domestic" affairs.
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-->Pabst Blue Ribbon was practically a dead brand until it became trendy with hipsters, and popularity has spread making it a "cool" beer despite no advertising.
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RALPH LAUER: FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
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<!-- end f.attachment.f.top-photo -->
June 29, 2008, 3:15PM
Reputation makes or breaks a cult beer
Popularity, trendiness help a brew earn label
By TOM FERAN
Newhouse News Service
<!-- rbox goes here --><!-- rbox ends here -->Choosing a beer used to be about taste, price, availability and advertising.
Now, like jeans and cars, beer sends a statement — and never so clearly as when it is a cult beer, an ever-changing lineup of brews that acquire a reputation as something out of the ordinary.
Barack Obama knows this. Campaigning in North Carolina this spring, he stopped in a bar in downtown Raleigh. "Where's my beer?" he said, within earshot of reporters.
Then he conspicuously announced his choice as "PBR."
Not Blue — that's what they say in Nebraska. And not Pabst, because those in the know don't need to say the name of a beer that was once famed mainly for being "popularly" or "attractively" priced. Meaning cheap.
PBR is what it's called by regulars and by the hipsters who made it their cult beer of choice. You can blame that on irony — because it was the blue-collar brew celebrated by Johnny Russell in the song Red Necks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer — or on the hipness of David Lynch's 1986 movie Blue Velvet, where Dennis Hopper yells at Kyle MacLachlan about his beer of choice.
Then again, maybe it just was the three-buck Tall Boys.
Regardless, PBR covers the bases in "domestic" affairs.
