And then there is free beer.
Are there better beers than Pabst Blue Ribbon? Maybe. It's entirely possible. In fact, yes. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Is there better beer than free beer? Unless there's a beer with a shiny new silver dollar at the bottom of every bottle, then decidedly not.
It may be that PBR's illustrious and decorated history is merely one of those legends so oft-repeated that even its perpetrators have come to believe it. While official company history cites the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago as the origin of the blue ribbon, at least one account suggests that blue ribbons were already being affixed to bottles of Pabst's select beer in the early 1880s. Whether or not the story of the blue ribbon is a myth, there is a mythology to Pabst. An aura. A mystique.
A stroke, perhaps, of marketing genius.
Dirt cheap and nearly flavorless: There could hardly be a more crowded category in American beer. Yet few have the cachet of Pabst Blue Ribbon; sure enough, those that come closest are part of Pabst's portfolio of regional revivalist brews. It's altogether counter-revolutionary, this nostalgia for what homebrew guru Randy Mosher aptly describes as the "Golden era of American brewery accountants." Still it lingers, though, in our cultural DNA. If the magnificence of Pabst is nothing more than a recognition of this genetic anomaly, it is an undeniable magnificence nonetheless.
Pabst Blue Ribbon is, dare we say it, a perfectly acceptable - no, enjoyable - beverage in the right place, at the right time, and for the right price.
As right prices go, it's hard to argue with free. For those who happen to be in L.A., the right place on this day is Safari Sam's. Nestled into a strip mall on a dark and dirty stretch of Sunset Blvd. - far from the Sunset Strip, far from the palaces of Beverly Hills, and every bit as far from the faux-bohemian confines of Silverlake - Safari Sam's is an unpretentious little venue. Unpretentious, of course, being a pretentious way of saying that it's a dive. The kind of place where PBR tastes best - with a rapid-fire succession of down and dirty no frills rock n' roll bands blasting from the stage.
It's free beers for bros. All you have to do is wear one.
