The Death of Beer?

broken beer bottle/flikr

The Atlantic investigates the slow fall of "big beer" in The Death of Beer? Money quote:

Follow any dude in oversized glasses into a bar, and you'll see why PBR and Yuengling are doing alright—they've spent serious time and money positioning themselves as the hipster drink of choice. Yes, they're cheaper than Bud Light, but by the slightest of margins. Hardly enough to explain the difference in sales.

Effing Hipsters. The marketing is no surprise, PBR is now owned by a hipster who also owns such venerable culinary pop culture icons as Chef Boyardee and Bumble Bee Tuna.

The difference in sales refers to the big dogs of beer -- Bud, Coors, and the rest. Apparently while "big beer" sales have decreased, craft breweries are increasing in market share but this hasn't slowed the tide of decrease in beer drinking by Americans. Instead folks are drinking more wine and spirits. Is it that American tastes are becoming more bourgeois of the continued democratization of wine as viticulturist look beyond the verdant slopes of California and spirits with the recent renaissance in cocktaillery?

The Hipsters got a promotion

The hipsters of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY have gotten a promotion. Librarians aren't out of vogue, but perhaps just a career stepping stone. Per the NY Times:

Visitors to the show are relatively young, somewhere in their 30s on average, which makes them a decade younger than usual for MoMA, recent surveys showed. And a surprising one-third of this audience had never stepped foot in the museum before.

“We’d never done anything like this,” said Rajendra Roy, the museum’s chief curator of film, who was one of the show’s organizers. “There’s always a learning curve. Would I have done things differently? I don’t think so.”

For a 37-year-old curator, Mr. Roy seems pretty cool about it all, considering that only a few years ago he started his professional life selling tickets at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Yet as museum directors have come to realize, younger minds attract younger audiences. And Mr. Roy is just one of a growing group of rising curatorial stars cutting quite a different figure from the age-old image of museum curator as a fusty academic.

That's right, hipsters have now taken over art and history museums (go figure). Now that's interesting.

Can hipsters be Conservatives?

John Guardiano bemoans the temerity of the young "Hipster Cons" as he calls them at David Frum's site. It beggars the question, Can a hipster be a conservative? My answer is, yes.

I've written before about hipsters... it's my own personal obsession to which I've come to the conclusion I myself am one, though I bemoan the fact that I am one, which makes me even more of a hipster -- ooooh, how meta.

Back to the point. I've written before about Christian hipsters, whether they're Evangelical or Catholic, so it's safe to assume that the definition of hipster is not limited to the ironic youth of Brooklyn though there are certain schematas consistent with all class/degrees of hipsters.

Who Guardiano classifies as 'hipsters' is up for debate* - what he calls temerity, a term of derision, put neutrally or positively would best be described in hipster speak as a search for personal/collective authenticity.

To borrow from my posts on Christian hipsters and quote Rabbi Avi Weiss:

"people are looking for a dialectic, people are looking for a commitment that is grounded but not one that is stagnant. The other part of the dialectic is an openness but not without limits."

This is true for all hipsters.

*Conor Friedersdorf actually wrote a post at the American Scene questioning what a hipster is and if he could possibly be one. Take it from me: If you have to ask people if you are a hipster, you probably are a hipster.

SC Reality TV

I'm not a huge fan of Adam Fogle, or his "Palmetto Scoop" never have been - never will be. But he does manage to get a decent story every now and then. Monday he reported that a reality TV show is probably looking to film in SC soon.

Apparently it's a new season of Oxygen's Bad Girls Club. All I have to say is -- has Joe Taylor heard about this? Per Fogle an ad on Craigslist is soliciting casting recruiters.

But if you want to see a reality show based in Columbia, SC you don't have to even turn on the TV -- just go to Drinking in the Morning where you'll see Aaron Johnson and Grant Robertson, owners of the F Stop in 5 points, doing truly unscripted programing. Seriously, hilarious stuff.

Speaking of Aaron and Grant they're running for Mayor and City Council respectively. What's really interesting is that Mr. Robertson has a fighting chance against incumbent Tamieka Isaac Devine. Devine has been hurt politically, as all incumbents have been, by revelations of the city's fiscal mismanagement and two personal financial scandals last year regarding improper loans through the Sumter Columbia Empowerment Zone.

POTD.... oh Hipsters

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

At Bierkraft in Park Slope, Brooklyn, customers bring their own growlers and fill them with fresh draft beer. They drink it there, or take it out.