Blue Collar is the New Black

Blue Collar is the New Black

Two nights a week, I make my living serving booze to Boise’s finest. The bar I work in boasts a randomness in clientele that keeps the cash registers ringing at all times of day. My shifts are on Friday nights and Monday nights. Working these two shifts has brought to my attention not only how people drink, but what they drink. On Fridays, we have a lot of younger patrons in the bar who aren’t usually seen on the weekdays. Mondays, being industry night, we serve the folks who work in other bars and restaurants downtown. I have been doing this job for almost nine years now, and when I first started, I would have been hard pressed to see girls in little dresses, or guys in skinny designer jeans slinging back a cold one, but these days it seems to be the norm.

There has been a noticeable shift in what young people are drinking, and I have witnessed firsthand the trendiness of drinking PBR. It is easily recognizable as “shitty beer” and it used to be that given the option between a PBR and another domestic beer, people would snub their noses at the blue ribbon winner and opt for something a little less “trashy.” Now Pabst is the biggest seller in my bar and from what I have read, in many bars across the country. To keep up with demand, Pabst even stepped into the realm of light beer by offering Pabst light. Now people can look trendy while keeping those calories in check.

In the bar where I work, we offer PBR (the quintessential blue collar beer) in every imaginable form and we consistently sell out of it. Our latest trend is PBR 40 oz. bottles for $4.50. At the end of a Friday night, you can hear the moans of the door guys as they pick up the half full soldiers left to waste. The notion of large quantities of beer for a good price does not factor in here. These bottles are purchased for the look. On more than one occasion, customers have been spotted in the bathrooms dumping portions of their beers out in the sinks. It is not about getting the most bang for your buck in terms of alcohol. Instead it is about getting the recognition for being a cheap beer drinker. It is about adopting the identity of the working class.

Cheap beer is synonymous with low economic status. It is what people buy when they want to get drunk for the least amount of money possible. It has generally been relegated to working class folks who throw a couple back at home, or kids scraping together all the change in their ashtrays to buy a case of beer for a party. Cheap beer has commonly been seen as the redneck beer. This spoof ad with Brad Pitt playing Chester Nelly is a perfect example of the connotations beer like PBR used to bring with it. (Warning: if you click on the Chester Nelly link, just be aware that this video is pretty offensive) There are people out there who have been drinking Pabst in bars for years, either because it is affordable, or because it is union made, or because it is one of the last large scale independent breweries remaining, or simply because they prefer the taste of it. Pabst Blue Ribbon has been around for almost 120 years, and the brewery has consistently marketed the product as the good ol’ American beer. It has generally been seen in the hands of the blue collar demographic. Now twenty-somethings all over the country are embracing this particular sign as a part of their identities.

What is it about the idea of blue collar that is so appealing to the new generation of drinkers? My best guess is it is the new rebellion against the upper tiers of society. There has been push back against the wealthy and the elite in different eras, and this new rush to guzzle the working man’s drink seems to be today’s manifestation. Though Pabst does not do any large scale advertising, the marketing for other domestic beers has seen a shift. Instead of the bikini-clad babes that used to beckon to frothing troglodytes, we now see a delivery man hero putting beer back in the hands of the common man, and women poking fun at tragically unfashionable men who drink light beer. We have spokespeople like Keith Stone. The marketing scheme has gone from “drink beer and get laid” to “drink beer and be an everyman.” Though I am unable to articulate just what it is, there is a certain identity that comes along with drinking Pabst these days. It implies that you are a working class hero; that you are above all that crazy consumerism that would drive other people to opt for a more expensive hand crafted beer. While this seems benign, I feel it begs analysis.

As with many adaptations of style, this beer nouveau crowd is borrowing cues from a group of people who are underrepresented in society. It has become cool to be poor, and the guzzling hipsters are waving their red, white, and blue beer cans high as they shamelessly exploit the working class. My issue is not with the fact that they are drinking a certain type of beer to look cool. My issue is with the notion that they have adopted a recognizable sign of low economic status in order to make themselves readily identifiable as “blue collar” but they can easily shed that identity when it is convenient. I doubt that any of the new cheap beer club members would willingly adopt all aspects of the working class culture, and they are lucky because they don’t have to. They can get the credibility for drinking the working man’s beer, but they do not have to bear the burden of the working man’s plight. The choice they make in their beer selection is not out of necessity, but out of desire.

The danger in this type of identity marker for me is that it ignores the representative group. It lessens their visibility in society because it smoothes over the unattractive parts. It downplays the seriousness of economic hardship by making it look fashionable to be poor. I am all in favor of people having choice and being able to express themselves freely, but I do feel like there are far too many trends that exist at the expense of others. I suppose that is the benefit of having a set of tools with which to deconstruct them.