discuss labor issues while grocery shopping.
© in perpetuity by Gilbert Shelton, all praise to his name.
“What more could anyone ask for than to work for a beer company?” Fat Freddy wonders.
Well, a living wage might be nice, say the brewery workers on strike against Leinenkugel’s in Chippewa Falls, Wis. It’s the first strike against Leinie’s since 1985.
“We’ve just fallen behind every contract,” [John] McGillis said after wrapping up a strike shift next to a rushing creek, where neighbors have been dropping off doughnuts, pizza and words of encouragement. “We’re behind what everybody else in this area is paying.”
The corporate bigwigs at the Molson Coors mothership disagree, because of course they do. They’re about making money, not beer, and probably up to their third chins in a scheme to have A.I. brewing virtual lager for digital pubs on Facebook. Dispense with that irksome human element, don’t you know.
Or maybe it’s worse than we think. While the Teamsters are out in the streets some scab plumber is probably rerouting the toilets to the taps. And for minimum wage, too.
Remember your W.C. Fields: “I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.” People do those things, too, W.C. old scout. Say, does the “W.C.” stand for “Water Closet?”
• Java jive redux: In other news from the morning side of the beverage industry (for those of us who are not day drinkers, anyway) maybe I have to reconsider that occasional Starbuck’s Americano.
Mad Blog Media 
Molson Coors same same Inbev. Buy out a local brewery making good beer and turn it into Miller or Budweiser. Corn and rice syrup along with maybe a little barley malt, some hop extract, yeast, and tap water and you have the typical Murican mega brew. The examples are endless, and New Belgium is probably the next casualty.
Too late for New Belgium. Sold to Lion/Kirin of Japan in 2019.
Lion has a long arm. Paw. Whatevs.
Oregon has instituted a new method that causes me to refrain from buying any of the mega-conglomerate beers along with their discreet buy-out takeovers. The State has a program of can and bottle recycling. It used to be that as with many places, you drug your empty containers down to the store and stood in line on sticky, smelly concrete to recover a store credit slip good for a couple of bucks. As may be inferred from my tone, I didn’t waste my time – I simply found somebody that looked like they could benefit from my bottles and cans and gave them to that person. But in the wisdom of corporate inconvenience, the State has mandated that an individual must now schedule an appointment with the store to recycle their containers. Well copulate in a rude and disgusting matter to that! I’ve made the decision that any beer that I now drink, will only be from growlers purchased at brew pubs, or direct from the glass at those micro establishments. My local grocery stores and the beer distributor who has the monopoly on supplying those stores no longer receives money from me.
Ipso facto boycott-O
I remember the Oregon can-and-bottle recycling program. A couple of hobos I met at Squirrel’s Tavern in Corvallis told me that’s how they earned their beer money. Food they gathered freegan style from restaurant Dumpsters and housing was a squat in some abandoned building. Flying pretty low on the radar they were and even bought me a beer.
Here in The Duck! City recycling gets picked up at the curb, save for glass. That I have to load into the Subie and drag to a senior center a few miles off. Lord, does it ever make a racket going into the rollaway.
Ahh the good old Vote with Your Wallet strategy Shawn. A few years back I bought a DrinkTank growler with optional CO2 kit. Worth every penny. Although filling it with craft beer is now exceeding the price per beer from the liquor store shelf, the quality is far better. After enjoying the first pint, I can keep the rest under CO2 for several more days and it’s still got the fresh taste as if you were at the brewery. Although the DrinkTank is insulated, you for sure want to make room for it in the fridge.
Do you have a dedicated beer fridge, Herb old scout? The brother of an old college pal had a fridge that held a keg. Tap on the door. Didn’t even have to open the sumbitch to draw a delicious lager, which he did often.
One day he awakened in his vehicle at a stop light and wasn’t quite sure how he got there, or how long he’d been there. It was a lesson to the rest of us. We continued to go through the time-consuming process of opening the door, grabbing a bottle or can, closing the door, opening and draining the container, repeating as necessary. If we were lucky we passed out before driving somewhere came to seem a swell idea.
I do have a secondary small fridge that houses more soft drinks, limeade, Fevertree tonic and Freewave N/A than anything else. But as Herself would agree, the fridge is happiest when chilling a few French rosé’ wines. As a matter of fact, since it’s raining out…….
O, indeed. Herself does love her some French rosé. There is almost always a bottle or two or three of La Vielle Ferme somewhere in the house (inexpensive, tasty), and there is a flagon of Whispering Angel in the fridge as we speak.
My college friend Bill had a beer fridge in the communal house he shared with a couple other friends. Keg in the fridge, CO2 tank, and tap on the door.
Bill worked the graveyard shift at U of R Security, as I did a couple nights a week as my college work study job, and sometimes we would go over there after work at 0700 and draw a pint.
As far as the U of R was concerned, we were all dead end kids but somehow we outsmarted the old alma mater and all landed on our feet after we had exhausted all the alternatives.
It’s funny how many collegiate miscreants convince their institutions that they are noble and deserve a degree, and then they go on to do good and successful things. I’m proud to half tipped many cans with a few of them. In my case, I just stuck around at the academic shelter long enough that they had pity on me and tossed a sheet or parchment in my direction. The good and successful things part has not been a component of my CV.
half tipped? That’s pretty good but I was never one for just half tipping a beer. I believe “have tipped” would have been a more educated use of language.
My department chair ridiculed me in front of my mom and kid brother at graduation saying I had a triple major: frisbee, Genesee Beer, and geology. That was actually true, but all my classmates winced and my mom just sat there stoic. She had her own trials with life. I seethed and thank god I didn’t have a pistol permit at that time.
I guess I made my decision to go to grad school in part to spite the motherfucker and in part because I actually really liked geology. My problem was all the devils in my head while I was a young man. I never graduated to driving my car in front of a train, but it was not for lack of trying.
But we miscreants all went on, one to be an investment banker, one a motorcycle mechanic, one a civil servant in state government, one a smart guy at the Xerox plant in Rochester, me as a geologist. But when I was faculty at the U of Hawaii, I always had a soft spot in my heart for students going through tough times. I knew many of us did, and we all ended up persevering with a little help from our friends, even though the college was only interested in how many Magna Cum Laudes it had at the immediate time of graduation. I was Magna Cum Dogshit, but hey, you get to prove them wrong once in a while.
“Living well is the best revenge.” — George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum
And to think they said I’d never find work. Why, I found it every few years. My employers often insisted on it.
The beer fridge, along with the bottle or two of pinot grigio, is in the garage with a magnetic sign on it. See below.
Hee, and also haw. We could do with a small second fridge in the garage, but I wonder about the heat. Damn, but it gets toasty in there come the summertime afternoons. A fridge would be working overtime and then some.
Word. We have a relatively small fridge in the kitchen, so the beer fridge saves space that one. This hot year, I have a muffin fan blowing on the condenser. Plus, Sandy has an evaporative cooler running in the garage when she is doing glass art. So far so good for 6 years. But, I bet it’s life has been shortened a little.
Love the sign Pat! On my way to fetch the Rose’ I got waylaid by a 2019 bottle of Argentine Malbec. Should help in treating an insurrection in my iliopsoas muscle which is damn near impossible to get at to massage or otherwise coax into taking a relaxed attitude about it all.
Them damn muscle uprisings need to be quelled with an iron fist, preferably holding a glass of something tasty.
I remember the Leah Zelden quote, “All food is political.” Over the years I have seen this statement proven true again and again. Not a beer drinker myself, but after reading the article about Starbucks in the NYT this last weekend, we’ve cut Starbucks out of our buying. There are plenty of alternatives, and I don’t care to support yet another self-absorbed billionaire.
Good call, Jon. I’ve read a few stories in which this swole-up pissant got to run his mouth and I can’t say it was music to my ears. Mostly I make my own java, but if I ever need a midmorning pick-me-up I’ll take my little bit of business elsewhere.
I recall that snide remark re-done as a t-shirt: friends don’t let friends drink Starbucks. I never liked their coffee. It often tasted like they roasted their beans to a crisp to hide something. Besides, there are so many good little local coffee haunts in the City Indifferent that going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to a national chain for New Mexican food. I typically buy beans at small local microroasters and brew my own. Or, go to a good local coffee shop.
Jim Gaffigan does a fine bit on Starbucks in his new special, “Dark Pale,” available on Amazon Prime. He cracked Marc Maron up with it; Maron was thinking, “Aha, Gaffigan’s already gone to the filler here,” but he was wrong. You can catch their chat at Maron’s website or wherever you acquire your podcastification.
When we first moved here and didn’t have any Innertubes I spent a lot of time doing business in libraries and coffee shops, rotating from one to another so I wouldn’t be That Guy, taking up a table for hours with my technology while nursing a single cup of joe.
I did the occasional Starbucks as part of the rotation, but never liked it. The local chain Satellite Coffee was much more my style. The Montgomery shop was a nice funky little joint considering its suburban-nightmare location, with good breakfast burritos, though parking was usually an issue.
If there were one within walking distance of El Rancho Pendejo I’d be there a couple days a week. Alas, we have about seventy-eleven Starbuckses instead.
Seems you can’t swing a dead cat and not hit a coffee shop up here. Or a pot shop, for that matter.
I believe that in the recent past I made a comment about Starbucks and believing that their corporate practices were relatively positive. Perhaps my perspective was taken from a mahogany row viewpoint; of one who doesn’t get down in the squalor of skinny double caf with double mint sprinkles orders. Forgive me. One of my market investments had just had a stock split and I was in a carefree trumpian state of euphoria.
But my Starbucks visitation rate has been in the 1 in 5 years range for about five years now. The last time I was in a Starbucks, I was number two in line and number three Starbucks employee on break received their order before number one. I’m an orderly person and like my numbers in order, so that Starbucks facility has encountered zero more visits from me.
Local is best in my area and with the exception of the addicted peasants that support a dutch brothers facility in one of our strip mall parking lots. My little burg has several local coffee shops to support. If only my stock investments would split more often so that I could justify more frequent visitation.
My last Starbucks stop was in July of last year. I was in Denver for a memorial gathering and was traveling way light, not even a laptop. Nobody in his right mind drinks hotel coffee, so the two mornings I was there I hoofed it to a Starbucks a couple blocks away.
I’m an early riser anymore and had the place mostly to myself both trips. The staff was pleasant, the coffee … well, better than hotel coffee, but only just. There may have been a proper coffee shop nearby, but I wasn’t in the mood to investigate. I should’ve packed my java machinery and spent the mornings muttering to myself in the room.
I agree on hotel coffee tasting like someone put hot water through a pair of socks that someone wore three days straight in the heat of summer. So if I am thinking (which is rare), I’ll put a small pour over and some of my own ground beans in my travel kit. Then, just heat water in those little hotel machines and use it to make a real brew.
Never been to a Starbucks, not even when I was traveling for work before I retired. But, this discussion reminds me of a song. Simplicity is one of our three treasures.
I’m with Shawn on thinking originally that their practices were things to emulate. After all, they have (as an example) tuition reimbursement. Only now to find out that you only get into the tuition reimbursement program if you work enough hours a week and, surprise!, they never give you enough hours. This practice of not giving you enough hours to qualify for benefits isn’t unique to Starbucks, but they shouldn’t tout the program as part of their PR.
The hours-and-bennies thing reminds me of a quip often attributed to Groucho Marx:
“If we had some eggs we could have some eggs and ham, if we had some ham.”