When I was a kid I couldn’t wait to be old enough to drink beer. Beer commercials were so cool when I was growing up.
At first it was the Hamms commercials with the cartoon of the bear and then it was Harry Caray hawking Falstaff at Sox games.
It was the Lowenbrau commercials that hooked me. Guys gathered around a table in suits with loosened ties. Dolan shows up and tells them he’s late because it was hard to pick up good seats to the game, but he scored them and everyone cheered his success.
The waiter knows him by name and hands him a menu. He doesn’t need the menu and tells the waiter, “tonight is special, I want a steak and a Lowenbrau!”
All his buddies hand the waiter their menus and order the same. I wanted to be that cool guy. The guy that scored his buddies tickets to the Blackhawks game and was full of confidence.
I was destined to be a Lowenbrau drinker!
A few years later I switched my allegiance to Michelob. I’m still not 21, but I’ve moved from Lowenbrau and now I was a Michelob man.
Why?
Hot chicks, Manhattan and Francis Albert Sinatra.
Old Blues singing “The Way You Look Tonight” while the camera pans across the New York skyline. Beautiful women waiting patiently in different nightspots for their man to arrive. Big 1980’s hair, shoulder pad dresses, black pantyhose with the line down the back of the calf and Frank Fucking Sinatra.
“Someday, when I'm awfully low
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow just thinking of you
And the way you look tonight….”
The cool guys drank Lowenbrau and Michelob. I wanted to be the cool guy when I grew up.
That wasn’t my destiny though. I never became that Michelob man Or Lowenbrau dude. I became an Old Style drinker.
I also wanted to be the Chicago guy that tailgated at Bears games, sat in the bleachers at Wrigley, watched the Blackhawks from the balcony at the Stadium and caught a foul ball in the golden seats at Comiskey.
Old Style it was and Old Style it still is. My dad called Old Style Panther Piss.
“You gotta be shitting me Moose! I catch you drinking and you’re drinking Old Style? You stupid son of a bitch! You’re grounded! Not for underage drinking, but for drinking Panther Piss!”
All these years later I can still settle for a cold bottle of Old Style!
Sox Park and The Stadium are gone, so is my dad. Soldier Field lost the Grabowski Charm and Wrigley replaced the bleacher bums with foolish twats.
…. But Old Style is still around!
I don’t even think Lowenbrau and Michelob are still made!
“Here's to good friends, tonight is kinda special
The beer we'll pour
Must say something more somehow
So tonight, tonight, let it be Lowenbrau..”
My “Sixty Day Celebration for Cecilia” is almost over. My first drink won’t be a beer though. It will be a whiskey drink, but in the days following I’ll find a bottle of Old Style or a glass of Fritzicuffs made at BuckleDown.
What was your favorite beer commercial?
I bet one of you old jock sniffers brings up the Lite Beer commercials!
Happy Tuesday Chalkheads, I’ll have a steak and a glass of beer!
