Posted on 05/12/2026 1:28:40 PM PDT by OldCountryBoy
Abe Vucekovich, the owner of the Chicago cocktail bar Friends of Friends, got a call a couple months ago. It concerned Schlitz beer.
This was a matter of some import to Vucekovich, because Friends of Friends is situated in what used to be a Schlitz tied house. There is a large Schlitz globe insignia on the side of the building. Because of this, Vucekovich decided to serve Schlitz beer on tap. To advertise this fact, he bought an old neon sign from a neighboring bar called Danny’s. It says “Schlitz on Tap” in bright red neon.
But the call Vucekovich fielded told him that Schlitz, which was purchased by Pabst in 1999, would no longer be made in cans and kegs. The brass had decided to just put it out in bottles. So much for “Schlitz on Tap.”
But that wasn’t all. Recently, the new CEO decided to stop making Schlitz altogether. Sales had been declining for some time, and there was never a huge demand outside of Milwaukee and Chicago...
… Faced with a world without Schlitz, we drove to our local liquor store, Ray’s, to stock up for the summer. We bought a case of bottles, and one can of Pabst, so we could make a Schlabst. And then we drove to Wolski’s and ordered two Schlitz drafts.
This may be your last chance to go for the gusto.
(Excerpt) Read more at themilwaukeemix.substack.com ...
Ah yes.
The beer that made Excedrin famous!
In the late 1970’s, Schlitz was KING of the hill in my small town just south of Houston. I worked at a 7-11. It was our best seller by far. That started to change when Miller Lite hit the market, and when Coors finally started delivering to Texas.
But Lone Star had the best ads. The beer was just weasel piss.
Schlitz was a good beer back in the day, and reasonably priced. One of the first beers I ever tried - before I switched to Iron City.
The locals would string them into garland at Christmas time for the small artificial trees in the bars and liquor stores, and some even on trees in their homes.
As kids, we'd fold over the tab and try to shoot them with rubber bands like a slingshot.
The modern tabs don't fold over easy but you can run a ribbon through them:
After teen-aged me finished mowing the lawn one afternoon, I was extremely thirsty. Soda didn’t seem right. Didn’t think orange juice would do the job, even with ice cubes.
Then an internal voice said, how about a beer? Another voice said, but you didn’t like beer the couple of times you tried it. The first voice prevailed.
A can of Schlitz was opened and promptly guzzled. And enjoyed ever since.
True, on both accounts. Miller Lite hit the market with great advertising though. It was an early lesson in the power of marketing. Schlitz was so dominant, they took up half the space in our cooler. In a few years, we hardly sold any.
I attended a wedding in 1980 that had a multi-level Schlitz fountain! You just dipped your champagne glass into one of the flowing streams. lol
“Rolling Rock. “
Pennsylvania piss!
We drank cases of that in West Virginia outside Morgantown in the holler. I dated a WVU girl for years and we spent summers with her fam in the sticks. You had to have four wheel drive to even get to the clearing where they drought in a portable sawmill and made the lumber for the big house and the little house on site. Solar panels and kerosene lanterns and outhouses rural. She was a country as them come and blonde oh so blonde. A mean fly fisher too.
It was, but is now NJ still.
I grew up in the rural area of Western PA, and it was not too different from rural WVA.
Swill, not still. Stupid autocorrect...
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