I don't really drink. And, given my druthers, if I do, my last choice is beer. But when people press me on this, I tell them the only beer whose taste I ever actually liked was Pabst Blue Ribbon. They'd look puzzled, then say, "Oh! But you don't really drink beer." Then they'd nod wisely.

Well, who's laughing now?

Pabst Blue Ribbon -- P.B.R., as fans call it -- is currently enjoying a highly unlikely comeback. In 2002, sales of the beer, which had been sinking steadily since the 1970's, actually rose 5.3 percent. From the start of 2003 through April 20, supermarket beer sales are up another 9.4 percent. It is endorsed in ''The Hipster Handbook,'' a paperback dissection of cool, and is popping up in trendy bars from the Mission District to the Lower East Side. Sales in Chicago are up 134 percent. But the growth started and is most pronounced in Portland -- a city best known in the cosmology of beer as a haven for fancy microbrews -- where most agree that bike messengers have been in the P.B.R. vanguard. The lowbrow brew has risen to the No. 5-ranked beer in town and is still the fastest-growing of the top-50 domestic beer brands. In local supermarket sales it trails only Coors Light, Budweiser, Bud Light and Corona.

Posted at 6/21/2003 11:00:00 AM |Click Here for Link| by Susie

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