I'm drinking Old Style - the beer of the Cubs. The scarves the ground are giving away tonight show the beer with the tagline of 'Authentically Krausened'.
It doesn't taste of much. Lager. The light version (yeah, we had that, too) is drier, simpler. It's good for watching the ballgame with a hot dog.
We look for good beer in the stadium but can't find it. It doesn't matter; we wanted Old Style. The Cubs win in extra innings.
As one born in Chicago (Arlington Heights, technically) I personally thank you for embracing Old Style. Although I left Chi young, I remember as a child, the numerous plastic Old Style signs dangling precariously outside some of the more, shall I say, "interesting" bars and taverns of the city. The white signs, swinging in the breeze; their blackletter font emblazoned on a blue shield—a shield that always reminded me of a sharp chinned professor in a mortar board.
ReplyDeleteThose signs are truly one of the most indelible images of Chicago that I have. Nothing says "the city of big shoulders" to me more.
Old Style isn't about simply about a beer made in Chicago—it's a beer made of Chicago. Alan wrote a post in September about Old Style and I commented with a poem—and I never write poems.
Old Style is Carl Sandburg and the Billy Goat curse.
A river dyed green in March and Mrs O'Leary's cow.
It's Vienna beef with neon green relish, tomatoes, a sport pepper and celery salt.
The Loop, the L, the wind.
A three-peat and John Hancock.
It's deep dish and Belushi.
Lujack and the Christmas windoews at Marshall Fields.
Lower Wacker, the Eisenhower and the view of the Lake from the Gold Coast.
It's the North Shore and the South Side.
Capone and Daley.
Italian Beef and a freezing third and goal at Soldier.
It's Sue at the Field and Navy Pier.
Seven in sixty-eight and Lincoln Park.
The Watertower and Blackhawks.
Harry Caray and Wrigleyville.
Some say it's the barley and others the hops,
I say it's State Street and the Sears Tower that makes Old Style great.