Does the entire Innocent Smoothies aesthetic strike you as deeply fucking irritating?

doesn't get more real england than a wobbly table

Don't love me a jam jar (for drinking out of, fine for containing preserves)

also good for saving your ejaculate in so that you can dunk your my little ponies in it iirc

look forward to brewdog's forthcoming 'pony cum' pale ale, hitting shelves in march

omfg

.

tough room

so this brewdog thing is just a brewhouse chain with some sort of membership club scam?

I want to hear more about NV's acquaintances that buy into this. Literally, as in their "shares" or they just like some of the beers and the branding doesn't offend?

yeah I meant they drink this stuff altho they are punks themselves and it feels like they are warm to the brand because of this

I did wonder if you were in the big smoke or not NV, it probably does make a big difference.

cf talking lager with a Polish guy in Liverpool, he was blown away by the fact that in zones 1-3 of London it's basically impossible to be further than 100 metres away from a can of Tyskie.

ya using big twice in the same sentence that's the good shit banana-fucking-man

it feels like they are warm to the brand because of this

Guess I feel like my definition of normie is wrapped up in this- receptivity to (what I find) cliched advertising tropes, and smooth integration of sense of self with these. Seems to be a more important divide than whether someone considers themselves punk/alternative or not.

yeah, that's what I was getting at with the normalcy of your self-perceived altness. tho I think it's a little more complicated, and then I don't know that they're influenced by the word "punk" in the branding so much as other aspects of it - the (lol) realness or something. I don't know, they're people I like, I'm like bg, I wish I could enjoy stuff without being repulsed by this nonsense

it's basically impossible to be more than 100 metres away from a can of Tyskie in Hull too

partly the thing I guess is that Brewdog is sold at the kind of alt-y venues that those people like to hang out whereas I'd rather be in the traditional old man pub drinking swill. altho that's also complicated by my main pub being half old man pub and half student-friendly cheapo bar

A Portuguese friend was staggered that I could get a pint of Estrella in London. Now he lives in Leyton so London things seem much less amazing.

I think punk/alt culture is a red herring here tbh. In London and I suspect other metropolitan cities its main market is young professionals who lean towards the hipster so the name is a vague gesture in the direction of that market. I suspect if you're at an actual punk gig it's still all cans of warm Red Stripe like the Good Lord intended.

It was also the first craft brewer to get really big so it was able to sell itself as the alternative to Heineken or whatever. Now there are hundreds of breweries like thatm, including loads of better ones, it just looks a bit wanky, especially as they're flush with private equity money these days.

I'm going to a hipster-ish (not really) venue on Saturday night to see an Iron Maiden tribute act, iirc they only serve over-priced craft shit, i'll report back

Also there are just a lot of credulous twats in East and South London who will buy into virtually anything with a bit of hype behind it. There was an excellent craft beer pub, Mason & Taylor, in Shoreditch for years and as soon as it became a Brewdog it was twice as full. Like I said it's probably considered a bit old hat now.

xxp absolutely my experience, at least in their own branded bars (which I've been to three of in London, so lol @ me), full of ties-off after work drinkers. Even on saturday, that seemed to be the prevailing vibe somehow.

"hipster" and other oversignified words don't fully cut it here in the sticks tbh - there are definite demographic distinctions between different venues, often class-aligned, but there are loads of blurred middle grounds and tbh to think in a Londonish way about not-London is a kind of provincial naivety of its own, in short I'm old and out of touch, what hell I know?

tbh to think in a Londonish way about not-London is a kind of provincial naivety of its own

that's a good point old timer

I'm going to a hipster-ish (not really) venue on Saturday night to see an Iron Maiden tribute act, iirc they only serve over-priced craft shit, i'll report back

https://drinksenthusiast.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/oliver-robinson-bruce-dickinson-enjoying-trooper-beer-launch.jpg

closing time at the Lord Iffy Boatrace Arms

Yeah I was only really talking about metropolitan centres. You never see this stuff in country pubs, although you could get it in provincial Wetherspoons last time I looked.

bottom line is that branding works, to some extent, and may god have mercy on our souls

"beer for punks" sounds exactly like the opposite of the punk ethic but ymmv

here, punks, a beer _just for you_!

actually that is exactly the punk ethic in 2018

arguments abt what was acceptably "real" uk punk consumption behaviour already in effect by the time of the first pistols single in nov 76

(viz mclaren: "of course the real fans aren't buying it")

imo punk doesn't want or need you, but it'll serve you beer if you show up

maybe punk was a less smarmy innocent smoothies all along

punk has been a blight on aesthetic thought since c. the date of that McLaren quote

:0

don't mind using it affectionately for kids who like tats and hardcore/post-hardcore etc

Ultimate empty signifier innit

perfectly contested signifier (which is not quite the same thing)

I wish the prevailing musocritical orthodoxy had been for anarchoDadaists or something instead tho

I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

we wish that too

mark is being more reasonable than me, it's the anger-authenticity-youth-energy nexus that rankles. I know it's not the only game, any more than privileging ideas over praxis (practice, literally!) and materiality is

praxis is how you get to carnigie hall iirc

*pretends typo adds clever layer to whiskered old gag*

That was the gag I was playing with tho tbf

weird how Rotten's most important moment, that none-more-snotty "we mean it, maaaaaan" became ignored by endless bores opining that meaning it is all that matters

That McLaren quote is funny though.

Love2Malcolm, but then he wasn't the one turning moments into mausoleums

weird how Rotten's most important moment

enh i could make a case for 'ever get the feeling you've been cheated' as the defining rotten and/or pistols moment but i'm still pondering suicide over brewdog's 'equity for punks' tbh

yeah OK that's a good one too

those recalcitrant rebel rousers were just out of control, man, how did the establishment survive them?

this is why my aesthetic is the Mute records '78-'84 box set and a handful of Throbbing Gristle albums, no attempts to codify an ethos there

Just to note that I am in Tesco now and they have the following Brewdog beers- "Punk IPA" "Dead Pony Club" and "Elvis Juice."

kind of want to try their grapefruit IPA to see if it's as bad as claimed, but Elvis Juice is such a terminally bad name

'dead pony club' and 'elvis juice' basically just make me think of landfill leachate

Brewdog have some distribution deal, it's even in some of the roughest Onestop branches in the UK - where the idea of a £6 4-pack is unthinkable.