Friday, June 09, 2006
The World Cup, Part II
This is why Anheuser Busch, and McDonald's for that matter, are evil. The short version of the story: Those two are the official beer and food vendors at the World Cup. Think about it -- in the land of sausages, pretzels, kraut, and fabulous beer, you'll pretty much be limited to Bud and Big Macs. That is utterly, morally wrong. I think the Germans threatened to riot and eventually got FIFA to allow some other vendors in, but Bud and McD will constitute the majority of the offerings. That's one of the few things I'm grateful for about the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, which in most other respects is an evil, worthless agency -- they require that any festival selling beer is required to offer at least one competing company to sell brews in addition to the big sponsor.
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4 comments:
I changed my comment settings to only allow registered users because some spambot tried to post an ad on my blog, but unfortunately it is mostly preventing friends from posting. So I'm changing the settings to require word verification, which is still a bit annoying but at least easier to get through.
Regarding my TABC comment, the following loyal I Love Beer readers said:
How do you explain ACL Fest then? If I remember right, the choices are
Heineken, Amstel Light, and Lone Star. Is Lone Star the alternative option I
guess?
-bill (f)
and:
Dave T says...
No. 1 -- If you only have Heineken and Amstel Light available at the ACL Fest, why not have only Bud at the World Cup? (Don't tell me how Heineken is not a real German beer. I know. And I don't care.)
No. 2 -- I don't know about the TABC rule you're quoting. The Willie Picnic is sponsored by Bud Light and only Bud products are available. And not being able to get Lone Star at Willie's Picnic is just as wrong as not being able to get Spatenbrau (or whatever) at the World Cup.
And my reply is: (To Bill) Hey, in a pinch, I'll drink Lone Star. If I can't be a beer snob, then I'll be a Texan snob.
(To Dave): I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that is indeed a TABC rule; maybe it's just city of Austin. As for Heineken and Amstel Light, you're right -- they're not real German beer. They're not even fake German beer. They're both Dutch.
Being at the stadium, it wasn't as bad as it sounds.
All of the beer outside of the stadium was local German fare. I didn't see any McDonalds stuff. Each stadium also had the local wurst for sale. Damn I had lotso sausage.
Our German hosts, Schneider and Schroeder, made us chant: "We'll only drink Deutsche Beer." and "German Beer is better!"
Even worse FIFA wouldn't allow people to wear logos of non-sponsors..no matter who it was! Now that's not US corporate crap...that's FIFA crap. Supposedly, some Dutch fans had shorts that said "Bavaria" (a dutch beer). They weren't allowed to wear them so they checked there pants and went to the game! I love the Dutch.
Here's a site for you:
http://budout.org/
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