Last weekend I attended the fifth annual Hipster Pride Parade Pitchfork Music Festival, as I've done every July since 2006. In the last five years, I've watched the festival grow from not-enough-bodies-to-make-a-crowd to not-enough-room-to-fit-the-bodies, and I can say that the expansion--aside from the Great Toilet Shortage of 2009--has been graceful, holding the event true to its original form.
Of course, as the festival has become more popular, it's become a bit more commercialized, but this has hardly been a problem. The vendors and organizations have, for the most part, remained local, and those that aren't--Whole Foods, The Onion, Amp, and Cliff being a few examples--at least fit with the festival's mantra (humor me). Ads were not plastered throughout the park; commercials were not shown on the video screens between sets. Everything was good as ever.
Everything except the Heineken.
I don't begrudge Pitchfork for trying to profit or hold down ticket costs. They should be doing this. But by booting a local staple for a mass-produced import, they're encroaching on dangerous territory. The festival had been serving Goose Island (312 and IPA) from the beginning, before every sports bar had a 312 tap and the president was delivering cases of Honkers to foreign dignitaries.
But this year, they served Heineken and--before it ran out halfway through the festival--Newcastle Summer Ale. (All I can say about Newcastle Summer Ale is, do not buy this beer.)
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Goose Island's IPA is hardly among the best, and 312 is one of the worst wheat beers I've tried. I don't mind Heineken either. It's fine. I drank a few. With the mercury pushing 95 all weekend, it wasn't exactly beer-guzzling weather anyway.
This is not the point, however. The substitution of Goose Island for Heineken was a troubling signal. Are we losing Pitchfork as we know it? Or was the cost savings just too much to pass up? I wonder what kind of market research went into the decision; I know I wasn't the only one grumbling.
So to Pitchfork, I say: Find a way to make the Goose Island partnership work again. By next year. This is not just a matter of taste but of the festival's image. Don't damage that because--let's face it--the image is just as important as the music.
I hope they get the message. If not, so be it. It's just beer, and it's just some music festival. Life goes on.
Glad this message got as I was disappointed that Pitchfork sold Goose Island down the river here.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that 312 is rather pedestrian, especially among the somewhat underrated crop of wheat beers/Hefes in the craft world.
However, Goose's IPA has grown on me over the years and is a very solid interpretation of the English styled IPA. No, it's not a hoppy dynamo that will kick your tongue's ass from the get go, but it's a more subtly flavored IPA that consistently provides you strong flavor on each sip. In Beer Advocate terms it's a solid B+ or so and on same days I could give it A- consideration.