I’ve always found it amazing that Pabst is so popular.
I spent 6 months in China in 1986, mostly just travelling around. The handful of people whose homes I visited, small stores, etc, often had dilapidated little cabinets where they kept and displayed their dusty treasures. One never knew what sorts of things people would have in them.
One day, in some town the middle of nowhere, I went inside a small store to hopefully get something to drink. Tucked away behind the counter, and in it's shadow, was one of these old looking display cabinets.
The store didn't have lights on, or much sunlight, and while I was drinking my orange soda - every town made their own beer, their own jars of yogurt, and their own orange soda, and if you bought any you had to drink or eat it right there because they wouldn't let you take the bottle or jar with you - I looked to see what he had in his cabinet.
Staring at it, I saw there was an ancient unopened bottle of beer in there. Covered with dust, stuck in the back, at some point I realized it was what must have been a decades old bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon, the only non-Chinese beer I saw on that trip.
I was shocked to see it, after months of nothing but Chinese goods. I really was just curious about it (Pabst, really?) - where he got it, how old was it, just look at it, but no dice - I think he thought I wanted to drink it.
