Beer is good food.
A photo of a photo. Seen at the San Antonio Winery in Lincoln Heights. Man, I wish I could have a case of that. Some Eastside lagers.
{My apologies for the photo quality.}
Eastside Old Tap(?) Lager
LA EASTSIDE
Life Beyond The River
This photo brings a tear my old eyes, nothing was better than a cold, long neck bottle, of Eastside Old Tap Lager on a hot summer night.
As a child in Lincoln Hts there was many a day(especially cold rainy ones), when walking home after school (Albion St, Sacred Heart), I would smell the Hops and Beer brewing and it seemed that all of Lincoln Hts was permeated by the smell of that Eastside Brewery.
Strange how the scents of childhood stay with you your whole life and Lincoln Hts was full of them.
The beer brewing at Eastside/Pabst, the smells of bread baking at Log Cabin, Barbara Ann, 4S or Foix, bakerys. The smell of the tortillas baking at the old La Morenita (now King Taco) Tortilleria where the first tortilla making machine was invented and used.
The smell of diesel fuel smoke from all the trains in the railroad yards in LH.
The distinct smell of the moss and pidgeons and water in the LA River.
The smell of the concrete from the city after a rain washed it all down.
And the best smell of all, the smell of chorizo and eggs being fried up by my abuelita before I went off to school.
Julio, Wonderful post!
DonQ,
Reading your list of memories transports me to similar nostalgic dreams. Thanks for the memories!
What did you think of the SA Whinery? I recently halted my self-ban on going there, but it was quickly reinstated. Oh damn, I forgot I was going to write a post on it! Boy am i behind on things…
Are you guys talking about the Maier Brew Co. which was later bought by Pabst?
That stuff was supposed to be pretty bad tasting beer (I wasn’t born, so I can’t be sure about that). I read that it was the cheapest beer in L.A. (maybe this is why it was so popular).
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/dec/19/news/adna-pabst19
It was OK. Nothing to write home about. I did want to get in on some free wine tasting but the lines were long. I went for an Aunt’s birthday brunch. Most of their popular wines seem to be those *much-too-sweet* for my taste sort.
Julio asks, “Are you guys talking about the Maier Brew Co. which was later bought by Pabst?”
No Julio, the Eastside Brewery which later became Pabst Blue Ribbon/Eastside Brewery was located on N. Main in Lincoln Hts.. It’s now called “The Brewery” (artist lofts and gallery’s).
Maier Brewery was located on I believe Washington and Mateo or Santa Fe? It was one of the original Brewery’s in LA and I recently saw some photos of Venice Beach circa 1920 that had a Maier Brewery advertisement on a brick wall there.
I worked at Maier Brewery for a month or two in the 1960’s and it was a real trip. It was so old and dusty that the rats scurrying around had been there for generations. At lunch time we would grab cold beers off the conveyor line which ran right along side the lunch room. That cold beer was great because it had not gone through the pasteurizer yet and tasted like something you might find in Europe.
Maier Brewery made beer under all kinds of labels that were sold in Super Markets as cheap as you could get, labels like Dodger Beer, Wheat Straw, ABC, and maybe the most well known and popular “Brew 102”.
It is gone now along with many other good Union paying Brewery jobs.
Sorry about that, it wasn’t Julio who asked the question but Ubrayj02
wasn’t the brew 102 near the 101 freeway as you pass the alameda exit? i remember seeing it as a kid.
Thats it Chimatli, right off the 101 bye the old “White King D” laundry soap factory.
That brewery is why the 101 jogs right there. When they were building the freeway they had to go around the brewery. I think about that every time I pass by there. Los Angeles has definitely lost some things that it shouldn’t have. My dad still talks about Brew 102. The Bud plant in Van Nuys, the Miller plant in Irwindale and Angel City Brewing in Torrance just don’t cut it to my thinking.
Don Quixote,
Over at the Chicken Shit Corner your comment has been turned into a post, though you’ve become just “a person” since the resident plopper couldn’t even be bothered to note your handle as they took your words for another free-lance “post”. Sorry about that. It’s almost impossible to teach modern-day “journalists” the concept of originality. What is to be done?
http://www.theeastsiderla.com/2009/01/when-they-actually-brewed-beer-at.html
Thanks for having my back Chavo! Cracked me up though because after you called that person out, and in no uncertain terms, he pissed backwards and clammed up.
It seems that if one is going to “liberate” material from another’s blog, in this case yours, then the decent thing would be to at least give a nod or some props.
What happened to respect and good manners in this world we are in?
Oh man. Biter! Snapper!
I’ll have to put a “No Snappers” on my posts from now on, just as we used to put on the punk backyard show flyers.
^ I always thought those “no snappers” warnings were hilarious! Like a snapper would read one and be like “hmmm, I better stay away!” 🙂
Growing up in South Gate before it got turned into a barrio, I remember smelling a mix of the Farmer John and Bandini plants of a summer morning. There used to be sonic booms all the time. The Firestone plant at Firestone and Santa Fe ran their air raid siren every Friday at noon. Oh, yeah Brew 102 SUCKED. Didn’t they use water from the L.A. river to make it?
When I was a kid I lived in Maywood. In the 1940s they had a catchy radio jingle that went like this:
Tap, tap, tap, for Old Tap Lager,
Eastside Old Tap Lager Beer!
I can still sing it — it drives people crazy.