A pretty good and widely known rule of thumb for American consumerism is: “everything is cyclical.” It’s the sort of world-weary aphorism that anyone can toss out at a cocktail party and reliably sound smart when the conversation shifts to whatever kids are up to these days. Here, watch:
Somebody just told me that low-rise jeans are coming back.
Makes sense, I guess. Everything is cyclical.
Wait, Motorola is making a new version of the Razr?
And people kind of love it, because everything is cyclical.
It makes me feel 1,000 years old to hear Zoomers using Creed songs on TikTok.
Why not? Everything is cyclical, and butt rock is everything.
You get the idea. It’s a pretty good rule, this rule! Of course, there are exceptions. Not everything is cyclical. For example: While the “indie sleaze” aesthetic of the aughts may have recaptured some attention earlier this decade, the astonishing, outta-nowhere resurrection of Pabst Blue Ribbon that lubricated so much of that over-exposed, Brat-presaging oeuvre will never happen again. Much like the Light Beer Wars of the 1970s and 1980s, it can never happen again, for structural evolutions — or devolutions, such as they are — of the United States’ brewing industry, cultural landscape, and collective palate. Follow your humble Hop Take columnist on this.
I don’t care to litigate the exact definition of the “hipster” here (or anywhere else; it’s 2024, for chrissakes), and certainly not “hipster beer,” which Maggie Hennessy already gamely wrestled with in these digital
