Does anyone recognize the ski lodge? Did they sell Coors beer in California already in 1959?
Vintage Photo: Wishful-Thinking Me In 1959
– Posted on April 7, 2022
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Curbside Classics Archives
Does anyone recognize the ski lodge? Did they sell Coors beer in California already in 1959?
I’m guessing it is Tahoe, but beyond that I got nothing. Two “I”s in Skis?
Just smile, nod, and be glad there’s no apostrophe.
Nicely said.
I attempt now to paraphrase Dave Barry, I think from Claw Your Way To The Top – “The apostrophe is used by small business owners to warn readers that there’s an “s” coming up at the end of the word”.
I’m no expert on alcoholic beverages, but I thought California was one of Coors’ original expansion states. Not sure about that, but regardless, the can here looks like Coors Banquet:
After I posted the above comment, I found this map. Can’t be sure of the accuracy of every state, but it’s interesting stuff. I remember that Indiana was the last, for some reason.
Maybe Coors wasn’t distributed throughout the whole state of California? I’ve found several references to distributors in Northern California in the 1950s, but I’m not sure about Southern California.
Based on Eric’s map, i don’t know why Dad always brought Coors back home to California. It’s a mystery…
Coors didn’t come to GA until January 1, 1983 (I worked in retail liquor before going to graduate school later that year), but during the 1970s you could get things like Coors T-shirts around Atlanta (they were popular in high school, I think that’s how they established a mystique that was aided and abetted by that silly movie “Smokey and the Bandit (1977)).” My step-dad would bring back some Coors in a can when he and mom would go to New Orleans for a long getaway involving the Falcons-(S)aints pro football game there around 1979-1980. I found it to be weak stuff. (My step-dad (RIP) bought Coors Light yet complained that it was as “weak as puppy pee.” I’m still not sure why he bought it repeatedly.) I preferred Miller Lite until I discovered British beer. But in 1959 there weren’t as many choices. My dad was mostly a Schlitz beer drinker.
That explains the setup of Smoky and the Bandit although I personally don’t understand the attraction of Coors. I went to college in upstate NY in the 80s so “the good stuff” was Molson and the cheap stuff was Strohs. By the time I encountered Coors I had discovered micro brew and Henry Weinhard’s.
I’m not a Ski Lodge expert, but that looks a lot like Monarch Mountain outside Salida, Colorado. Coors wasn’t available in California in the early 60’s, so my father always grabbed a case or two during our Colorado road trips.
I remember Coors hit the big time when a photo appeared with President Ford with a Coors in his hand. Prior to that photo, I never had heard of the brand.
I remember being all exited when we finally got Coors (in Maryland), after all the hype created for it by a certain ’70s movie featuring Burt Reynolds and Sally Field, and of course that beautiful Trans Am.
Now that I am a beer geek and occasional homebrewer, I’m wondering what the hubbub was all about.
As a [former?] skier, I always thought that skis from the 50s were all wooden slats like you find in an antiques shop! These look like they could’ve been from 1979 when I started skiing. In fact, all through the eighties and nineties you could get skis that looked like that, but since about the late nineties, they’re all parabolic in shape now.
Oh, and I am drooling over that ’57 Nomad. I’d want it in that exact color, too! How very nineties being that shade of teal!
We all thought Coors was this magical beer when it wasn’t available east of the Mississippi, and you only got some when someone ‘snuck’ a case in.
Then they went national distribution, and everyone realized it was nothing more than an alternative to Budweiser or Miller. And not much better.
I had my first one back in 1972 (San Diego) after having had Bud and Michelob before hand. Much ado about nothing and I can honestly say I have never bought a six pack of Coors in my life. Though it wasn’t any better than Tecate and Corona which were considered piss beers both in San Diego and Tijuana. Yet look at Corona now given the magic of marketing. That is another beer I have never purchased in my life and have turned down in the past for just water instead. Today only Sierra Nevada (in the fridge), Boston Lager, or small US owned craft brewers.
When I first skiied in 1968 or ‘69 most downhill skiis (I learned to use two ii’s in all variants of the word, but my spell-checker doesn’t like it) were usually brightly colored, with plastic bases. My first pair of XC skiis in the seventies were wood top and bottom though. As for Coors, I remember even in the late sixties it was considered a premium exotic, like a limited run micro-brew might be today, but it was available in California by then. I can’t read the sticker on the plate, but California replaced all black on yellow plates with yellow on black in mid-1964, so the picture must be older than that.
The picture was dated 1959, hence the title.
The ‘skiis’ spelling elected a minor flashback experience for me – I’m pretty sure I remember it being spelled that way in the 1960’s as well.
As for the plate, 1959 = yellow plates, with white sticker 🙂
http://www.oldplateguy.com/YOM-Information-for-1956-to-1962-California-Vehicles.html
‘elicited’ that is….haven’t seen that edit function for ages??
All our friends in Iowa City that went to Colorado for vacations always brought back a few cases.
I got my first beer buzz on a Coors in Colorado in 1965, when I snitched one. It was the 6% kind that was sold/allowed locally for buyers over 21, not the 3.2% kind.
That higher 6% alcohol level allowed in Colorado was a big part of the appeal. The question is which of the other states where it was sold allowed the 6% vs. the 3.2%?
If it was sold in California it probably was 6%, or at least not 3.2%. I say this only because I remember my Mom making snooty comments about “three two” beer in some other states.
I recall three of us taking a tour of the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen circa 1976. After the tour a large seating area for tasting. There was a large contingent of Germans on the tour and they started drinking and singing songs. The three of us sat off to the side for the next hour watch, listened and tasted. Singing during happy hour, hmm. We all drank three Elephants, I didn’t know what it was except it had a stronger taste than American beers. We made it back to the hotel by 2 in the afternoon and didn’t wake up til 8:30 pm. Wow, where did the time go? Then the receptionist told us everything shuts down in Copenhagen on the weekends as it was Saturday July 3rd. So we rushed out Sunday morning for breakfast, starving, and everyone wished up Happy Birthday. We were puzzled until we put it together, July 4th. Great time in Tivoli Gardens that night.
When I was in college in Northern AZ, the Utahns would pop down for “real” beer 🍺 now and then.
The good(?) thing about drinking alcohol at elevation is that it gets you drunk faster. So Coors works just great when skiing.
Who drew the smiley face in the snow?
I thought the bumper sticker might read “Lakers,” but Wikipedia says they were in Minnesota ’47-’59 (which somewhat explains the name).
With my oddly shaped feet and ankles and tissue paper skin, I wish ski boots had laces when I was skiing, but they still probably wouldn’t have fit well enough to avoid discomfort and blisters.
When my mother first tried skiing in Austria in ’54, they told her to reach as high as she could, and that was the length of the skis they gave her. She never skied again.
Ad circa 1979:
It’s no downstream beer. It’s no city beer. It’s Coors.
California was part of Coors’ 11-state distribution area once Prohibition ended in 1933. I was born in ’56 and grew up with Coors being among the beers my dad and uncle would have.
As for the ski resort, that’s a lot tougher. In addition to the ski resorts at Lake Tahoe, there were/are Mt. Shasta north of Tahoe, Bear Valley and Dodge Ridge south of Tahoe, Mammoth and June on the east side of the Sierra, Badger Pass near Yosemite, China Peak east of Fresno, Alta Sierra in Kern County and at least seven resorts in the mountains north of Los Angeles and San Bernardino/Riverside.
I recall that when Coors beer got to Texas in 1960-something (or 70-something?) I told my father that evidently the arrival of Coors didn’t signify the millennium as things seemed just as they had been apart from the beer cans.
On the small screen, the young man evoked a younger Prince Charles.
Being from Indiana I had heard about the mystique of Coors for years. I finally got a taste of it when stationed at Ft. Sill in 1971 where we could buy pitchers at the post beer hall for, I think a quarter. Lucky for us our barracks was right across the street and we could get back safely on weekend nights. I liked it, but part of that might be because it was cheap. I drank it for a while when you could finally get it here but finally switched back to Miller and Bud.
I have a friend who has a ’57 Nomad in that very color. It looks stock except for the wheels but being a hot rodder he has , of course dropped an LS in along with some C4 Corvette suspension parts. It is a very nice car. When he was building it he asked me to buff the stainless trim before he installed it. I told him to bring it over along with any chrome trim he wanted cleaned up. Wow! That took a while since it was dirty and had primer overspray on much of it. Also, counting interior and exterior pieces it was over 150 items. I thought I would never get done. I didn’t touch the billboards as they were too far gone so he had to buy some reproduction ones. I have polished a lot of trim for a lot of cars but that was the biggest job ever.
Coors Banquet is the preferred beer for Johnny in “Cobra Kai”
Lovely photo .
Q. : what’s the similarity between making love in a canoe and drinking Coors ? .
A. : they’re both fucking near water .
Like Corona, Tacana and other light beers either you like them or not .
I don’t care for stouts, ales and so on .
-Nate