What's the Best-Selling Beer in the Castro? The Mega-Brews Making a Play for Gay Dollars

By Brian Yaeger Wed., Jun. 23 2010 at 10:03 AM

Categories: Beer, Queer Food Capital

There, on the bottom right corner of the official Pride website, four tiny, alternating ads flash that link to corporate sponsors, each with a tagline that winks to their support of the LGBT community. Anheuser-Busch, a corporation that pulls in almost $37 billion in sales by virtue of controlling roughly half of the entire beer market (and that's just for America), encourages gays and lesbians to "be yourself."

In contrast, when the Teamsters started boycotting Coors in 1973 over labor disputes, they reached out to minorities including homosexuals, enlisting the aid of community organizer Harvey Milk. The official boycott is over, but the damage has yet to be repaired.

There was actually a PR effort to mend the hurt feelings between Adolph Coors Co. and the LGBT community when Scott Coors ― an actual gay Coors, akin to Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter, Mary ― launched a charm offensive, but the family's ties to ultraconservative organizations such as the Heritage Foundation meant that those efforts have not been fruitful. Good luck trying to find Coors Light on tap anywhere in the Castro.

Calls to popular bars including Badlands and Twin Peaks Tavern confirmed that, not only are no Coors products available in those establishments, but that patrons, just being themselves, have made Bud Light the best selling beer in the Castro.

Now if only they had Schmitts Gay on draft.

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