"Restoring the Roar"?!

above: my life, 2006-2007

"Don't try to fix what isn't broken."

These are words to live by in every aspect of one's life. Yes, even when it comes to drinking cheap beer.

The Lion Brewery was founded in 1905, but more importantly, my friends and I started drinking its titular Lionshead Pilsner approximately the summer of 2006. It was definitely the cheapest beer at our one and only Krewstown Beer Distributor—at one point dipping as low as $9.99 per case—and it tasted pretty decent for the price!

It had the lo-fi appearance of a cheap, working-class beer: faded white/brown label, drab brown and gold-colored caps, and shitty boxes that were always falling apart or torn up, printed with an ugly, red, medieval-looking logo. It looked like something you'd see in a picture on an alcoholic uncle's photo collage hung in a musty rec room basement, But we took pride in it, because it didn't try to be fancy like your Lites and your Buds. It was what it was.

Best of all were the little puzzles under the caps. We spent practically the entirety of high school trying to figure out those motherfuckers. For instance, what the hell could a picture of a iron bell weight, an arrow point to a back, and a fucking wooden chair mean? But we figured them all out, both under the noise of an intoxicating evening and the haze of a brutal hangover (when you find a dozen caps in your pants pocket the next morning). It got to the point that when I was in college, people were amazed that I didn't even have to look at the cap to figure out what the solution was.

Natural Light kind of took hold of my life in freshman year, unfortunately, because there was no easy way to sneak the loud clanking Lionshead bottles into the dorms. But I still ran into it every once in a while at an upperclassmen party or during a visit to fancy-schmancy UPenn. Even more so, I still kept Lionshead close to my heart.

Humble reader, a grave thing has happened, indeed. Lionshead just had to go and change everything. They had to act all "new" and "cool." They had to destroy themselves.

First of all, the design is moderately but crucially different. No more does it feature a fading red logo on a white box, or a weird tan label under a weird gold and brown cap. Replacing it is a "slick" new logo, complete with "badass" looking lion, and red/blue caps. Worse still is what's printed on the caps: new puzzles. Uh oh.

I remember wanting new puzzles when I mastered the old ones. But be careful what you wish for, dear reader—these new ones are fucking terrible, and that makes me sad. An egregious example is a picture of a calendar, with an arrow pointing to Friday, and then "the 13th" simply written out as is. My six-year-old cousin could fucking figure that one out.

I feel as if I have been married to some woman for three years, and then she gets a terrible, terrible haircut. I'd still love her, of course but something is just... off. Same thing with my beloved Lionshead. I still enjoy the taste, and I'll still probably choose it over, say, a case of Milwaukee's Best. But nevertheless, it feels wrong. This is not the same beer I grew up on all those summers ago.

THE END OF AN ERA