Remembering Ten Cent Beer Night In Cleveland – IOTW Report

Remembering Ten Cent Beer Night In Cleveland

Tuesday, 4 June 2019, 18:30 Dr. Tar Uncategorized 36

It was 45 years ago tonight that the Cleveland Indians hosted the Texas Rangers for the beginning of a three-night series at old Cleveland Municipal Stadium.
About 25,000 showed up that evening, mainly for the ten cent Strohs beer promotional.

And just to make things interesting, there had been a bench clearing brawl in Texas the week before with vows of settling the issue now that the Rangers were in Cleveland. More

36 Comments on Remembering Ten Cent Beer Night In Cleveland

  2. Used to be a bar her in my town that had nickel beer night served in 5oz. dixie cups. Used to order $1 worth at a time which they brought you on a tray. Good times. I also think thats where the idea for the old tough man contests came from. Only lasted a couple months when they came to the conclusion that it might not have been a good idea. Kept the cops busy and made the courts quite profitable for awhile.😀 (Might have been 3oz., not quite sure but a couple trays had ya pretty happy)

    6

  5. 10¢ beers sold to 25,000 sports fans concentrated in a stadium with limited entry/exit channels. What a phenomenally stupid and irresponsible thing for Stroh’s and stadium and team management to do.

    I always thought Stroh’s was a particularly nasty tasting beer. This is one more reason to dislike it.

    5

  9. Geoff – had the carnival t-shirt guy make me a shirt with Disco Sucks on it before you could buy them commercially. Don’t know where I saw it but was probably either Rolling Stone, National Lampoon or High Times magazine. Anyways, I would wear it to the nickel beer bar which was called Parkplace and when the cops finally showed and booted everyone out that they hadn’t arrested for fighting, we would go to the bar on the upper floor called Boardwalk who had the Disco bands and the lightup plexiglass dancefloor. They never appreciated my shirt much up there.😉

    6

  11. Local College (Illinois State) Had a Bar called Spanky’s…Thursdays

    were Nickel Beer Nights…My GF Worked there….( She a Student, Me a

    lecher) And I got blind ass drunk and walked home, about a Mile..I

    was renting a Cookie Cutter House in a brand new Subdivision…I woke

    up on the Couch…Of an identical House…Two doors down…My Shoes

    placed neatly on the front Porch…They even threw a blanket over Me..

    I awoke at Dawn and slinked Home. I moved away two Days later in

    shame…A process I’ve repeated 72 times since then.

    Loved the video and the way it was presented.

    8

  13. Growing up in western Washington back in the day we had Portland Wrestling and nothing could compare. The shows at Portland Memorial Coliseum or the UPS Fieldhouse were OK, but nothing compared to matches in Aberdeen, Willomina, Woolley and other lumber towns.

    7

  15. Being a Michigander, my grandfather taught me the proper way to drink Stroh’s. You had to put it in the freezer and pull it on the verge of freezing. Really did make a difference but Grandma would give you hell if you screwed it up. Bottles go boom!

    3

  16. The best way to drink Stroh’s was to trade a six pack of it for a can of Schlitz and pour the Schlitz down the drain.

    When the Army was training me at Fitzsimmons in Aurora CO in the summer of ’69, a local bar withing walking (staggering) distance of the hospital sold 10 oz. drafts to GIs for 15¢. We drank an awful lot of whatever it was.

    4

  17. I can’t remember how much San Miquel (San Magoo) beer was in the Philippines in the mid 70’s but it had to be cheap since we paid for it in pesos and you could get a lot of pesos for a US dollar. And I don’t think that I’ve drank any San Miquel since I came home to the US in 1975, it wasn’t very good beer.

    3

  19. Grew up in NW Indiana, about 30 minutes from Chicago. There was a nice, small bar in the next town over that did Nickel Beer Nights (I think on Mondays). I’m certain the proprietors knew we were all very under age, but we gave them ALOT of business as word spread among friends. It was the era of Hamm’s, Schlitz, Strohs, Pabst, and the regional beer – Old Style. Great times.

    3

  20. @Different Tim

    Back in the late 1970’s I used to get a free magazine at the music stores call BAM – Bay Area Music. You could order the “Disco Sucks” T-shirt from an advert in the magazine.

    3

  21. Friday games in the Astrodome were nickel beer night – yes, 20 for a dollar. And for a while, they had The Foamer: if an Astro hit a homerun on an even-numbered minute (yeah, I know), beer was free for the rest of the evening. Of course, during all of that, they stopped selling beer after the 7th inning. Don’t want to promote alcoholism, right?

    2

  23. Collectively, this readership has a fascinating and detailed memory of America completely unknown to later generations.

    I’ve never paid less than a buck forty for a gallon of gas. No one in my generation knows who Howdy Doody is, but we all love Inspector Gadget. You guys had Ike and Nixon and Kennedy…. we got Reagan….and then Bush and Clinton.

    Nickle beer? We got one hollow gumball for a quarter. Your comic books were a quarter, maybe ten cents. Ours were a buck. That’s why we love silver age comics. They were hella cheaper. You could get two, sometime three raggedy ass comics for a buck twenty five.

    Your generation is all “Apocalypse Now” while mine is the HBO classic mini series “Generation Kill.”

    You guys made way more of a fuss over forced school busing than we ever did. My point is, you guys should contribute short stories of your histories into a larger work telling the story of the introduction of the mutton chop side burn and big block V-8s into American life.

    I’d read it.

    5 cent beer indeed.

    6

  24. Tim Buktu – was out in/near Bay area in 78. Moved thinking I’d like to get away from Michigan and try a fresh start. Drove out with a buddy who had a friend from college that would put us up until we got on our feet. He lived in Concord. When we got to his place I was shocked. It was the Michigan apts. on Detroit Ave. (I may have that backwards) Doomed from the start. Only stayed for a month and returned home to Michigan. Missed the water and the people I fit in with. Salt water sucks.

    4

  25. Sounds like Aaron Burr is calling some of us old. When I was a kid in Detroit and gas wars would happen every now and then, I remember gas for 9.9 cents a gallon. Yup, I guess I’m old.

    5

  26. I was at Cleveland stadium with my older brother and neighbor that night. That was when streaking was a thing. I remember a guy climbing the foul pole and mooning the crowd. Hundreds of people on the field, we all thought he was going to fall. I hung out in the bleachers and looked on with amazement. We found our way to the parking lot and made it home safely. I don’t know how much my older brother who drove home drank at the game. I was 15 at the time.

    3

  27. A bar in Champaign, Illinois (Univerity of Illinois) used to have $2 all you could drink on Tuesday nights. You paid your money at the door and they gave you a mug – you spent the rest of the night fighting your way to the bar where they never turned the taps off except to change kegs. It was Falstaff beer, but after the first three or four it was o.k.

    Of course, all of the campus bars had $2 pitchers – full size and not the weeny ones most places call a pitcher now-a-days. Combined with $.10 hot dogs at some places and a pack of cigarettes for $.50, for $5 you could eat, drink and smoke all night long.

    3

  28. I remember in Vancouver, BC, in ’73, I think it was. They stopped selling beer at taprooms at 11PM or so, but then the private clubs started opening, and they stayed open until 4 or 5AM. The private clubs couldn’t sell beer either, but you could bring your own. The beer got checked in at the door, and they gave you a poker chip for each beer. Then you went on into the club and exchanged a chip for a beer. You didn’t get the same beer you brought, you just got a beer. Everyone would buy the cheapest beer they could find and hope they got better when they cashed in a chip.
    At the bars we were at earlier, they would always bring two beers when you ordered a beer. I finally asked why they did that and they said- ‘you’re probably going to have another. There it is.’

    2

  29. In high school we would put an empty gallon A&W Rootbeer bottle by the back door of a tavern on a South Tacoma Way with a five dollar bill and then call from a phone booth and let the bartender know it was sitting there. Left a nice tip when we picked it up ten minutes later.

    5

  35. $.10 beer CITYWIDE could cure a LOTTA what ails Cleveland NOW! And Buffalo, & Pittsburgh, & Chicago & Detroit & San Fransissyco & Los Angeles &… 😛

    I think big cities should try it for a MONTH. It would surely help clear up a LOTTA problems! 😆

    2

Comments are closed.

iOTWreport.com ©2024 ----- iOTWreport is not responsible for the content of comments. All opinions in comments are solely the commenter's.