Your thoughts on strippers at the CBC, Portland

Summer gathering will have strippers too?

Nobody was forced to go anywhere. Get over yourselves, your 5 seconds of fame is up.

I don’t think the BA had any involvement, there were some sanctioned CBC events, but most were privately run. In Portland this is nothing new, there have been beer events there before. I’m not really sure inclusivity is the goal of some beer brands, just look at some of the labels and even brand names out there.

I would have been astonished if there weren’t strippers somewhere. Portland has themost strip clubs per capita (or did) of any city in the US. That doesn’t excuse anything, but I do wonder if this general knowledge (and a warning beforehand - though that seems like it was accomplished) doesn’t make the anger go away.

On the other hand, this is how some in Portland views the city (as punk rock) and it’s a bit heavy-handed to expect conformity with a ’national’ image.

I don’t think this was a BA event as it overlapped the CBC opening reception. There were so many events going on and with 11,000+ people in town I am sure not everyone was at Sassy’s. I think I saw the event listed in an email with 10 other events going on that night.

The weird event that the BA had listed in the long list of events was the Garth Brooks concert that was in town for two days during the week. Unrelated to CBC to my knowledge but odd that was put on the list of craft beer events going on that week.

Originally posted by joet
So Craft Brewers Conference 2015 in Portland is history. There were several promotional events that featured strippers, which apparently are an accepted Portland culture thing. This was a bit surprising for several conference attendees, including our own correspondent.

Several writers commented on the phenomenon including this summary by Stan Hieronymous

http://appellationbeer.com/blog/from-deep-in-the-belly-of-craft-beer/

and Carla Jean Lauter
https://twitter.com/beerbabe/status/589084661055418368/photo/1

and Heather Vandenengel
http://heathervandy.com/2015/04/17/a-quick-note-on-sexism-and-the-beer-industry/

My thoughts are just a couple 1) This is seemingly at odds with the goal of making the industry more inclusive. You’re just going to alienate many of the people we’re striving to include. And 2) Avoiding least common denominator marketing and focusing on quality used to be clear differentiator between us craft beer people and them industrial brewing powerhouses. At a time when many have concerns that David is now behaving a lot more like Goliath, we get this.

Your thoughts?

If it was an official CBC event it seems a pretty stupid thing to do, whatever the local customs are.

If it was just some promo by a brewer, where they hold their event is up to them. But still not the smartest move I’d say.

It wasn’t a CBC even as far as I know, just held that week. All these criticisms seem to be based on the assumption that all breweries are striving for inclusiveness, which I think is simply not the case in the industry. Plenty of brewers know they can sell all the beer they can make to a niche market segment that doesn’t care about stuff like this. They probably don’t give a shit that anyone who is offended by strip clubs might not buy their beer. Plenty of other breweries out there if it bothers you.

I have no issue. Beer is a consumer product, the producers of that product determine how and where to promote their wares. If they think T&A is the best strategy then let them go for it. It’s not like T&A hasn’t been used by other beer producers. If more people buy their beer because of how they decided to promote it, then great. If they get negative feedback, and it damages their brand, then I guess they will try a different approach (Garth Brook concert?!?).

I don’t think it has anything to do with Portland cultural or whatnot.

Tim

Originally posted by SamGamgee
It wasn’t a CBC even as far as I know, just held that week. All these criticisms seem to be based on the assumption that all breweries are striving for inclusiveness, which I think is simply not the case in the industry. Plenty of brewers know they can sell all the beer they can make to a niche market segment that doesn’t care about stuff like this. They probably don’t give a shit that anyone who is offended by strip clubs might not buy their beer. Plenty of other breweries out there if it bothers you.