Tecate

AFFORDABILITY: Tecate 12-packs used to be like $10 apiece, but recently I guess Food Lion started getting coyotes to sneak in shipments of Tecate along with the seven thousand Mexicans wandering their grocery store aisles on a Sunday afternoon in every small southern town from Virginia to Oklahoma, because it’s down to like $8 a 12-pack, which isn’t Old Milwaukee cheap, but puts it a rung below Budweiser and Coors, but not quite as self-disturbing to actually buy. 4 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: All cheap beer gets you drunk, so it’s the actual taste allowing you to slam it faster that actually gets you drunk that matters. I do not at all mind the taste of Tecate. One night, I was at the hipster burrito joint that kicked my wife out for breastfeeding, and the bar dude put a slice of lime in the can of Tecate, so sometimes when I’m feeling extra gay, I do that shit too, pretending it’s a real Mexican beer deserving of special treatment. 4 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: Proud indio label, but modernized, so there’s a robotic eagle of some sorts and the font is all Mexicali looking but popped sideways like it should be on a race car. The 12-pack boxes are where it’s at though, because the one I bought today has all the logos from what I’m assuming is Mexico’s primero liga de futbol. Also, in probably the greatest piece of cheap beer packaging awesomeness going today, the bar code is shaped like the eagle on the can. 5 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: Imported by some fake named company from White Plains, New York, which is the same place I think all massly found foreign beer shit like Beck’s and Corona and all is imported from. So it’s some sort of shady shit. Still, it’s not outright Adolph Anheuser. 3 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: From the aforementioned encounter with Tecate at the hipster burrito joint, and previous sightings in other places, it is painfully obvious that Tecate is like Super PBR. PBR as a stupid hipster beer has become so prevalent that even pseudo-hipsters at fag colleges that don’t even have arts programs or music clubs drink PBR. So for the hardcore ironic hipster, who doesn’t want to be associated with second-rate hipsters, Tecate is a nice alternative to PBR to separate yourself from the riff-raff of black-rimmed glasses and Modest Mouse or Drive-by Truckers appreciation (that musical reference is dated a few years, because I think both of them are major label now, meaning hipster doofuses are into something newer and more obscure – which insinuates regular society doesn’t understand it – and I’m out of the loop on that one; I don’t frequent hipster dives so much anymore, mostly because I usually end up wanting to fight people but no one will fight so I go piss in the manager’s office or some stupid passive aggressive shit like that). Combine the drinking of Tecate with the ironic unexpected wearing of a lucha libre mask and you have hipster band practice in the bassist’s basement euphoria. 2 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 3 & 3/5 STARS!