Pabst Blue Ribbon returning to L.A.

The company that makes Pabst Blue Ribbon beer is moving its headquarters from the Chicago area to Los Angeles this summer. There won't be any beer produced here — Miller Brewing handles all that now for Pabst — but PBR did used to be made in Los Angeles where The Brewery art complex is now on North Main Street. There is plenty of beer brewed in Los Angeles, of course, at the Anheuser-Busch plant in Van Nuys. A few years ago it was the largest water user in the city, though I don't know if that's still true. Regarding Pabst, "the company, purchased last year for about $250 million by billionaire investor C. Dean Metropoulos, declined to comment about the reasons behind the move or how many local jobs it might create," the L.A. Times reports. "Pabst spokesman Mark Semer said that Metropoulos' two sons, Daren and Evan, both live in Los Angeles and run the company with their father, who lives in Greenwich, Conn."

I'm not sure how many breweries L.A. used to have, but there have been several. The former Pabst brewery also did business for awhile as the Los Angeles Brewery and had been known as Eastside Brewing. Maier Brewing's Brew 102 was a visual landmark in Downtown for decades. The Metropoulos family bought Pabst from a foundation set up by the former owner of Maier and Brew 102. There also was a Schlitz brewery in Van Nuys for many years, and there is a Miller plant in Irwinwdale.