It’s hard to write this–and it shouldn’t be, because Joe Jost’s is the only place I ever drink Pabst Blue Ribbon–but after a price dispute with the distributor, Long Beach’s oldest bar by default has poured its last Pabst.

The new brew, as the Press-Telegram’s Tim Grobaty writes today, is something called Busch–which, like Lucky Lager, Mickey’s Big Mouth and Miller Lite, I’m aware of. I’m aware it’s beer. I’d just rather have a Pabst.

Perhaps that’s just because, as Grobaty points out, they’ve been pouring Milwaukee’s finest there since 1976, when I was six. It’s practically part of the decor now, along with the Special sandwich, Marmion’s peanuts, the pretzel sticks–and of course the pickled eggs.

I never drink PBR anywhere else–mainly because Joe’s had the coldest, crispest pour in town, but also because, c’mon! It’s PBR! It ain’t Stella or Hef. At Joe’s, it was part of the ambiance–joining the stuffed deer head, the beer-can airplane, the impressive collection of vintage girlie calendars in the back.

It says a lot about Joe’s that you can even get some of that atmosphere from the bar’s website, which has an impressive collection of articles written about itself: some from the P-T’s George Robeson and Bob Wells, plus one from the Herald-Examiner’s Merrill Schindler.

Dating to 1967 and perhaps earlier (a couple are undated), their words are an incredible example of the droll, dry way newspapers used to be funny. The best of them mention the place, the dames–they even mention Joe Jost, the man hisself–but besides ceaselessly pricing it, they don’t dwell on the beer. (Except one example, which determines a loaded schooner weighs about four pounds.)

Example? “High Society at Jost’s,” from “Bob Well’s Nightcap,” a clubby column by Wells, in the Feb. 2, 1967 P-T.

Sample: “Mr. Wells had hoped to wear a gold lame turtleneck sweater, but it had not arrived from the fitter. He made do with a dark suit in plaster-dust finsh, an Eleanor blue shirt, black and rose tie and oxford grey shoes.

Mr. Jost, the genial host, wore a lose [sic] fitting blue shirt and cotton pants cunningly bagged at the knees.” Yikes–a vintage typo!

There was even a wow finish–back when that term was presumably “patent pending”: “Mr. Jost was in a jovial mood. He greeted Mr. Wells by saying, ‘I never thought to see the day you’d bring a bunch of skirts into here.’

Mr. Wells explained that his guests were not ’skirts’ but journalists and society leaders. Mr. Jost agreed that this was so, and said he had not had such a distinguished company in his saloon since the last televised heavyweight championship fight.”

Ah, 1967–like one long episode of “Mad Men.”