Reviving Prohibitchin'.

The bitch is back.

Prohibitchin’ originally started as a monthly column in West Coaster Magazine, San Diego’s only publication solely dedicated to covering the local craft beer industry. My goal was to share stories from people* working in and around San Diego craft beer who have been historically overlooked by other publications, whether it be because of their gender, racial identity, sexual orientation, or simply because their role wasn’t considered newsworthy. After all, why interview a keg washer when you can talk to the brewer?

Because keg washers are people too!! And because prestige positions aren’t the only positions keeping the beer industry going. Not by a long shot.

For about two years, Prohibitchin’ was — and I’m pretty sure still is — the only dedicated channel for diverse stories in #sdbeer. But media is tenuous at the best of times, and when COVID-19 finally descended on San Diego, West Coaster’s already shaky grip on operational solubility crumbled under the pandemic pressure and Prohibitchin’ along with it. (No shade to WC; I’m eternally grateful to the guys over there who gave me the chance to launch and build this concept.)

But as 2020 has shown us through events like the murder of George Floyd, the resulting social justice protests and demands for accountability from authorities, inequity in healthcare, conversations around equity and justice are no longer controversial topics, but necessary for the mainstream to continuously discuss to both normalize these topics and continue building a better beer industry.

So the bitch is back. Starting in January, you can expect a new interview every month with different people from all corners of the craft beer industry. (It’ll probably be fairly San Diego-specific in the beginning, but I always love getting nominations about people anywhere in the world.) I’m definitely going to try to implement some podcast material as well, but hey, one thing at a time, right?

Why aren’t I doing this in another magazine? To be quite honest, no one took me up on it (and Prohibitchin’ is just too good of a name to give up). Eventually, I’ll figure out how to get y’all to pay me a teensy little bit for this. But for now, it is what it is.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for sticking with me. Please sign up for updates, tell your friends, and if someone pops to your mind who makes you think, “That person is awesome, and no one knows about them!” — send me an email with your nomination(s). Even if I pretend like I do, I don’t actually know every single person in craft beer.

Happy end of 2020. See you soon.

*There are some legal (and frankly, moral) issues with the absolute wholesale exclusion of one specific group of people in any situation, so let’s just say I focus my work very very strongly towards a goal of gender and racial equity by elevating voices outside the current craft beer demographic majority of cisgender, heterosexual, white men.