Shiner Beer Now Legal in New York City.

When Shiner Bock rolled into Austin in the 1970s, the counterculture fell in love with it. At the time, it was not a premium beer, and was cheaper than Bud and Miller. It was also not the pale fizzy lager their parents drank. Shiner Bock became a staple around the University of Texas campus. As UT graduates spread out across the country, they found they missed good old Shiner Bock and began asking retailers to carry it, and slowly, Shiner spread across the country.

I confess, I too fell in love with Shiner Bock while at UT. Afterwards, before the days of the craft beer boom, I was guaranteed to get a strange look from co-workers when we went out for drinks. "What the Hell is that?" they would ask. But I digress.

For years, UT grads in New York lived in a tortured Hell where only a couple of bars sold Shiner Bock and they were doing it slightly illegally. They would go to other, near by states that had Shiner distributors, and buy it from them. Rub BBQ, and Rodeo Bar were among the first to sell Shiner in New York City, and found themselves hosting "Texpats" and TexasExes (the UT alumi association) meetings.

Now, Shiner is distributed in New York, and seems to be taking New York City by storm, selling 100,000 cases the first year.

"The beer that originated in the one-stoplight, 2,000-person town of Shiner is now available in countless delis and restaurants across the five boroughs (with its 12,500 stoplights and more than eight million people)," writes Adam Chandler.