Hooray for Beer/Thank God for Wine

This advertising juxtaposition at the corner of Rivington and Essex is quite interesting, culturally. It basically represents a clash of the Old Lower East Side and the New Lower East Side.

At the bottom, you have an aged painted ad for Schapiro's Kosher Wine, an old concern which until recently had a small plant on Rivington, providing sweet ritual wine to the observant Jews that once lived in the area. The Red Stripe ad, meanwhile, is cloth and relatively new, the "Hooray Beer" campaign being of this decade. Schapiro was/is all about service to Kosher laws. Red Stripe is all about having fun. Schapiro never cared about image, only that it was trusted by its consumer base. Red Stripe's ad is about as self-consciously hip as you can get, perfectly catering toward the demographic who will drink something based on an appreciably ironic tag line.

I doubt the Schapiro people have ever heard of irony.