One afternoon I happened onto a few picnic tables of people enjoying some oysters and chowder at Brighton Beach. I thought it was odd seeing one man feeding oysters to another man so I snuck in this picture. This was back in the days when Budweiser had come up with a peal off tab and nobody had to keep a can opener with them. You could just peal back the tab. SEE an article on the subject.
The problem back in those days was that the tab came completely off and people would just throw them anywhere without thought and if you were walking around on the beach at that time you might cut your foot on one of them or, just as likely, on piece of broken Coke bottle glass. They didn’t have plastic bottles back in those days but then we know what happened once plastic entered the picture but it did solve the broken glass on the beach problem at the time.
All those beer tabs became a problem and the more environmentally conscious people or at least the ones that had cut their feet on a beer tab, started putting the tabs inside of the can when they opened them but then, some people, when they had a few too many, started choking on the tabs so you had to be really careful about that part. The soft drink and brewing industries didn’t come up with the modern tab (that just folds in) until 1975. You have got to wonder how many billions of detached can tabs are out there just under the surface all over the world.
But I am still wondering why that one guy was feeding the other guy. Oyster eating seems like kind of a personal eating experience if you ask me.