“Reno As Fuck”

The comparison “X as fuck,” as Jesse Sheidlower tells us in  The F Word (soon to be updated!), has appeared in print since at least 1978. [UPDATE: 1970! See Jesse’s comment, below.] By 2010 or so, the abbreviation “AF”—as in “elegant as fuck”—had begun cropping up in public settings, especially Twitter. When I first wrote about it in 2015, AF was still pretty much under the radar commercially, relegated to Etsy jewelers and festival T-shirts, but over the next few years it began going mainstream. In my most recent post on the subject, from July 2019, I noted that a product called Down There Wipes was being sold at Target with the prominently displayed slogan “FRESH AF.”

AF was one thing. Surely, though (I said to myself), the spelled-out “As Fuck” would never appear on supermarket shelves.

Well, I was wrong as fuck.

“Rena As Fuck” in the wild (Berkeley Bowl Marketplace, Berkeley, California, March 2023)

Reno As Fuck is a “New England style haze double India Pale Ale” made by Revision Brewing Company in Sparks, Nevada. I spotted it last week out in front in the beer cooler at a family-owned grocery store in Berkeley.

Here’s how the website describes Reno As Fuck:

EMBRACING THE NO-HOLDS-BARRED, PURE, DIRTY, CLEAN, CRASS CULTURE OF THE GREATEST PLACE IN THE WORLD, THIS BEER IS A REFLECTION OF THE CITY IT WAS BORN IN. IT’S REAL, DOWN-TO-EARTH AND UNFILTERED. YOU DON’T BUY THIS BEER,
YOU EARN THIS BEER. THIS BEER IS RENO AS FUCK.

At a hefty 8.4% alcohol by volume, you might also call it Reno-Ass Fucked Up.

Here’s an indicator of where we are in 2023, as-fuck-wise: Revision filed for trademark protection of Reno As Fuck in February 2019. Registration was finalized on December 23, 2019. Merry Christmas!

Another Revision brew, Vegas As Fuck, was not in evidence at Berkeley Bowl Marketplace. But it is available somewhere, and as of April 28, 2021, that name is also a registered trademark. 

My search for those trademarks turned up other As Fuck registrations unrelated to Revision Brewing Company: Memphis As Fuck (candles), Festive As Fuck (also candles, but from a different company), Drunk As Fuck (toys and sporting goods), Caffeinated As Fuck (coffee), Vermont As Fuck (glassware, bumper stickers), Clean As Fuck (advertising, marketing, and promotion services), Namaste As Fuck (yoga retreats), and many more. See for yourself.

Still pending at the US Patent and Trademark Office: Revision’s trademark registrations for Phoenix As Fuck and Miami As Fuck. And, who knows, maybe your hometown as well: after half an hour spent trawling Trademarkia all those As Fuck marks began to blur together.

Clearly we have crossed some sort of fucking line, and the USPTO just doesn’t GAF anymore about what used to be called immoral and scandalous marks. We are awash in AS FUCK brands. Need a new brand name? Forget artificial intelligence; just add AS FUCK to any old noun, adjective, or Sanskrit greeting. 

I leave it to my worthy Strong Language colleague, the trademark lawyer Anne Gilson LaLonde, to figure out just WTF it all means.