Someone asked a question concerning “Blue Laws” in GQ. It started me wondering about odd, or irrelavent laws around the country.
Tell me about blue &/or odd laws, past and present in your state.
I’ll start. Washington repealed most, if not all, in the late '60s.
Women couldn’t sit at the bar in a cocktail lounge or tavern. (I’m assuming those terms mean the same everywhere, but I could be wrong. A cocktail lounge serves hard liquor, a tavern serves only beer and wine.)
Women had to have escorts in cocktail lounges, but could go to the tavern alone.
One wasn’t allowed to walk around with a drink. A server had to carry it for you. I think this is still the case in British Columbia.
No alcohol was sold on Sundays, nor was fresh meat. Meat wasn’t sold after 6 pm any day.
To buy liquor, one carried a “Liquor Control Card.” It had the your birthday, the year you turned 21, and your picture, long before WA drivers’ licences had pictures. I still have mine somewhere. It was a rite of passage to go to the liquor board when you turned 21.
Not exactly a blue law, but one repealed around the same time, was that when operating a motor vehicle after dark, a second person was required to walk ten feet ahead with a lantern. Obviously, this wasn’t enforced in the '60s
I think the meat prohibition was probably due more to a union agreement than a blue law. At one time, the butcher’s union required a certified butcher to be on hand at all times when meat was sold. Since butchers could work faster than the product sold, they could prepare a batch in advance and go home, but the union didn’t like that.
When more meat products became processed in larger, regional locations, some stores had even less need for a butcher, so eventually this was changed. At least in all places I know of.
You’re not saying my state goverment might have given favor to special interests!? :eek:
You’re probably right, the liquor card was a simple revenue generator. My uncle was on the liquor board for years. He was the biggest drunk at the party.
In Colorado, car dealerships must be closed on Sunday. It works out though; employees like having an assured day off, and customers enjoy being able to browse the cars without being hounded.
Oh, and liquor stores are closed too. You can buy 3.2 beer in the grocery. That one’s a little tougher.
As I recall what I heard and observed since moving to Maryland 21 years ago, we had Blue Laws (to protect the Lord’s Day) that prohibited many kinds of stores from operating on Sundays, and then some larger chains brazenly started violating these without meeting much resistance. But for a few years the laws allowed them to open and sell things, however prohibiting the workers in the stores from providing any assistance. So they could sell you a garden hose but weren’t allowed to help you find them. I met with this obstacle a couple times. However, nowadays I find stores behave the same ways when they are open Sundays as at any other time they are open, and though I don’t know I assume their different hours on different weekdays represent social custom and business considerations only, not legal issues.
Though wine, beer and spirits may work differently - I don’t drink and am less aware of this.
IIRC, at one time, California didn’t allow women to tend bar unless they were owners of the establishment. Obviously prompted by a concern for their morals. :rolleyes:
At the same time, other states had female bartenders in good-looking costumes drawing customers to the bars. Talk about your reverse concepts.
IIRC, a woman could sit at the bar in a cocktail lounge, but not in a tavern (I distinctly remember a tavern I passed daily on the bus, which had a big “Booths for Ladies” sign in the window). Inference: a woman at the bar in a cocktail lounge was a “lady,” but a woman at the bar in a tavern was not.
My two favorites: a tavern’s interior had to be visible from the street, and the door to the cocktail lounge had to be x feet from the main entrance (Washington does not have standalone cocktail lounges—they must be part of a food establishment).
Minor point – I think the meat prohibition, at least in the states I frequented, wasn’t a law. The unions just said, “If you sell meat, you gotta have a butcher on duty.” So if the stores couldn’t justify paying his wages after X PM, under the union agreement, they had to stop selling meat at that time.
Of course, the effect was the same as a law.
RE: Liquor ID cards
At one time, driver’s licenses were not very reliable IDs. Missouri had one that was just a computer printout on card stock, no picture, no security. It was incredibly easy to modify, which I did to make myself 2 years older (ah, youth!). But to make life easier for bartenders & liquor store clerks, who had to learn to recognize different DLs from different states if they were in a border area, Missouri began to issue a highly-secure picture card on request. This was the only one that the clerk was required to accept in case of a question.
This concept backfired when I went to a distant state that was unfamiliar with it. Out of ignorance, a waitress once refused to accept my legitimate, hard-to-fake liquor ID card and insisted on seeing my driver’s license, which I HAD altered years before!
I used to live in a town that had various weird Blue Laws. One I remember was you couldn’t buy things like charcoal and picnic supplies on Sunday. I guess you weren’t supposed to cook out on sunday. You also couldn’t buy magazines, but you could buy books. I guess they would have bannned selling books, but were afraid they would be accused of censorship. Of course, you couldn’t buy beer at all in that town, as it was totally dry.
In PA, cars can’t be sold-new or used, on Sunday. Yes, you could agree to buy the car sitting out on my lawn, but we’d have to wait until Monday when the tag shops are open to effect transfer of the title and other paperwork. IIRC, this grew out of a much older prohibition on the trading/selling of horses on Sunday.
Beer distributors are closed on Sunday. They experimented with state run liquor stores being open on Sunday, but that hasn’t taken off around here. So, you can buy beer and wine coolers from taverns, but they have to meet a certain volume of food sales to be allowed Sunday operation. You can’t carry out more than 192oz. in a single visit from a bar. It has been repealed, but about 20 years ago, all alchohol sales were prohibited on election day until closure of the polls at 8PM. VUI?
Ocean City, NJ used to to have a long list of prohibited stuff. Perhaps a Jersey doper will confirm that to still be true or not.
I’m pretty sure when I turned 21 my husband took me to a cocktail lounge where we sat at the bar and we were told I couldn’t sit there. Women not sitting at the bar was true for both, I’m pretty sure.
It may have been taverns that women couldn’t go into alone. 21 was a loooonnngggg time ago for me
I had forgotten the food thing. That is still tha law I believe. I don’t get out much.
In what passes for my home town (Poplar Bluff, MO), it’s still illegal to shave after sundown. Also, you can’t change a light bulb unless you’re a licensed electrician.
Granted, I don’t know the last time these laws were enforced, but they’re still on the books.
In Ontario (Canada, if I must clarify), it used to be illegal for most stores to open on Sundays. In fact, it wasn’t until a few years ago that beer & liquor stores started to open on Sundays. There was a dry neighbourhood in Toronto, called Swansea, until quite recently, too.
In Manitoba (Canada again for those following along) a few years ago when I was last there, you could not be served more than three drinks by any establishment on a Sunday, nor could you buy a drink without also ordering food. No idea if that’s still the case.
In Saskatchewan (still in Canada!), there are still lots of old pubs (beer only, and attached to a hotel) with separate entrances for ‘Gentlemen’ and ‘Ladies and Escorts’. There used to be a railing to divide the room into the separate areas. You could get ‘off-sales’ of beer, but it couldn’t be chilled. Some restaurants were licensed to sell wine and liquor, but only to be consumed on the premises with a meal.
Wine and liquor were otherwise only available at government liquor stores. Many years ago, you had to fill out a slip for the booze you wanted and wait for an employee to bring it out of the back room for you.
I don’t think that meat on Sunday thing was a state law.
I grew up in north King County. I remember going with my mom to shop in Snohomish County because one could buy meat on Sundays.
Bergan County, NJ is ground zero for the bluest laws. Yes folks, the west end of the GW bridge is home for closed stores on Sundays. Twenty miles away, the wheels of commerce grind 7 days a week, but there is one spot in America where, if the day before Christmas falls on a Sunday, you are SOL to find anything open :eek:
picunurse, I bow to your personal experience. Being male and having turned 21 the year the BLs were repealed, I never underwent this sort of discrimination. I do remember being told about the dichotomy by my parents (my mother found it amusing; my father, who hailed from Montana and had the typical Montanan attitude toward government damnfoolishness, took a somewhat more negative view). So there is this nagging question as to whether you experienced the establishment’s interpretation rather than the law itself.
In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter—not only was it a long time ago, but there was more than enough other silliness to satisfy the most jaded palate.
