Now you’ll be able to say, “Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.”
I know. It is exciting.
The fellow behind me in line at the Superstore (a Loblaws holding) purchased a beer. Fortunately he was behind me, for the clerk had to fetch a supervisor because he was not in the “beer” line.
Yup. Winter is here. Along with the snow came a lot of power outages. I came back into town and am spending the night at my office.
Alright, I never thought I’d see this. I just clipped my wife two fresh rosebuds from our garden. On Dec. 21. In the GTA.
Upon reflection, I should have left them overnight so I could say I did it on the first day of Winter, as the solstice is tomorrow.
I read this initially as holding (drinking) a beer for some reason, and was thinking “Well, duh! Dude’s drinking in line! Of course they’re gonna call the supervisor”.
“Sir, you’ll have to pay for that”
" But it’s empty!"
Beats eating grapes in line by a long shot!
There’s a “beer line”? How does that work?
In other news, I note that Northern Piper has the most posts in this year’s Canadope thread, but Leaffan is not far behind. It will be an interesting race to see who will start 2016’s Canadope thread.
I will /\
No, the honour of starting the annual Canadope thread traditionally goes to the poster who has posted the most in the last year’s Canadadope thread. And even then, us Canadopers are kind of picky; I’d suggest we value quality over quantity; and even if an SDMB member who registered in December 2015 posted enough in the thread in the month of December to qualify, we’d probably allow the second on the list to start it.
But that doesn’t mean that you can’t post enough in 2016 to qualify. You could, and you could become a valuable member of our community. And even though there are ten days left in December, you can still participate, get to know the rest of the Canadopers, and tell us more about yourself as time goes by.
Let’s begin. Your username is Torontonian. I guess that means that you live in Toronto. So did I, for many years. What part of town?
Cabbagetown
Im pleasantly surprised that this forum board is active. I wrongly suspected Reddit replaced forum boards
Cabbagetown! I’ve walked it, and know it well. In addition to walking it, I’ve ridden the Carlton streetcar past it many times, on my way to our weekly jam session near Main and Coxwell. Funny about the Carlton car; it travelled on Carlton Street for about three blocks, but it also travelled on College, Dundas, Parliament, Gerrard, and so on. How it got to be known as the “Carlton car” when it travelled on so many streets is beyond me.
Have I got my Toronto credentials established? 
I think so.
I ve been living all over Toronto in last decade. Never had more fun than living in Kensington!
I lived at Yonge and Eglinton, in parkdale, leaside, on danforth, on queen st west, cabbagetown for now
I lived in the Yonge and Lawrence neighbourhood–only on the west side, so we weren’t like the kids in Lawrence Park, on the east side. But I knew enough of those kids, and as a high-schooler, splashed in their swimming pools after school, and saw (in one case)the original Jackson Pollock hanging on their walls. I got to play a very exclusive golf club–once we were outside the sight of the clubhouse. When we were in view, I was my pal’s (the member’s) caddy. When we were out of view, I borrowed his clubs, and we played golf. I could never have played there as a private player, but Buddy made sure I got to play holes 2 through 8.
But as I said, we lived on the west side of Yonge. We had a nice house, and were comfortable. But it was nothing like Lawrence Park.
There are a dozen or so checkout lines, but not all of the store’s clerks are qualified to sell booze, so a flag is posted at the lines where the clerk can process the beer sale.
The store already has a wine kiosk that does not sell beer. :smack:
“Qualified to sell booze”? Ohhh-kay. Grandma Gundy is still in control.
Here in Alberta, I walk down to the local liquor store (which basically exists on every corner), select my purchases from the shelves, and present my purchase to the clerk. Who, in many cases is just barely 18. The clerk rings it up, and then I present my Interac card, and pay for it. I should add that Alberta liquor stores can be open up to 2:00 a.m. every night of the week, as they choose. The store two blocks away is open until midnight, seven days a week.
Woo-hoo! Ontario lets grocery stores sell six-packs of beer. But only through “beer lines” and dictated times and approved cashiers. There are times I’m glad I left Ontario. This is one of them.
Here in HK you can just go down to the 7-11 and buy what you want there if you can’t get to a grocery store. Most are open 24 hours. I’ve seen a few drunks around at times, but most seem to follow the ‘don’t be a jerk rule’ when it comes to drinking here.
I went on a quest for booze yesterday. I wanted to get a Christmas gift for the older gentleman who provides the office space at which I was attending in Geraldton today.
Being too young for alcohol, I’m not up to speed on the arcane distribution channels, but I had seen a new building labelled LCBO go up across the street from a gas station where I was going to fill up this morning before heading off to a satellite office.
No joss. I arrived in Thunder Bay only to find that the new store did not open until late morning. I guess its patrons must prefer to be sleeping it off in the mornings.
So I continued on my merry sleigh (no reindeer, but it does have studded tires) to the next town down the line (Nipigon), only to learn that its LCBO is closed on Mondays, ‘cause Saturday nights being what they are . . . .
Hmm, I pondered, hmm, hmm, hmm. Hmm. Then it came to me: teh interwebs. Sure enough, the LCBO site set out locations and operating hours, so I checked to see if its store in Geraldton would be open when I arrived. The website kindly informed me that it was closed all day. Shazbot. Fortunately, the website said that it had a store in Beardmore that would be open by the time I passed through that morning, so all was well.
Only not all was well. I arrived in Beardmore only to find the store closed for the day. It stated to look like the old fellow would have to eat cake, for the next town was Geraldton, but no worries, for in Ontario, the further you are from anywhere, the easier it is to find spirits.
That led me to Jellicoe, with a population of about fifty good souls, and a house that sells what you need, which in northern Ontario includes alcohol. Bottle of booze secured, I asked the nice elderly lady if she happened to have a gift bag, so we went to the back of the house and started poking away through some boxes of stuff, and eventually came across a gift bag for the bottle. You see, that is the way it works at these little places in the middle of nowhere. They don’t have much, but they have what you need, and you get to meet and chat with some nice people.
All this fuss about grocery stores moving into selling alcohol makes me chuckle, for in the back of beyond you just go to the house that sells what you need, be it bread or booze. The LCBO does not have such places on their website’s store locator, but they do have a list in case you are curious, or just plain lost in the woods. http://www.doingbusinesswithlcbo.com/sdre/Downloads/AgencyStoreList.pdf
In Ontaio, store clerks are required to check the age of people who might not be at least 19. Also, people selling alcohol here must be 18 or over. Since a lot of grocery stores employ a lot of cashiers who are under 18 (14 is the minimum age), it means the stores have to have a procedure in place to deal with the clerks’ age qualification as well as to ensure that the clerks are up to speed on carding people who might be minors.
I tells ya, it’s a lot easier to not drink.
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!