In RI and neighboring MA all alcohol is sold at privately owned (as opposed to state owned) liquor stores. Until VERY recently you could not buy it on Sunday, except during the week or so before Christmas when the authorities looked the other way. When I lived in NY, you could buy beer wherever you could buy soda, but I think you had to wait till noon on Sundays. In ME where my parents live you can buy wine and beer in the grocery store, but there’s a separate section for it.
This is a problem in my state, because New South Wales is kinda Texas-sized. This means that a developer will go to a small village in a remote rural area, approach the owner of the struggling local pub ,and wave fistfuls of dollars under his nose. He buys the liquor licence, and transfers it to the Sydney metropolitan area, and the bush pub closes its doors. The result of all this is that it’s helping to kill many small rural communities, since the pub is usually the social hub of those tiny places, and Sydney gets yet more unneeded wine bars for yuppies. As I recall, in the old days the licences were distrubuted according to much smaller, local areas, but now they’re valid statewide. I don’t know what they were thinking when they changed it.
About four years ago in a small town where I used to live, Sunday was a dry day. No alcohol was allowed to be sold, not at resteraunts or liqour stores.
And about being carded at all ages, I read an article about this guy who got carded. He was about 50. The guy who carded him said they had to do it because a senior citizen didn’t get carded and the he sued for age discrimination and won. So now they ahve to everytime.
Wow. I’m glad I live in Illinois, where I can just buy my alcohol at the grocery store or the drugstore. Although there is a liquor store just down the street, but I’ve never been in it, because I just pick mine up when I’m grocery shopping.
No, that’s about it. Oh, and stores can start selling at 8 am, but bars can open at 6. I think.
The 3.2% is a hangover from when 18-year-olds could still drink. If you were 18 to 20, you could only buy 3.2% beer; no wine or liquor even if it was below that.
Well, I would ask pardon for my ignorance; but in the immortal words of Sam the guru (spoken to one Judson Daniel Elliott III), “ignorance can’t be pardoned, only cured.” Consider mine medicated, at least.
Actually, in MA where there was just a referrendum that failed due to a city police chief basically lying television commericals about selling wine in grocery stores. During the campaign, the point was brought up that grocery stores are actually more likely to card for buying tobacco than liquor stores. My mom still gets carded in the grocery stores, I, at 21 have been in liquor stores and not been carded. I think it’s all stupid, but I spent a year in California, where you can by Jack Daniel’s at the gas station.
Concerning the first paragraph above, a 19 year old can serve alcohol in an establishment that makes most of its gross sales from food.
Concerning the second, I’ve ordered pitchers from the table at several places here in NM. Are they breaking the law? Am I?
Living in Nevada, and turing 21 after moving here, I have a warped sense of liquor laws. 24/7 whatever you want…
I am originally from Nebraska, where from what I remember:
[ul]You could buy beer and wine in the grocery store, but there was a separate section for liquor.[/ul]
[ul]No Alcohol sales in stores after 1 A.M.[/ul]
[ul]Bars close at 1 A.M. but all the surrounding states close ar 2 A.M.[/ul]
[ul]No alcohol sold on Sunday before noon, then after 12 noon- only beer, wine and champagne, no liquor.[/ul]
[ul]I don’t recall seeing beer/liquor in the gas stations, but I’m guessing a no on that.[/ul]
Mr. Geek is from Kansas and I guess they had wierder “blue” laws than Nebraska according to him.
I did some of my geologic field work (for 3 weeks) in NW Utah right near the Idaho border. I knew better so I brought my own alcohol (case of beer, bottle of vodka). Some of my classmates ended up paying $15+ for 12-packs of 3.2 BudLight from the mom and pop mart in the very small and only town we were near.
I was however looking forward to buying another bottle of vodka ( I was running low and didn’t want to run out) when we went up to Twin Falls/ Burley ID for supplies. You could only buy liquor in a state liquor store. None were open whilst we were there.
Now, now Paul…I had several friends who worked in Saudi Arabia and they all told me stories how easy it really is to get alcoholic drinks if you are not a Saudi…granted, you didn’t exactly go walking through a mall will with a Miller Lite in your hand, but they all told some interesting stories.
And as LVGeogeek mentions, here in Las Vegas you can buy, drink and party 24/7…but I will grant you one similarity…at some bars here you can get 40 lashes, but you have to pay extra.
I have never bought booze in Oregon, but I can tell you that Washington prices are about 20% higher than California’s.
As far as selection goes, I assume you have never been to a BevMo. Easily 4 times the size of a Washington state package store.
Oddly people do walk through the malls here with a beer in their hand. No-alcholic, but in a can that looks just like the real thing. It makes you look.
Been awhile since I have been there, but I seem to remember being told that you can buy a drink through the drive through, but they can’t put the straw in it because that makes it an open container.
Maybe we have a LA doper who can better answer the question?
I regularly bought my booze in Ca. when I was still on the road. A 1.75 liter of bourbon, at Costco, was under $12.00. At the Wa. state store the same brand went for over $22. I now buy it at the PX on a local Coast Guard Station, for a bit over $15., I think the Wa. price went up about a buck, the last time I checked.
Back in 1970 I tended bar at a couple of juke joints near Coos Bay. The law then required that liquor bottles had to be broken as soon as they were emptied. Some places had a short metal peg above a trash can so you could break the neck, others had a metal rod to break out the bottom of the bottle by sliding it through the neck and striking the bottom. They finally changed this, I suspect because of injuries. The owner of one place I worked at used to cheat on this. He would save the bottles and drive his statiion wagon to Ca. to buy booze. He then poured it into the saved bottles, which had the Or. tax stamp. I wasn’t supposed to know this, but it didn’t take a genius to figure it out.
A couple years later I was in Ms. All the bars had go-go cups (plastic glasses), if you wanted to take your drink w/ you all you had to do was ask for a go-go cup. At last call they would just pour the drinks into plastic cups and many people would order 2-3 drinks at last call. Lots of people who got stopped by the cops, if they weren’t too drunk and didn’t mouth off, were allowed to call someone to come pick them up, or drive their car home.
Going from Nevada to extremely rural Wisconsin was a culture shock in a lot of ways. One of them was definitely the differences in liquor laws. They’re fairly liberal in Nevada, so long as nobody under twenty-one is handling said liquor, but here they get a bit odd.
Right now, I’m living in the county seat, which has about 2,100 people in it. I can buy alcohol and have the sixteen year old cashier ring it up for me at the grocery store. My mother could take my teenaged brother into a bar and buy him a drink. But, a restaurant that serves hard liquor has to have a separate entrance for the bar and you can’t, apparently, get your liquor at your table. Also, bars are required to close by 2AM and cannot operate on Sundays.
While our liquor laws aren’t as bad as some states, they still suck, IMO.
Beer and wine can be bought anywhere (liquor store, gas station, etc…)
Liqour only at liquor stores, but they can also sell wine and beer.
No alcohol AT ALL sold after midnight monday-saturday, and not after 10 PM on Sundays (most grocery stores have a cage or gate to put around the booze to people don’t even attempt to buy it after hours.) I don’t know what time it “resets” in the morning, but I think it’s 6 AM. Bars can sell booze till 2 AM all days of the week.
I don’t know all of the details about Indiana’s laws, but you can’t buy any alcohol in any store on a Sunday, election day, or Christmas Day. There are also laws about liquor stores (they sell beer, wine, and liquor) not being able to sell milk, juice, or soda. Big grocery stores often have a wine and beer selection, but not many have hard stuff.
The “no liquor on Sunday” rule always pisses off thousands of people in town for the Indy 500, Brickyard 400, and US Grand Prix. You can bring your own booze into the track, but when you’re out, you’re out.
Columbus, Georgia, here - what the rules are here may not be the same as the rest of the state. Grocery stores can sell beer or wine, but not liquor. Liquor stores are not state-run, and also sell beer and wine. No retail alcohol sales at all on Sunday. Resturants can sell drinks, beer, etc. on Sunday only if more than 50% of their gross sales are of food.
And I am of the opinion if the legal drinking age is going to continue to be 21, there should be an exception for members of the armed forces. It really pisses me off that soldiers are considered old enough to die for our country, but not old enough to drink in it.
In Indiana you can’t sell soda in a liquor store* but you can have a bank of several soda machines right ouside the door. Seems dumb to me.
*I worked in an Indiana liquor store years ago and it seems like we sold warm soda but not cold. It was a long time ago, I may be mistaken. We sold ice inside too.