Crazy liquor laws in your neck of the woods

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@indecisive1

Thanks qwest sounds like many Inuit people are living a pretty grim life.

Similar situations exist in Alaska, too, and some areas are dry. I think Barrow used to be “bone dry”, meaning you could be fined for mere possession, but I believe that law has been changed a bit. The town website now has a link to apply for an importation permit, for personal use.

I don’t have much to report in the way of weird laws. Things were a lot looser in California when I was in college, and liquor stores routinely sold to underage students. While stricter nowadays with those who damask cheeks betray the possibility of being less than 21, they’re not ridiculous. Older looking people do not get carded.

I do live near a VA facility, and there are state and federal laws prohibiting “saloons” near a VA site, although restaurants can and do serve alcohol. I believe these laws carry the exception clause allowing licensed pharmacists regularly doing business to provide alcohol on prescription.

[Sublight]

The vending machines out on the streets selling beer and whiskey are required to automatically shut down from 11pm to 6am. Insane!

[alphaboi867]

@Spectre of Pithecanthropus

…I do live near a VA facility, and there are state and federal laws prohibiting “saloons” near a VA site, although restaurants can and do serve alcohol. I believe these laws carry the exception clause allowing licensed pharmacists regularly doing business to provide alcohol on prescription.

How could the federal government restrict bars from operating near VA sites? Zoning laws are a state matter (unless it’s like NMDA). And do pharmacist even still dispense medicinal alcohol?

[StuffLikeThatThere]

@Eva Luna

The funniest was when I was in grad school in Bloomington, Indiana, though.

Shortly after I moved to Indiana, I went grocery shopping on a Sunday, and in happy ignorance added a bottle of wine to my cart. The clerk freaked out and actually yelled at me. “No alcohol on Sundays!” Yeesh.

It’s still a mystery to me why the aisle wasn’t marked in some way. In Ohio, you can’t buy alcohol until 1:00 (or something) on Sundays, but if you go to the grocery store, the alcoholic beverage aisle is taped off. It’s quite clear, which saves the cashiers from having to scream at the customers.

[Troy_McClure_SF]

I vow to never again bitch about having to go home at 2.

Funny story… I was in Oakland a few years ago at around 1:45am. Me and some friends wanted to hit up the Safeway and get some beer for home. We got in, but the place was packed with both boozehounds and regular shoppers. The clerks actually seperated us all out into alcohol-buyers and non-alcohol-buyers. The drunks got their own express lane!

[Bridget_Burke]

@Tully Mars

I thought Texas has this more screwed up than anywhere else, but reading some of these posts has changed my mind.

Here’s how this works in Texas:

The issue of wet/dry can be decided at the voting precinct level. In the past, that usually (not always, e.g. Cuney, TX) meant at the county level in rural areas. One side affect of this was the “highways of death” on the mjor routes from the dry to the wet counties.

In the cities, the result was a patchwork. You can have, in the same city, the following combinations:

1. Totally dry precinct,
2. Beer, but not liquor or wine,
3. Beer and wine, but not liquor,
4. Beer, wine, and liquor.

This leads to some weird geographical situations.

Statewide, liquor sales must stop at 9:00 PM but beer and wine can be sold until midnight. This means, that in totally wet areas, the stand-alone liquor stores must be partioned into two stores where the liquor side of the store can be closed at 9:00.

In dry areas, some restaurants declare themselves private clubs and sell memberships for $1.

The times, they are a changin, though. At least in the cities. The big retailers are tired of missing out on the sales, especially of wine. The have been some cases where they’ve refused to build in certain municipalities or have moved (e.g. North Richland Hills) because they couldn’t sell wine. In others, they have petitioned to get on the ballot and got ordinances changed (Bedford, Wautaga). The cities are finding out that the extra sales tax revenue is a good thing.

There is currently a case in Dallas where someone is petitioning to get the issue on the ballot in a Justice of the Peace district, which will override/conflict with some of the city and county ordinances. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. Dallas is a good example of the patchwork I mentioned before. All of the liquor stores (and the strip joints) are concentrated in a few neighborhoods.

I’ve explained to outsiders that this patchwork concept serves a larger purpose and consequently, it will be hard to change. The patchwork allows the good, God-fearing folks to go to church on Sunday morning and say with a straight face, “We don’t allow that evil liquor or lacivious dancing anywhere near our homes and schools.” But, it’s still within driving distance when Friday night rolls around.

The patchwork you describe bemuses this Houstonian on visits to the Metroplex. A relative bought a house in the Fort Worth area before she realized that she could NOT buy a 6-pack anywhere nearby.

Near Dallas, a Muslim running a convenience store informed us somewhat smugly that beer was NOT available. (Although I doubt that the Teetotalers who started that community intended it to be especially welcoming to observant Muslims!)

Apparently the communities conquered by Houston’s urban sprawl didn’t bother with incorporation, so things are more uniform down here. Or more relaxed–the Pakistani who owns the local liquor store does not drink, but he was happily ringing up sales on Saturday–& wishing us all a “Merry Christmas!”

That liquor store does well because it’s near the boundary between Houston & the Heights. A rarity down here–the Heights is dry. It was annexed to Houston in 1919–with the agreement that beer/wine/liquor could not be sold. The rule still stands, although at least one restaurant has a somewhat dicey “private club” policy. And a couple of places are BYOB. The law that kept out the beer joints is now working against fine restaurants, now that the neighborhood is changing.

Of course, until a few years ago, Texas State Law allowed open containers in cars, including in the hand of the driver!

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@alphaboi867

How could the federal government restrict bars from operating near VA sites? Zoning laws are a state matter (unless it’s like NMDA). And do pharmacist even still dispense medicinal alcohol?

Maybe it is a state law or local ordinance at that. The VA came to West L.A. in the 1880s, really well before there was such a thing as West L.A. at all. During the early decades, when a lot more veterans actually lived there, there seem to have been vice-related issues like public drunkenness and unscrupulous gamblers and liquor dealers who would fleece the vets of their meager pensions.

I asked about liquor by prescription here. Apparently there are or were a few pharmacies in Boston that sell medicinal booze that way, catering mainly to proper old Boston ladies who were too embarrassed to buy it from a liquor or grocery store, so their doctors gave them prescriptions for it. I doubt if the linked Boston Globe story is still accessible, however.

[SSG_Schwartz]

In the Army community, we have “Class VI Stores.” They are basically convenience stores that are run on post. If the Class VI sells alcohol (and most do) you can buy whatever they sell whenever the store is open. There is a 24hour Class VI on post that from midnight to about 4 am every Saturday night, the lines can take 45mins to purchase that bottle, but it is the only place left where it can be bought.

SGT Schwartz

[Shoeless]

Things in Kansas are still pretty screwy, though not nearly to the degree that they used to be. My favorite story is about the legendary hard-assed Attorney General Vern Miller back in the 70’s, who wanted to make it illegal to serve alcohol on a plane flying over the state. Back when I came here to go to school in the early 80’s, the drinking age was 18 for 3.2 beer and 21 for liquor. Beer was sold in taverns and liquor was sold in private clubs. You had to be a member of a club in order to enter and get a drink, although many clubs had reciprocal memberships so if you had a membership to one, you had several options as to where you could drink. Hotel bars were basically private clubs where the guests could go get a drink.

True story – when I was in high school and my dad and I drove out here to check out some colleges, we spent the night in a hotel in Topeka. We went to the hotel restaurant to have dinner and my dad wanted to have a drink with dinner. He was told that if he wanted a drink with dinner, he would have to go into the club. Of course, I couldn’t go in with him because I wasn’t 21, so I would have had to stay in the restaurant. Luckily I was more important than the drink.

Like I said, things are better now. It’s 21 for everything, and private clubs are a thing of the past. I think it is still up to the county to decide if they are dry or not, but I think there are only a handful of dry counties left. Just in the last year or two they finally decided to open the liquor stores on Sundays. But you still run into some weird things like you can only get 3.2 beer at the grocery store, and I don’t think grocery stores are allowed to sell beer on Sundays.