[mild and mostly confused-- educate the west coast kid]
So I’ve been looking into a temporary (1 year) relocation to a certain county in a certain state in that area that’s not quite midwest and not quite deep south. One known for its chicken, horseracing, and bourbon. Bourbon! And yet confusingly, I’ve just learned that most counties in this state are ‘dry’ (including my would-be county, which is apparently considered ‘moist’ since liquor is legal in one town). This whole thing is a concept I just had to do a little research on, being so far out of my experience.
Now, being used to living places like Portland and Seattle, where beer is simply a neutral part of life and has no taint of sin (and spending much of my time abroad in places like Amsterdam, where prohibition of anything is not something that crosses one’s mind), I find this flabbergasting. I mean, how absolutely insane. I am to go to a nice Italian restaurant and drink ‘pop’ or ‘cocola’ or whatever nutty term is used locally? What am I? Nine? Did I accidentally miss my Louisville connection and now I’m in Riyadh? I mean, wow.
Now, am I to understand that not only can I not buy alcohol, but I’m not even supposed to possess it in these counties? Like, I’m not to buy a half-rack in big city X and stick it in my car trunk for consumption in small town Y? Are these laws enforced, or does local law enforcement see it as like one of those 18th-century holdover laws like “No one may walk a duck on a leash on Broadway” or “Women are not permitted to wear trousers”? Should I brew my own, or set up a hooch still just for kicks?
Perhaps it will just take me a couple of days to wrap my head around this one. I mean. . . [head asplodes]
The county I live in is dry. But you can buy beer and liquor inside the city limits of the two largest towns in the county.
Liquor laws can be bizarre.
I grew up in a dry county in Eastern Kentucky. I’m moving back to the state this summer, but to a wet county.
Most of the counties that are dry are very rural, and just don’t have the sort of restaurants where you might order a glass of wine. Where they do exist, they just don’t have it. That’s why a “night out” almost always involves a trip to another town. I don’t know what the story is in Berea; I know there are some decent restaurants there, but I’ve never eaten at any of them.
My understanding is that possession of alcohol for personal consumption is explicitly legal, but it is technically illegal to transport the booze through a dry county. That said, I am absolutely confident that if I filled my trunk up at Liquor Barn in Lexington and drove it to my parents’ house in Beattyville, and I got pulled over for something and told the cop that my trunk was chock full of liquor, he wouldn’t bat an eyelash. It just isn’t an issue.
While I realize that rural Tennessee is about as culturally far away from Martha’s Vineyard as you’re likely to get, I’m betting the laws are pretty much the same. In the dry counties, if you dare to bring liquor into a restaurant, they will have the audacity to charge you a small uncorking fee as they bring you your wine glasses.
What this means in practical terms is that if you want to drink, you gotta go on a packy run. PITA, but not a show-stopper.
Of course, when you bring up the fact that because most folks living in dry counties have to drive at least 1/2 hour to get to a wet county to “go out”, that means they’re probably going to drive back while at least slightly intoxicated, making it a very dangerous policy. Of course, as most of the people who support this for non-commercial reasons are the same type of people who are fighting to keep HPV vaccines off the market so people won’t be more likely to have sex, that’s not really a concern.
True. But the thing is that if you LIVE in a wet county, you probably don’t have as far to drive. Not that that would excuse deciding to drive drunk, but it’s definitely a safety concern.
capybara, Kentucky’s really weird about stuff like that. Hell, my (sort-of) hometown almost tore itself to pieces fighting over going “moist” a couple of years ago.
This very argument comes up every time a county or town comes up for a “wet/dry” vote.
The most effective counter-argument is that when a county does go wet, the liquor stores that open up are generally squalidly glorified trailers with about 100 plastic beer signs and one of those big flashing yellow arrow things out front. The nearest package store to my hometown, in the neighboring and fairly recently wet Wolfe County, is just such a trailer, right across the street from a fairly evangelical church. If more places would put some conditions on their liquor stores to keep them from becoming such eyesores, they’d probably get the votes they need more often.
All this aside, the area where I grew up still has a very Puritanical attitude about alcohol, to the point of considering any and all drinking to be immoral. That doesn’t mean that most of them don’t booze it up regularly, though. It’s just like the old joke about the best thing about Baptist heaven–you can talk to each other in the liquor store.
We must have good zoning laws here- my county (Lincoln county, NC) just stopped being dry maybe 3 years ago or so, and I’ve never seen that at all. All of our liquor stores are ABC stores run by the state, and most wine and beer is just sold in the grocery or convenience stores.
Since you started the thread about Berea, I’m guessing that’s the location you’re referring to? Because while that town is dry, there’s a city very close to it that’s absolutely full of alcohol. Locally, that’s pretty much what it’s known for (party college town). I don’t really understand why anyplace bothers to stay dry when it’s so incredibly easy to get alcohol anyway.
MMmmmmmaybe.
The thing is, we’re accustomed to “going out” to a pub, as in walking two blocks to it on a nice day, not driving 30 miles to a strip club or something and careening home. Or, you know, buying a damn six-pack and watching a DVD, so the driving drunk in a wet county doesn’t really apply. I’m just lamenting the lack of ability to walk downtown to the pleasant nice brewpub with the Clash on the jukebox and the dartboards and chess set and Gardenburger. A life with no local pub is no life at all!
Doctor J-- I like that joke. Yeah, I get the idea that there’s a moral valence connected to drinking in the southeast, and I’m just used to it being neutral, where the big concern at dinner is, “Is it warm enough for white? Wait, this is beef! Oh, who cares. Open the Riesling, anyway.”
Okay, I’ll take the other side on this. Some of us (who drink on regular basis) think that living in a dry county has advantages. For one thing, it slows development way down. Resorts don’t stand a chance of prospering without booze. Having lived in Johnson County, TN for about three years and meeting others “replants” (my own term; highly educated, well off people who like rural, remote areas), there was a common agreement that if the county went “wet”, it would be a negative impact for us. The concern was a loss of community, increased cost of living, crime, and congestion. We only had to look south at Boone, NC to see the results of going wet. Sure, it met we had to drive long distances for booze, but the trade-off was worth it. See if you can leave your door unlocked year round. You can’t do it in Boone.
If that’s the case, it’s pretty safe to say that maybe Berea isn’t for you. In fact, I’d venture to say that 90% of the country isn’t for you. Believe me, I’d kill to live within a couple of blocks of a place like that, but in Berea you’re probably not within a two-hour drive of such a place. The “local pub” is just not a concept that one frequently finds in the South, unfortunately.
That’s the key. Kentucky’s laws are different; the state does not run the liquor stores like they do the ABC stores here in NC. Some places allow beer to be sold in grocery/convenience stores; others don’t. Wine and liquor have to be sold at a liquor store, which are privately owned and have to make most of their money selling booze.
So in KY, in a wet county, any Joe Bob who gets a license can set up a Beer Trailer. I don’t know why they don’t put some conditions on the liquor license; I’m sure they do in some places, but in most they clearly don’t.
I don’t really understand why anyplace bothers to stay dry when it’s so incredibly easy to get alcohol anyway.