I remember reading somewhere that fully half of the US population lives in the Eastern Time Zone, and another 20-25% live in Central. This is often used as the explanation for what seem like very east-coast-centric media scheduling practices to those of us on the west coast.
I haven’t independently confirmed it, but looking at what population centers are where gives me no cause to doubt this story.
The Official United States Time:
bizerta, do you have a link where I could actually read that statute? But I did just remember something. If y’all would be directed down to your window clock, please right click on it (for those of you using a mac or unix, you’ll have to trust me).
Go to time zones. You’ll notice an “Indiana” timezone. There ya go. And if only those areas that border a time zone, that’s where those 5 in sync with NY fall in.
Just wanted to point out that there is no Ysleta County in Texas. The part of Texas in the Mountain time zone is El Paso and Hudspeth counties.
Connor -
Here’s a link to the statute concerning daylight savings time.
Connor; Go to the link you provided, thence go to the link a the bottom of that page. 15 USC is probably online in lotsa places.
Time zone boundaries can be a bit fuzzy at times, even those that are supposed to follow state boundaries.For example, Wendover and Jackpot, Nevada keep Mountain Time, because most of their clientele come from those timezones. (These are two small towns consisting mostly of casinos abutting the state line. They are otherwise in the middle of nowhere. From Jackpot, the nearest town is Wells, over 60 empty miles away.)
Let’s say you have a bar straddling two time zones.
Let’s say the laws say you can only sell between 6PM and 3AM.
theoretically, you could sell booze on one the late side of the bar, then when it got 3AM, move the liquor to the other side and keep selling for another hour?
Yup. But very unlikely, as time zone lines tend to be non-populated. But there could always be some tavern in some small town in the middle of nowhere. Its also doubtful that this bar would be open that late, though.
If the time zone line went between Florida and Alabama in the panhandle, this could be done at the Florabama (a wonderful, WONDERFUL place.)
One of our corporate offices is in Phoenix and our managers are forever missing conference calls as they assume AZ is on DST and they get the hours messed up.
They also tend to follow county lines and state lines. A bar straddling a county line or a city limit would have to satisfy two different sets of liquor laws and have two liquor licenses. I doubt that it’s legal to have two liquor licenses for one establishment.
Here’s another article on DST. Note that the writer refers to it as “daylight-saving time.”
Nope, not illegal. As referenced in my previous post, the Florabama in Pensacola is actually ON the state border between Florida and Alabama.
[Chagrined] You are, of course, correct. Ysleta is the name of a school district that serves El Paso. That must have been what I was thinking of. Next time, I’ll check my geography more carefully.
Michigan is no longer in two times zones. A little while ago, they jogged the zone border west and now it runs along the Mich/Wisc border until it’s out in Lake Superior, then it joggs back east before entering Canada.
If I recall, exactly that same thing happened in Texarkana, which straddles the border between Texas and Arkansas (duh!). I can’t remember which was which, but the liquor laws of one state required the bars to close earlier, at which point the patrons literally walked across the street and drank at the bar across the state line.
It’s crazy enough that states are divided in half, but why do you suppose a state such as Oregon, which is on Pacific Time, is in a situation where Mountain Time bulges into the state?
You just bumped a ten year old discussion where the answer is actually in the thread.
One (maybe only) reason to enjoy living in Phoenix - no DST.
Whenever my mom and I travel to Laughlin and visit with my uncle and aunt in Bullhead City during standard time, we always clarify “my time or your time”
Newfoundland sets it’s clocks back at 00:01 (rather than 02:00) so that the time during the “fall back” goes something like:
23:59, 00:00, 23:01 (the previous day)
One has to be 19 to buy alcohol. So if you turn 19 on the day of the switch, you are ok to buy alcohol for the one minute between 00:00 and 00:01, but then would have to wait 59 minutes before you are legal again.
No idea if this is actually enforced.