When I used to get kegs they didn’t care whether I brought them back or not because they hit me up for a huge deposit, like $50 per. If I brought them back I got it back. They seemed far more interested in covering their own asses to me.
When someone buys more than one keg, I think it’s pretty obvious what’s going on, and the LCB wants to know who’s responsible for it if an underage kid gets drunk.
I’m betting that this keg/form deal is directly portionate to either a: the anal retentiveness of the clerk, or b: they’ve been busted previously and the Intoxicant Gendermes have given Holy whatever.
In Albuquerque, the supermarkets (usually 24 hour) have a gated section where you can buy all the booze your little liver can process. My brother tells me that MADD has really been on Bernalillo County to stop the drive through drink windows.
“Would you like the McWasted Supersize Rum & Coke with your Happy Meal, Sir?” :dubious:
I just remembered when I lived in Levittown, the fellow next door came over with a few of his buddies and asked me to do the buy for them at the beer store. You don’t know where this came from was my response.
Last time I saw the guy’s name in the local paper-he’s now a Chief of Police! 
That is a truly disgusting statement.
The worst thing about the PA State Stores is their piss-poor selection of wines. The Official State Wine Selector must have an asbestos palate. As a direct result, the people I know down in Philly still make runs to Jersey just to buy decent wine.
When I worked as a supermarket cashier in the fine city of Williamsport, PA, I had to tell out-of-staters in town for the Little League World Series that they couldn’t buy beer in our supermarket, and they had to go to one other store for beer, and one other store for wine and spirits. You should have seen the look on their faces. They probably thought our state was run by the Amish.
Pennsylvania has to have really outrageous tax on beer, as well. A case of Labatt Blue that cost me $12.99 in New York costs damn near $20 from a beer distributor here.
Massachusetts has worse alcohol laws, though. Liquor stores there won’t accept out-of-state IDs unless you are over 30. Come on, is it really that hard to get one of those swipey things to validate your license or something?
I live in Minnesota, and I hit the bar at midnight on my 21st birthday. Wisconsin & Michigan don’t care, either.
Oh, she could’ve gotten alcohol from a bar, it’s just that Safeway (or the Quickie Marts or whatever) wouldn’t sell her any until 5:30AM.
Yeah, I remember finding that hilarious because you were and I wasn’t…
I am having a beer at the moment. I turn 21 in 18 days. Fef.
This has little to do with outrageous alcohol laws (though, being the original Puritan state, we do have plenty of blue laws- I’m not familiar with them, but nothing as complicated as PA seems to be happening), and everything to do with MA never trusting any other state to have ever done anything right. When I moved from IA to CO, I handed the CO DMV my IA driver’s license, and for a small fee was given a CO license. In MA, I would have to go through everything I went through to originally get the license (all the paperwork, at least, probably not the testing) and pay a large fee as well. Since I don’t drive here, and my CO license is not expired, I’ve just not done this. When my 17 year old sister had to get a license here, they spent a month verifying with the state of Iowa that her drivers’ ed course met MA’s standards. They are insane. They don’t trust the other state to have verified your age correctly, is what I think, although not being able to spot fakes is probably the big justification (like you said, just get swipey machines, like they had all over the place in…wait for it…Colorado. God I miss living in a normal state.)
I knew a guy in college that was arrested buying a bottle of champaign £¨spelling£©for his girlfriend when he was 20 years old¡£ He had to go to an ADULT court to face the charges¡£
21 drinking age is bullshit£¬ and I am 36¡£ They started the 21 thing around the time I was 18 to 19 years old¡£So to get a bottle£¬ I had to sneak around and find other people to buy for me¡£ I was hassled about a GD ID until I was over 30¡£
I lived in China where there was no drinking age¡£I used to drink with a friend£¬ and if we ran out of beer£¬ we got his five year old to pick us up some¡£I never saw anyone under 18 in the bars£¬ and I never saw anyone underage drinking¡£ The reason being is that the kids were going to school and studying£¬ and most were into other activities in their free time¡£Booze was not a lure for them¡£ Not a ¡°forbidden fruit¡± element¡£
The drinking age in America should be 18¡£The police have been very vigilent in DUIs for many years and it is severe to be prosecuted for that crime¡£ Many people over 21 drive drunk and do outlandish things under the influence¡£ The reason for this 21 crap is insurance companies£¬church groups£¬ and the good American reasoning that a small problem should be inflated until it explodes¡£
By the way£¬ anybody over 18 should be allowed to smoke pot too¡£
SP
For what it’s worth, I’m going to sign an initiative petition to get a marijuana decriminalization measure on the Oregon Ballot for 2004 (just as soon as I get it in the mail), and encouraging my voting friends and family to do so.
FYI, Connecticut blue laws state no alcohol sales after 8pm Monday-Saturday and no sales at all on Sunday. All the stores are crowded around 7:45pm with last-minute shopping. We missed the 8pm cut-off once and drove to Rhode Island.
OK…the advertisements are hard-ass and severe (and slightly amusing: there’s a causal relationship between Alcohol & Date Rape? CITE). But what they are doing is trying to scare the average mom & pop (and kid who works after school) into carding people who puy six-packs at sandwhich shops. BTW- almost any diner or nice restaurant in eastern PA (can’t vouch for western PA) sells beer/wine. Some have embarrasingly big signs right behind the cash register offerring these products. The ad makers feel that the alcohol sales in the mom & pop places have started a new trend in that they’ve become less legality driven and more profit driven. This ad campain, successful or not, is meant to combat that trend.
PS- Its more than amusing to me that the Renaisance Faire is held on the grounds of a Vineyard in Intercourse, PA.
I too have a hard time dealing with Blue Laws. I think they are patently unconstitutional, but try mounting a campaign to change them.
What politician wants to be labeled as un-Christian by wanting to change the Blue Laws regarding alcohol? He/she would be crucified by the religious right!
Stupid Virginia was the same way when I was in school. I was a year older than my girlfriend, so I would buy the alchohol. If she was with me at the checkout line, they would card her too. Which I understand, maybe, but it meant she had to sit out in the car in the grocery store’s dark parking lot. Not cool.
They have ABC stores there that sell the hard stuff - strangely, my license was usually scrutenized more by the grocery store people than the state employees at the ABC store. Also, underage people could be in the store - only the person buying had to show ID. Makes sense to me!
And yeah, they have weird hours - when we threw parties we’d have to take stock around midnight and often make a mad dash to the store before they stopped selling.
It was so frustrating. I saw so much sketchy crap go on. In order to have a drink, you had to go to an apartment off-campus, which pretty much means somebody drives. If the drinking age had been 19, say, you’d just have some people living it up in the safety of their dorm rooms, and RAs and cops could wander around and make sure no one was dying of alchohol poisoning or getting date raped or getting in fights.
Why doesn’t this make sense to anyone? I think a lot of people really believe that if you keep cracking down on it, it will go away. It won’t, dammit.
This is not a California law, as far as I know. I certainly went right out at midnight and bought alcohol, as have many of my friends. And we went to a grocery store because we’re too damn cheap to go to bars (broke college students, here).
Although, now that I think about it, when I went to buy cigarettes on my 18th birthday, the guy at the 7-11 gave me trouble about it being “the day of.” I think it’s just that they are afraid of doing something wrong, and so cover their ass by making sure they aren’t off by an hour or a day. I straightened him out by pointing to the “You must have been born on or before this date in <year>” thing and asking him to read it aloud.
This is inaccurate. Alberta is also 18, as is Manitoba.
The legal drinking age is 21 and although I disagree, I can live with it. What really bugs me is the part where you can lose your drivers license for something completely unrelated to driving. Sure, drunk driving is a serious offence and should be punished accordingly.
But hell, I was 19 years old, standing in a friends field around a bon-fire, and having a couple of beers with a very civil crowd when the cops show up. Lost my license for a year (second offence for underage drinking). Again, I would understand if we were driving or if vehicles were involved, but we were just going to camp out in tents (and maybe get some lovin’) and go home in the morning when we were sober.
It really sucked because I was commuting to college at the time (I could barely afford tuition and definitely couldn’t afford housing so I lived with my parents) and had to walk there for a year.
On another note, the town I live in is ‘dry’. No bars, but we do have three beer distributors and a State Store not far outside the town limits (and no chance of ever going ‘wet’ - the local college has too much power and would never allow a bar in town). There are a few bars scattered throughout the adjoining townships but you are forced to drive several miles to grab a beer.
And getting a liquor license from the state is damn near impossible. The majority of bars around here are actually hotels which are automatically eligible for a liquor license. Most have two or three rooms advertised for vacancy but I have never recalled anyone ever staying in them.
The unfortunate thing about The Mad Mothers is that they set out to try to stop underage drunk driving, but they continued to push for more and stricter laws affecting everyone. Their zero tolerance policy has pushed thru ridiculous laws like forcing stores to card everyone, including senior citizens, and making it an offence to be drunk, in the proximity of your vehicle. with the keys to it on your person. They’re out of control zealots.