As I remember from reading the State Liquor Authority Handbook we have the bar I work at, it is GAMBLING that is illegal in a bar.
However, speaking as a bar manager, I will usually not let anyone play cards in the bar as it is one more possible area to be hasseled by the Liquor Authority and/or Police.The burden becomes ours to prove “we” weren’t gambling.
Still, some nights are deserted, and you DO get bored…
BTW VarlosZ, I’m from Albany. Which bar were you in?
Here in Toronto there is one state store as you call it that sells liquor/beer starting at 7am.
It is the only store in all of Ontario and is close by the market which opens at 6am on Saturday mornings.
I have never understood it myself because if people just get organized I could have any amount of booze at home when I want to drink it, and after all we are adults.
But times change and they have over the years.
I can remember here in Toronto when I was a kid men and women couldn’t even drink in the same place/pub there were even different doors to the same building.
Sundays was really a joke you were not allowed to drink anything on Sundays without having something to eat at the same time.
But now that drinking/gambling and shopping is allowed on Sundays it has not affected the church goers at all. If they wish to go to church go ahead since maybe others wish to shop or drink, after all we are all adults and able to choose what we want.
Maybe someday soon the liquor laws will change as well…
means ‘vileness’ - from latin ‘turpis’, meaning (no surprises coming here) vile, or disgusting.
Just an aside. 
FD.
When I visited my parents in San Antonio a few weeks ago, I went to the grocery store to get a six-pack of Shiner Bock to bring back for a friend. I don’t drink, and rarely buy alcoholic beverages of any kind, so I’m not familiar with blue laws.
I got up to the cash register and was told that I could not buy the beer. It was a little after 11 in the morning on Sunday. I ended up having to make a separate run for the beer after noon.
Stupid, isn’t it.
Robin
Don’t forget that the ‘Blue Laws’ don’t lways relate to only alcohol. where I went to college (Greenville, NC) in the mid eighties the laws extended to hardware stores, and other merchants as well. The only type of businesses that could be open on Sundays were Restaurants, Grocery stores and newsstands. And they could keep you from buying hardware-type items in the gracery stores as well. It was finally repealed (85, I believe) as it was only in the city, and the mall was OUTSIDE of the city limits, and the local merchants weren’t too happy about that. The town meeting where they repealed it was interesting. We had Christian groups up there saying that the city was going to be like ‘Sodom and Gommorrah’ if they repealed this law. I got up and stated the non-christian point of view, and was rebuked by the one member of the council who didn’t vote for the repeal as being ‘ignorant’.
Wait, so you’re saying bars in your town aren’t allowed to be open on Saturday night?
I think technically a “Blue Law” refers to any law that uses the moral beliefs of individuals to regulate behavior seen as “immoral” (although, technically, aren’t all laws based on morality? ANYWAY…). You often hear anti-pornography types referred to as “blue-noses”. Are there any state laws that regulate when porn can be sold? Can you only buy a Hustler magazine on certain days of the week?
Some friends and I just had a discussion about this, in a bar, of course.
In NY State, a restaurant cannot sell you an alcoholic beverage before noon on Sundays. The only alcoholic beverages sold in grocery stores are beer and malt drinks, and they also cannot sell them to you before noon on Sunday. Liquor stores, which in NY State are the only source to buy bottled liquor or bottled wine, are closed on Sundays.
Would there be a public outcry if these blue laws were repealed? Probably not. So why aren’t they?
What we came up with:
Restaurants aren’t losing much, if any, business by not serving before noon on Sundays. If your inlaws are in town, and you are taking them to brunch, you can either suffer through without cocktails, or schedule your brunch for later in the day. There don’t seem to be many potential brunchers staying home in order to get tanked (although they don’t have my in-laws, either).
The competitors of liquor stores are other liquor stores. Since they are all closed, liquor store owners are not losing business to the competition on Sundays. Would business on Sundays cover the cost of hiring staff and keeping the store open, if the law were to change? Would a small, family-run liquor store feel pressured to stay open on Sundays to compete with larger liquor stores? Maybe some owners like having a mandated day off.
The people who are the most affected (i.e. annoyed) by this are people like me, who forget about this law until Superbowl Sunday, when I realize I don’t have enough tequila in the house. While I am annoyed, I am not starting a consumers’ action group for the purpose of lobbying NY state, either.
I firmly believe that if either the restaurant owners association or the liquor store owners association felt that they were losing substantial business, there would be more pressure on the state to change the law. A large response on the part of the consumer might have some weight if it could be organized, but how are you going organize a group of people whose primary goal is to find a cocktail on Sunday morning? Who would fund this? Would they meet in bars, and if so, could they stay sober long enough to get any business done?
Again, these are just the ideas we were kicking around on this same topic. One of the people in the group is the owner of a tavern, btw.
So go to church. It’ll help pass the time until noon, and you can pick up a case of suds on the way home.
Well, sure, but ever since Vatican II, it’s been nearly impossible to find a parish with real wine to tide you over 'till noon.
My ship used to use real kosher wine for communion.
Robin
Liquor stores apparently aren’t open on Sunday at all in Washington (or at least Seattle)… and last night when we discovered the sorry state our New Year’s Eve cabinet was in, it was too late.
For New Years Eve, I realized I didn’t have any liquor and the state liquor stores in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania were closed, so I took a little trip to Wheeling, West Virginia (about 30 miles away). I went to the liquor store on Wheeling Island as that was the one I knew from my trips to Wheeling Downs and went in…only to discover that no liquor sales were allowed on Sunday ;( (and also discovered that liquor there is much more expensive than in PA…a fifth of Jack was 22 dollars compared to 17 at the Wine and Spirits shops). I went over the bridge into Ohio to try my luck there. Well, I discovered that not only do they not sell hard liquor on Sundays (not even the 21% watered-down they have at grocery stores) but no wine either.
On the way, I thought about whether they could at least make special exemptions to stay open for Sundays before holidays (such as New Years, Christmas and Thanksgiving) or for Super Bowl Sunday…is this possible?
…and to all of the above, you can add the city of Evanston, Illinois, the very home of the WCTU, and a town that had been dry since its inception. Holiday Inn came in here several years ago, but only with the provision that they could get a liquor license - I belive it was the first one ever issued by the city. That led to what is now a pretty nice little boom in restaurants here. However, we still have remnants of the blue laws: in most places that sell liquor, you have to order food, too. You can’t just stop in for a drink. And some of the establishments have very nice atmosphere, lovely bars for sitting and chatting, etc. But, when you go in, they tell you you have to order food or no booze. (The WCTU, for the ininformed, is the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.) The missionaries strike again.
Re. a “dry” Evanston. The temperance ladies – many of whom supported it for sociological (leftist) instead of, or in addition to, religious (rightist) reasons, incidentally – surely were the main cause of Evanston’s long “dry” history. However, I would think the presence of Northwestern University would have had something to do with it as well. In other words, the “townies” didn’t want the “gownies” getting drunk and raising hell in their town. The logic of the city leaders was probably something like: if you college kids want to get drunk, hop the L – or walk – across the border to Chicago, but you’re not going to do it here. Town-gown issues have a LONG history in Evanston, as both started in the 1850s. 
If I remember the facts correctly:
Orange County has a not-before-noon law for beer and wine sales on Sunday (beer and wine can be purchased in the grocery stores, and the liquor stores don’t open until after noon anyway). Osceola County has a not-before 1 pm law for the grocery stores (not sure about the liquor store openings there). Osceola County also has a law on the books stating that if a place sells alcohol, it must be open for lunch and dinner (so the establishment is not just a ‘bar’); most are open for lunch, being a heavy tourist area, however, several restaurants and dinner ‘theme’ shows operate in complete disregard of the county law, usually opening after 4 pm, or only for the scheduled show.
Also, Orange County has a minimum 1,000 foot radius around churches and schools, banning alcohol sale in that area. This led to a really nasty situation recently in Winter Park when CostCo built one of their monstrous warehouses and found it was a few feet within the ‘no-alcohol zone’ (there was a school nearby). They could not even sell alcohol from the other end of the building because part of the building was within that zone. Home office was not happy and claimed ingnorance of the law, but in effect, that location is a dry CostCo with no alcohol sales at all. There may still be on-going negotions, but last I heard, change didn’t sound promising.