One of the most famous is Lynchburg Tennessee, where Jack Daniels is made. The taste tester needs a special permit just to do his job.
Standard practice for most servicemen was to order a national brand pitcher of beer for $5, then after finishing that off, order Lone Star
at $2 a pitcher from then on.
Quote: slytherUntil recently, in Washington state you could only buy liquor form a state-run liquor store. We finally voted that out and now you can get it at Target, Safeway, Costco, etc.
Virginia liquor is still in a state-run store, but now they are open on Sundays, which is pretty progressive for us. You can buy wine and beer at a grocery store here, but in New York you have to go to the liquor store to buy wine. In Arizona, you can get everything pretty much anywhere. Hatteras Island in North Carolina is finally allowing liquor by the drink as of last year--it used to be banned, but at least there was an ABC store at the southern end of the island for liquor by the bottle. I remember not being allowed to get beer in a restaurant on a Sunday in South Carolina, but that was 20 years ago, so it may have changed. There's such a patchwork of laws everywhere we travel!
Quote: slytherUntil recently, in Washington state you could only buy liquor form a state-run liquor store. We finally voted that out and now you can get it at Target, Safeway, Costco, etc.
Ohio is also a state-run liquor store, though you can get watered down product anywhere...
So from 2am till noon on Sunday we'd get cab
calls from the Ghetto area to take the passenger
to the 'bootlegger'. Which was a guy selling liquor
out of the trunk of his Cadillac, usually. From the
looks of it, he did a thriving business too..
If you want the really hard stuff, the homemade kind that burns blue, you have to go waaay out in the county.
To my knowledge, there hasn't ever been a STATE law prohibiting that here in Texas. The liquor laws have pretty much been handled on the city and county level. And yeah, some of them were weird and still are. But I was drinking whiskey in bars in Texas long before 1971.Quote: renoI read on the internet (and the internet is filled with misinformation) that bars & saloons & taverns in Texas were prohibited from serving hard liquor until 1971. (Beer and wine were ok.) Does anyone know if this is true? I just can't fathom that it was illegal to drink whiskey in Texas bars for most of the 20th century.
1. Availability. You can buy liquor any day of the week until 2am (I don't know when it starts). In the past, the state stores closed by 8-9pm.
2. Cheaper high-quality stuff. I'm not too well versed in this, but I've heard that Costco's Kirkland brand is bottled by Grey Goose.
Let's go international, in the UK they have a problem with dirt cheap beer/malt liquor. Their solution? Minimum prices.
"When beer is cheaper than water, it's just too easy for people to get drunk on cheap alcohol at home before they even set foot in the pub."
Quote: FarFromVegasVirginia liquor is still in a state-run store, but now they are open on Sundays, which is pretty progressive for us. You can buy wine and beer at a grocery store here, but in New York you have to go to the liquor store to buy wine. In Arizona, you can get everything pretty much anywhere. Hatteras Island in North Carolina is finally allowing liquor by the drink as of last year--it used to be banned, but at least there was an ABC store at the southern end of the island for liquor by the bottle. I remember not being allowed to get beer in a restaurant on a Sunday in South Carolina, but that was 20 years ago, so it may have changed. There's such a patchwork of laws everywhere we travel!
In Raleigh, NC you cannot get an alcoholic drink before noon on Sunday. I 'think' it is state law, but I am not sure.
You can buy beer and wine in the grocery stores, but once again, sales are banned until after noon on Sunday.
Quote: ahiromuLet's go international, in the UK they have a problem with dirt cheap beer/malt liquor. Their solution? Minimum prices.
"When beer is cheaper than water, it's just too easy for people to get drunk on cheap alcohol at home before they even set foot in the pub."
Because how much people drink is totally determined by price and budget. Like, when they get their paycheck, they say, "OK, this is my $300, I'm going to drink through $100 of it. Fingers crossed that there isn't a cheap vodka promotion that is gonna kill me."
Quote: P90Because how much people drink is totally determined by price and budget. Like, when they get their paycheck, they say, "OK, this is my $300, I'm going to drink through $100 of it. Fingers crossed that there isn't a cheap vodka promotion that is gonna kill me."
Yeah that's mentioned by some of the comments. These are the same people that go out and get drunk off of $5 pints.
Bars, Clubs, etc, close at 2AM (Ithink... used to be 1AM except Fri/Sat were 2AM, and Sun. midnite)
Quote: ahiromuYeah that's mentioned by some of the comments. These are the same people that go out and get drunk off of $5 pints.[/q
In the hobo nation, you are not really an alcoholic till you can drink Sterno Half & Half.]
In the Michael Crichton book and movie The Andromeda Strain, the town drunk is one of only two survivors of the fatal alien virus because his blood pH had been altered from drinking Sterno. "We'll have the answer to this disease when we know why a sixty-nine-year-old Sterno drinker with a bleeding ulcer is like a perfectly healthy six-month-old baby."
In PA you still mostly can't get a 6-pack at a grocery store, but you can carry 12 cans out of a bar.
Quote: RaleighCrapsIn Raleigh, NC you cannot get an alcoholic drink before noon on Sunday. I 'think' it is state law, but I am not sure.
You can buy beer and wine in the grocery stores, but once again, sales are banned until after noon on Sunday.
So you can't have a Champagne Brunch for Mother's Day?
Not like my family would ever do that. I can barely get the teenagers out of bed by noon on the weekends, let alone dressed and out the door. I couldn't even get my husband to the breakfast buffet in Vegas before it switched to lunch prices at 11 am, which translated to 1 pm Eastern time!
Its just that at high temperatures, air conditioning and pools are needed, even by die hard tourists dedicated to walking somewhere and no matter what time of day it is, tourists who want to guzzle yardarms of booze on the strip are going to do it. Beer for breakfast? Why not? Its Vegas, Baby. Vegas!
Quote: Texas Alcohol Beverage CommisionAfter several attempts, the Texas Legislature responded in 1971 to a public referendum by creating a mixed beverage permit that allowed sales of liquor by the drink in those areas specifically authorized by local option election.
With the new permit came the mixed beverage gross receipts tax: a tax at the rate of 10 percent… imposed on the gross receipts of a permittee from the sale, preparation, or service of mixed beverages or from the sale, preparation, or service of ice or nonalcoholic beverages that are sold, prepared, or served for the purpose of being mixed with alcoholic beverages and consumed on the premises of the permittee.
The new permit met with immediate acceptance, and the new tax quickly became a major revenue generator for the state. In 1985, the tax rate was increased to 12 percent and increased again in 1989 to 14 percent. For fiscal year 1993, gross receipts tax and penalty collections amounted to $244.7 million, more than half of the total revenue collected by the agency.
Revenue as cited would amount to sales of liquor by the drink in 1993 of roughly $100 per year for every man, woman, and child in the state.
Quote: PokeraddictGeorgia just this year started allowing cities and counties to decide if they wanted to do package sales on Sunday. No alcohol can be sold before 12:30pm on Sunday. Up until 2010, South Dakota did not allow liquor to be sold on Memorial Day or Christmas. I'm not sure why Memorial Day but Easter is OK. NC has(had?) state run ABC stores. I like the solution here in Las Vegas which is basically no regulation on alcohol.
I think that must be the same in Indiana, at least on Christmas, because when I was there on Christmas Day at Horseshoe Southern Indiana, they did not allow ANY alcohol to be purchased. In fact, on the slot machines, they completely turned off the drink options except to water and soda.
Quote: pacomartinA lot of people have an impression that Americans drink a lot. In reality, alcohol consumption is much lower than many parts of the world. You can order by percentage of drinks or amount of liquor per person, but USA comes much lower than much of the world.
Not suprising to me at all, the world is loaded with drinkers. My buddy was suprised to learn how heavy drinkers the Japanese are. He said you would never picture that in such a conservative society. What amazed me is how much drinking in the USA in the late 1800s. Take the heaviest drinkers you know and then picture the general population at that level. How did we ever build the country? And we all know how alcohol was a secret weapon against many Indian Tribes.
On this note, I cannot wait for new episodes of "Bar Rescue" to start up soon. Yes, it is "Restaurant Impossible" in bars, but so what, the guy seems to know his stuff.
Quote: AZDuffmanNot suprising to me at all, the world is loaded with drinkers. My buddy was suprised to learn how heavy drinkers the Japanese are. He said you would never picture that in such a conservative society.
What amazed me is how much drinking in the USA in the late 1800s. Take the heaviest drinkers you know and then picture the general population at that level. How did we ever build the country?
If you ever read Dave Barry does Japan, I guarantee that you will actually laugh out loud at a book.
- One night in Tokyo we watched two Japanese businessmen saying good-night to each other after what had clearly been a long night of drinking, a major participant sport in Japan. These men were totally snockered, having reached the stage of inebriation wherein every air molecule that struck caused them to wobble slightly, but they still managed to behave more formally than Americans do at funerals.
-
Flying from the United States to Tokyo takes approximately as long as law school.
-
A map of Tokyo looks like a tub of hyperactive bait. There is virtually no street that goes directly from anywhere to anywhere.
-
I'm probably just revealing my own intellectual limitations and cultural myopia when I tell you that Kabuki is the silliest think I have ever seen onstage, and I have seen a man juggle two rubber chickens and a birthday cake.
- The Japanese eat, sleep, and breathe golf; the only thing they don’t do is actually play it, because to get on a course, you have to make a reservation roughly 137 years in advance, which means that by the time you actually get to the first tee you are deceased. Of course, in golf this is not really a handicap.
Quote: pacomartinPercentage of drinkers (men and women)
We lack a definition of "drinker."
It can mean anything from people who get drunk every day, to people who have had at least one drink in their lives.
We also need to categorize drinkers. Alcoholics are very different from people who drink daily with meals
I've heard in Pennsylvania, the clerk selling alcohol has a dress code, like vest and tie. This was on the commentary of an episode of The Office.
Quote: ahiromuThe result of privatizing the liquor industry hasn't been price. We have an excise tax based on volume at $3.30 per liter plus a special sales tax of 20.5% - a 5th that has a sticker price of $20 is close to $27-28.
It looks like you are talking about WA where I also live. There is another tax (I believe 17%) to the retailer which is part of the reason the prices don't go low enough to compensate for the consumer taxes. When they privatized they made sure the total taxes added up to the amount the state made off the old liquor stores. Unless the new private stores operate with zero costs and zero profits the final consumer price must be higher.
On the plus side there is much greater selection under privatization. There is a CA chain called Total Wine that just opened their first store in Belleuve. They have 2000 sprits which is much more selection that we used to have. The selection at normal grocery stores is pretty poor though.
14.4% of the US population is less than 45 million people.
what was the criteria to define a "drinker"?
Prevalence
Percent of adults 18 years of age and over who were current regular drinkers (at least 12 drinks in the past year): 50.9%
Percent of adults 18 years of age and over who were current infrequent drinkers (1-11 drinks in the past year): 13.6%
Source: Summary Health Statistics for U.S. Adults: National Health Interview Survey, 2010, table 27
Quote: AZDuffmanNot suprising to me at all, the world is loaded with drinkers.
Prohibition was the direct result of heavy drinking
European immigrants around the turn of the century.
We were mostly a nation of very moderate drinkers,
and here come the Irish and the Poles and the Germans
and the Russians and the rest, for whom drinking
among the lower classes was an Olympic sport.
Getting falling down drunk was a tradition and the
ladies temprance groups were not about to stand
for it.
Read Kirk Douglas's autobiography. His father was
a Russian immigrant in that time period and he
would get drunk regularly and beat the living crap
out of Kirk and whoever else got in his way. It was
very common for the lower classes, its the only way
of life they knew.
Quote: ewjones080
I've heard in Pennsylvania, the clerk selling alcohol has a dress code, like vest and tie. This was on the commentary of an episode of The Office.
I don't remember on the vest, but they usually have a tie. The state owns the stores and even a bar must buy from the state, I believe even if they take a delivery the price is the same as if you bought across the counter. Every time they try to privatize the stores the UFCW has a cow, so nothing is happening anytime soon.
Ironically, the PA "State Stores" as they used to be called (look for a big sign for one in the movie "Slap Shot") formally and still are by many are actually upper-middle-of-the-pack as far as liquor stores I have been in. They never, ever feel dirty or unsafe and the clerks actually know the product well.
in the old Soviet Union, at any factory you chose, 45%
of the workers were legally drunk if they had to take a
breathalyzer test. Can you imagine living in a society
like that?
Quote: EvenBobI remember reading in the 80's that at any given time,
in the old Soviet Union, at any factory you chose, 45%
of the workers were legally drunk if they had to take a
breathalyzer test. Can you imagine living in a society
like that?
Does that mean you do not think that most of our younger generation would have a problem with that ?? LOL
Quote: EvenBobProhibition was the direct result of heavy drinking European immigrants around the turn of the century.
We were mostly a nation of very moderate drinkers.
Prohibition was the direct result of publicity campaigns based on scaremongering between "us" versus "them" with the them being whatever immigrant groups were most unpopular for any given locale as well as Syndicalists and Pacifists.
"Us" was usually the rural property owners.
Sure urban drunkeness was a problem since usually bars were voting places and clearly seen as places of iniquity based on extreme situations but a total ban was not the goal of the voters or the legislators, only the distillery owners who wound up with a highly profitable, albeit regulated industry instead of one of open competition.
1870's and was appalled at the number of women and children
who were abused at the hands of European immigrant
alcoholics. So they went on a campaign that ended up being
Prohibition. It was rife with half truths and outright lies,
but the facts couldn't be denied. Immigrants from Europe did
drink far more than Americans at the time and many of them
were serial abusers of their women and children.
Its still in the culture today that the Irish and Germans and Eastern
European's are hard core 'two fisted drinkers'. Whats the
point of St Patricks Day? To get falling down drunk.
point of St Patricks Day? To get falling down drunk.
I guess I am wrong again. I thought the point was to beat up a Protestant !
Quote: NareedWe lack a definition of "drinker."
It can mean anything from people who get drunk every day, to people who have had at least one drink in their lives.
We also need to categorize drinkers. Alcoholics are very different from people who drink daily with meals
I botched up those statistics. The file I was looking at froze, and I didn't get all the data descriptions correct. The World Health Organization report is complex with dozens of defined terms. Needless to say, drinking is very heavy in Russia and many places in Europe. The British are much heavier drinkers than the Italians, Greeks, and Spanish where there is a traditional wine drinking culture.
Outside of Germany, beer drinking is pretty heavy all through the Americas (primarily USA, Mexico, and Brazil)
In the Americas 27.4% of Women are lifetime abstainers, and 15.2% of men. But the numbers double for people who haven't had a drink in the last 12 months to 49.8% of women, and 33% of men.
Quote: thecesspitMADD is the modern equivalent of the Temperance Movement. The originator quit as (at least south of the border) the movement has become anti-drinking, rather than anti-drink driving.
I'm a member of DAMM....Drunks Against Mad Mothers.
I drink. Sometimes I drive. But like anything else in life, you have to practice every day at it to get good enough to beat the competition. My competition, who keep screwin' up, are ruining it for everyone else, IMO. I stay clear of the roads on Amateur Nights, like NYE, SuperBowl, Halloween, etc. Gotta be smart about it if you want to avoid Johnny Law. Oh, and death...gotta avoid death too.