Archives for the 'alcohol' tag
Cities Demand Suds on the Sabbath
The mayors of the three largest cities in Connecticut who want to revoke the state-wide ban on Sunday alcohol sales are facing opposition — but not from moralizing politicians or teetotalers:
The group that would sell most of that alcohol, the Connecticut Package Stores Association, has blocked Sunday sales multiple times during the past five years in one of the most heavily lobbied issues at the Capitol. The association says the extra day would not mean any extra money for the state or the stores because it would simply spread existing sales over seven days instead of six — while adding an extra day of operating costs.
Geographically, all three cities — Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven — are located far from the border. The mayors hope repeal will stop Sunday six-pack runs across state lines, with the resulting tax revenue trickling back to them. Failing that, the mayors say they’ll seek exceptions for their cities. I have to wonder if that isn’t their true goal: the cities would become wet islands, attracting folks from satellite towns. The mayors could then enact local taxes on the sales without having to wait for the money to first filter through the capital.
What’s Buzzing in the World of Beer?
Maine lawmakers already looking to amend new law permitting stores to hold beer and wine tastings. Seems one provision in the law–wouldn’t you know it, but it’s “for the children”–has forced store owners “to cover [the] front and back door windows with black and drape a sheet across the large storefront windows” anytime they want to do a tasting. [Bangor Daily News]
One man’s guns for beer program backfires. [Crossville Chronicle]
Texas says you can give away beer, you just can’t tell people you’re going to give it away beforehand. Or something. [Clocking In]
Oh, the humanity! This beer’s “quite putrid”! Lowenbrau from the Hindenburg disaster up for auction. (As an aside, is it really a “disaster” when a Nazi airship covered by swastikas blows up?) [BBC]
Sam Adams brews up a beer with 27% alcohol. Available for a mere $150 per bottle. [Houston Chronicle]
Adventures in Grilling, Boozing
Having spent my summer grilling and drinking rum, I thought I’d share two recipes useful for outdoor entertaining.
The first is a dry rub for steak that I impulsively whipped together early in the season:
1 Tbsp. granulated brown sugar
1 Tbsp. chili powder
1 Tbsp. curry powder
1/2 tsp. salt
Mix all ingredients and rub into a thin-cut steak. Allow to sit a half-hour or so before grilling. Works best with indirect heat; that is, cooking the steak to the side rather than immediately over the coals. This allows the sugar to glaze over the steak.
The granulated brown sugar is important since regular brown sugar is difficult to spread evenly on the meat, leading to clumping and burning. Also, while McCormick curry powder is fine, I use Oriental Brand Hot Jamaican, which has anise and is heavier on the turmeric, giving it a smokier taste that lends itself to grilling.
Better Booze in Virginia, At Last?
Liquor stores in Virginia are terrible (so bad they probably caused fellow Crispy blogger Jacob to flee the area!). They’re owned and operated by the commonwealth’s Department Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC), and if you’re looking for anything snootier or more unusual than Maker’s Mark, you’re probably SOL. The lighting is bleak. The clerks have all the enthusiasm for their product of middling DMV employees. (Come to think of it, DMV employees may actually be more enthusiastic about the work+hooch combo than ABC staff.) And the hours are inconvenient.
But serious Old Dominion boozehounds see a ray of hope in their tequila sunrises: Former state attorney general and current Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert F. McDonnell proposed privatizing the whole mess in a press conference yesterday, conducted (seriously!) in a parking garage.
The idea is win-win. End 75 years of incompetent state alcohol sales management and the state gets a bunch of cash for transportation spending when it sells off the rights to run a private liquor store.
In case you’re waffling on whether this is a good idea, go spend 5 minutes on Virginia’s weirdly self-congratulatory booze biz website. Historic photos celebrate milestones. Like 1970, when the first lady clerk, Betty Wilson, was hired. Thank goodness government was running that rum, how would we have achieved gender equality otherwise? (Note: I think the guy in my local liquor store in nearby Alexandria is still wearing her coat.) Lady boozemongers were an innovation that appeared just a couple of years after Virginia started licensing sales of “liquor by the drink” in bars.
In its early history, Virginia ABC agents were also enforcers of anti-bootlegging and moonshining laws, allowing the government run stores to deal very effectively with private competition.
Party Like It’s 1933
Eric Felten hoorayed Repeal Day in Friday’s Journal by calling attention to one of my favorite Prohibition pastimes: the hotel party. Folks would BYOB to a hotel room, then call down to the kitchen for ice and glasses. The transitory nature of the get-together and the collusion of hotel management and staff made the parties nearly immune to police interruption, while the scandalous circumstances — men and women mixing in a bedroom, women openly smoking — only drove the stake deeper through the heart of Victorian morality.
Felten recommends the Commodore Bedroom for Repeal Day libations, which I may request of my bartender Friday night. And you, dear reader? Do you have any plans to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Prohibition’s demise this December 5?
Photo credit zoethustra, who I am sure is never a mean drunk.
Wisconsin food police tackling beer before cheese
The New York Times has a piece today in which it looks down its arugula-eating nose at Wisconsin’s drinking culture. The article starts by explaining that 15-year-olds are routinely served beer at bars there—so long as they’re accompanied by a consenting parent. This is no doubt meant to shock, and I was indeed shocked that Wisconsin still manage to receive federal highway money.
The point of the article seems to be that Wisconsin, apparently alone among the states, has a population that gets drunk a lot, and that public health people there have had enough. Specifically, a group led by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health plans to start a campaign to “to dramatically change the laws, culture and behaviors in Wisconsin.” How? “[S]tate agencies would use a $12.6 million federal grant to step up screening, intervention and referral services at 20 locations around Wisconsin.” Do you know how many PBRs and shots of Yeager $12.6 million can buy?
Now, I can do without puritan moralizing; I drank plenty in Spain the summer after I turned 15 and I’m the better for it. But what about drunk driving? Is that not the definition of negative externality? I was a bit surprised to learn that in Wisconsin drunk drivers “are not charged with a felony until they have been arrested a fifth time.” Have I lost my libertarian credentials for thinking that you should be free to drink as much as you’d like as long as you don’t get behind the wheel of a car? What’s the right way to tolerate, if not encourage, a healthy cultural relationship with alcohol while keeping drunk folks off the road?
The Enchanted Tiki Boom
The weekend Journal has a great article by cocktail connoiseur Eric Felten on the revival of tiki bars:
With the much-repeated words “worst financial crisis since the Great Depression” marking the moment, it seems appropriate to visit that peculiarly American escape — the tiki bar — itself born in the depths of the Depression.
Market meltdowns and bailout ballyhoo aside, the timing of the article couldn’t be better after a summer of exploring regional tiki bars with my research assistants — not an easy feat in New England once you move beyond Boston. And pegged as it is to a San Francisco tiki crawl happening this weekend, space and structure prevent the story from detailing the cross-country thriving of tiki, from Brooklyn to Chicago to Los Angeles. But it does entertain the question of why:
The tiki-craze may have reached its zenith in the late ’50s and early ’60s, but there’s a new allure to the escape it promises. What are we escaping now? The financial woes may be the best excuse of the moment, but tiki provides an escape somewhat more fundamental, a vacation from the everyday, even if today’s bears little resemblance to the everyday of the ’50s.
Felten suggests that in wired America, tiki is a vacation from technology, a TARDIS to a Stone Age of topless hula girls and mysterious mixology. But I think he betrays his point and arrives at a closer truth when he writes:
There’s good tiki and bad tiki. Anything sleek and postmodern — say, a steel-and-glass totem — is bad tiki. Anything you can find in the luau section of your local party store — think cheap plastic leis and cardboard cutout hula girls — is bad tiki. I’m also of the opinion that “camp” makes for bad tiki. Ours is an irony-soaked culture, and camp is just a gaudy variety of the old, knowing wink-and-a-nod. Campy tiki provides no escape at all.
Tiki, like belief in the Great Pumpkin, must above all be done sincerely. It is “a vacation from the everyday,” and in a world of slack, that means a refuge from cynicism and poseurs and T-shirts with slogans on them. I’ve been to more chic New York bars and restaurants than I can remember and I always think to myself, God — would it kill these people to drop the act and have fun?
Genuine tiki and its aficionados love it not because of its kitsch or even the great drinks but because they — the bartenders, restaurant owners, totem carvers, mug makers and collectors — feel something we’re not supposed to feel amongst the snark and snideness: emotion. It’s the passion that’s retro. Or as tiki blogger Humuhumu puts it another way:
The author, Eric Felten, even mentions something I’ve long held to be true — that while yesterday’s PolyPop escapism was about eschewing formality, today’s escapism is more about eschewing informality.
Mahalo.
UK Grocer Tells Shoppers to Leave Kids in Car if Buying Booze
England has to be about the most horrid place to live these days.
Tesco is refusing to sell alcohol to parents shopping with their children under rules designed to tackle underage drinking.
The supermarket has told cashiers not to supply alcohol if they suspect an adult is buying the drink for an underage youth.
Staff have been told to “err on the side of caution” when interpreting the policy, leading to cases of parents out shopping with their children being told to put alcohol back on the shelves.
Tesco says it believes parents will support the policy and it would rather apologise where it has misjudged the situation than sell to underage drinkers.
[...]
A Tesco spokesman said: “I can understand the frustrations of the customer but I think that any reasonable parent would understand the problem and support our policy.”
I’m guessing Tesco’s a bit mistaken on this one. As in people are just going to buy their booze–and groceries–elsewhere. More here from the Telegraph.
[Via Slashfood.]
