I remember going to a Pittsburg supermarket trying to get beer. No beer anywhere! Then there’s one type only, O’Doulls or something I’d never heard of. Whatever ok we need beer. Wait. What is this? NON-ALCOHOLIC BEER? Why does this exist? Why would anyone drink beer, the active ingredient is alcohol!!?
Then my friend was like, “oh yeahh… i think they passed a law recently”. We had to go to these little microbrews to buy beer. Ended up carrying a few cases passing frat house blocks. I was worried it was going to get boosted.
For the liquor you have to go to these state stores and it was strange, they had to scan the out of state license and take copies. This was around 1993.
On O’Doul’s… I make up local advertising for AbInbev, and the price discrepancy between Non Alcoholic beer (which still contains trace amounts of alcohol so a no no for people in recovery) is nearly TWICE as much as the real deal. It reminds me of the “super leggera” versions of sports cars… pay 50% more for us to remove features from the vehicle ;)
I lived in Kansas back before liquor-by-the-drink was legal. You had to join a club (maybe $10?). Then you paid an up-front fee (the ‘liquor pool’). The point of the liquor pool was that you authorized the club to buy liquor for you, which they then stored for you behind the bar (in common containers with everyone else’s - aka the bottle it came in). When you ordered a drink you paid part in cash (the “setup”) and part was deducted from your liquor pool balance.
All you could get in a ‘beer bar’ was 3.2 beer. And to buy anything in a liquor store? Cash or check only, no credit card.
In the '70s in Ohio, 3.2 beer was all that 18-20 year-olds could buy and it was all that could be served on Sundays, which gave it the nickname “Sunday Beer.” Oh, and the beer ads during that era were completely free of any symbolism or suggestiveness:
This was an era where beer ad executives were under the impression that it was purchased exclusively by men (go fig). After coming to the startling realization that half of the drinking age public were GASP women!! our industry got a little less sexist with the ads. See below for a 2018 version.
However, this didn’t stop sexist pandering, the number one selling beer package is the “18 pack” because marketing execs were sure that “women doing the shopping couldn’t lift a standard case (24 pack)”
But Virginia also has state liquor stores, and it’s almost entirely blue on that map.
Maybe it’s just the wording of the laws? For instance, you can’t buy liquor in Virginia on Sundays, but that might not be because the law says so… it might just be because the state ABC stores all “happen” to be closed on Sunday. Speculation.
Well that’s a different state than where I lived in Virginia. Also, getting into an ABC store and buying something felt like you were trying to go through airport security.
