I travel a good bit and am always surprised at the different laws to buy beer and liquer between states.

In Oklahoma you can buy 3.2beer at grocery stores but for real beer, wine and liquer you have to go to a Liquer store where you can buy all three. You can buy beer at a restraunt or bar but it has to be in an opened container.

In Texas some counties you can't buy ANYTHING and then in the next county over you can buy beer and wine at the local supermarket. Some county's you have to join a club to buy a beer with dinner. - Pretty goofy.

In the U.P. (Northern Michigan) they had small shatterproof plastic bottles of Jim Beam called "travelers" next to the battery's at the grocery store checkout. Hmmmm not supposed to drink and drive but hey why not make it easy :-).

My vote for the goofiest goes to PA. If you want to buy a sixpack you go to a local bar (illegal in OK). If you want to buy more than a sixpack you have to go to a beer distributer where you can only buy it a case at a time. If you want to buy Liquer you have to go to a state owned liquer store ( I quess you buy wine there too, I never found one!).

What other states have goofy drinking laws? Did I miss anything about the ones I've mentioned?.......................DJ

Moonshine is illegal here......

Oh yea one of the funny things I remember about Germany was being able to buy Jack and Coke in a can, at a gas station! :-) ..............DJ

Suprisingly this is one area where CA has is right. All alcohol is available at any store that is allowed to sell alcohol, what a concept!

it surprised me when i drove through Louisiana and saw the brothers buying liquor at the convenience stores when i'd stop to get gas

Of all the states I've lived in, Oklahoma had the strangest laws.

Minnesota 3.2 beer law is pretty stupid.

Also got stuck in a dry county Alabama for work once. What a horrible surprise to sit down, order a burger and fries and a beer, only to be told that the nearest place to purchase beer was about 40 minutes away...savages.

Texas. I live in the bible belt here and it's ridiculous. We have more "winos" per capita than anywhere else tho because the holy rollers don't count that as true alcohol and it can be bought at the grocery store as opposed to hard liquor.

Also one of the retarded areas you have to join "the club" to buy alcohol with your meal. Have a college of 16,000 in town and you can't buy beer and pizza in the same location. They think it makes people less likely to drink lol. They publish the DWI's daily here and we have more DWI's in a county of 50,000 than in the last town I lived in which published there's in the paper as well and it was a metro area of 400k and you could buy any alcohol anywhere anytime.

I don't even drink AT ALL and it bugs me.

Whatever county DFW is in....

MN is messed up too.....

All is golden here unless its 2AM to 7AM.

I don't know about DFW Airport though. That's were I figured out that flying buzzed is more fun than sober and Stoli doesn't make you pee as much as beer :-), :-) but that's another story..................DJ

It is also illegal to sell singles (12oz) at convenience stores in OK now (but quarts are fine ). Liquor store where I grew up was divided in half, one side had liquor, wine, and beer above 3.2(hot). In order to buy cold beer you had to go back outside, go into the other side of the building. Cold beer was 3.2%.

I worked a couple of years in south central PA. I never could make sense of the case minimum either, but I did drink a lot more beer than I normally would have if I could of bought it by the 6-pack.

Lot's of southeastern states have funky laws (dry counties/ wet counties, blue laws, etc.) Arkansas, TX, Tenn., and Florida immediately come to mind.

The town I live in is a dry town. No alcohol in any restaurant, not even a beer at the mexican places. The city limits have grown over the years and now include two liquer stores that used to be out of town. They are still able to stay in business since they were annexed in after the town became dry. A dry town with two liquer stores, how stupid is that?

i live in mn and it sucks everytime i travel to another state takes me a while to remember that i dont have to find a liquor store i can go to a gas sation or grocery store..

mn 3.2 at gas stations or grocery stores
and liqour stores are closed on sundays ..

Lubbock, TX; they can't open a liquor store within a certain distance of a church BUT they can open a church within inches of a liquor store. Result; all the liquor stores were on the edge of town.

Pine Ridge, SD; entire reservation is dry. Result is that a certain town in Nebraska sells millions of dollars worth of booze every year and the tribe can't do a thing about it. Doesn't occur to them to open their own liquor store and use the procedes to fund the alcoholism program.

Jones county is dry. You can by beer and liquor in laurel and Soso, but not in the same store. The beer and liquor stores are usually side by side but have to be a separate business. All liquor is distributed the state and when they have computer or accounting problems it puts a halt to all deliveries.

,

OH yea you reminded me of a little store up the road from Sallisaw in Oklahoma just across the river from Arkansas. There was a little store with 2 doors in the front, one to a beer store and the other to a liquer store. We went in one side that had a beer store there was an open doorway in the wall but there were all sorts of signs that said do not go through the doorway, you must exit the front door to re-enter the liquer store on the other side. We asked the Lady on the beer side what the deal was and she gave some story about 2 different licenses blah blah, so we went out the front door and walked into the Liquer store side.

The beer lady walked through the doorway in the wall from the beer side to the Liquer side and said "Is there anything I can help you with today?". I Swear it was just like an old Hee-Haw skit............................DJ

Only in America can we purchase potentially hazardous unregulated products from China at will, but yet in several states cannot have a bottle of wine shipped to you after it was entirely produced and taxed on American soil.

I may have this wrong, but if I was told correclty it might be Louisiana.

Do they still have drive up windows where you can order a drink like a Sonic Slurpee? You can have it in the car, complete with a straw, but you aren't supposed to drink it.

I've seen drive through stores in Ohio and other states. Drive into the drive through and they hand you a sixpack or I quess whatever else to you in your car......................DJ

They are Baning smoking in bars. Won't be long they will ban drinking booze in bars. Damn this Brave new world. The only Wild Turkey will be the feathery critters that live in the hills.

It's changed in recent years. Drive thru daquiri places were popular. Don't laugh these aren't normal daquiris, but super loaded down with hard liquor.
Even the open container law has changed recently. When I lived there you could have an open container as long as the driver wasn't drinking. Then it changed to just those in the backseat, I don't know about now. But in most places you can buy alcohol and walk around with an open container, I never understood places that banned that.

When I was younger you could go to Miss. and get beer out of vending machiens outside of stores at the beach.

Here in TX you can't buy beer and pizza on the same premises but you can buy any alcohol you want at a drive thru only liquor store.

The county I'm in has three small towns. First town can have bars but no stores. Second town can have stores but no bars. Third town has both.

Those knotheads are something else! There's been riots and shootouts and all sorts of "wildwest" type stuff over there. Never seen anything like it anywhere on the continent. You can always tell when it's "injun payday". Hords of them walking down the highway in rush hour traffic, regularly a pretty desolate stretch of road. Each car loaded to the gills with carpoolers. Thousands of dollars worth of beercans in the ditch and a truckload of bottles, a supply re-upped every month. You could make a nice living driving a commuter bus, charge them a 12 pack each for the service cuz they got no money... Park a refigerated box truck on the "free" side of the state line so your bus doesn't fill up with payments received. Better be a retired Brinks or WellsFargo truck though... with armed guards...

It's jsut crazy. Federal "stimulus" money generates much of the local economy on the free side. And on the not free side lies the most poverty stricken and repulsive area I've ever visited. It's gut wrenching.


Never encountered the drive through and buy a drink in open container. Belligerently ridiculous... Wonder how many states still have drive through liquor stores? Just like a drive through bank or drive through choke and puke and it was actually pretty handy on payday. Down on the local gut bomb run all 3 were in the same block. Cash your paycheck at drive through bank, pull into your choice of gut bombs and grab supper, then drive through the liquor stop for beverages of whatever sort and ice. After punching the clock it was only 3 quick stops with no worries about parking, and you're ready to head for the hills for a couple hours booze cruise and watch the sunset.

Bachelor days...

When I was in Oxford, MS going to school at Ole Miss, beer was legal but stores were not permitted to refrigerate it. (I couldn't make this up.!) In the fall and winter, smart store owners would store the beer outside in a locked room and it would be nice and cold. In the summer, you better have a big cooler and lots of ice.

Against the law to drin and drive-- but the bars in Florida used to havr drive thru windows.
Blue law was you couldn't buy alchol before noon on Sunday.

Go Baylor!

Still can't buy "adult beverages" before noon on Sunday here.

Or West Virginia as I recall.

But I think PA's "Separation of Beer and Booze" is still the goofiest. Not as purely evil as no booze at all, but goofy.

Not really a dumb law as much as one of life's little ironies, but as long as I can remember the town where Jack Daniels is produced, Lynchburg, Tenn., is located in a dry county.

In Texas, we could buy beer, but no liquor. We asked where to buy liquor, the answer "at the State Beer Store".

KS had some stupid laws. A friend owned a small liquor store in years past. He couldn't have a beer clock, because it was a "moving sign".

Best Texas funny. Why do you always take two Baptist's fishing with you? If you only take one, he'll drink all your beer.

In Idaho, we can buy beer about anywhere and wine in most grocery stores. Hard stuff has to be sold in state liquor stores. We used to have a drinking age of 19 for beer and 21 for wine and liquor. Carter's illegal highway funding schemes took care of that. Now it's 21 for beer, too.

The needing to be a club member to drink is pretty common in some of the southern states, but in TX - especially West Texas - it's a hoot. Some of the memberships cost a few bucks, others are free. At one the clubs - Loraine I believe - you need a sponsor to obtain membership, and the person charging the admittance fee sponsors you, silly really. I was entertaining customers in Kingsville recently and had to get sponsorships for all of us, no problem, the barmaid obliged.

Did my tech training at Sheppard AFB in Wichita Falls, TX in 1964. Local bars could only sell beer and wine. You could however bring your own booze and they could sell you the set up (Glass/ice/mix). Private clubs were the only place that you could get a mixed drink over the bar.

i'm going to tell my girlfriend that we need to check the lick her laws the next time we hook up

Is it still Beer and Booze up to 12 at night then after 12 only booze, in OK City?

In Texas, alcohol sales are determined by the precinct you live in, which is a subdivision of the county, so depending upon what street you live on, you might have to walk across the street.

In those dry precincts, you can drink at a restaurant if you join the club. Cost to join the club--it's free, and all they do is right down your DL number. You could buy these gold cards that allowed you "drink at will" even in dry precincts. I don't know if those are around anymore.

Beer and wine is sold everywhere, liquor is sold in liquor stores. I guess beer and wine aren't alcohol somehow, and can be bought with your potato chips. You can't buy beer/wine until 12:00PM on Sundays, so stock up before the football games on Sunday. No liquor sales on Sunday, so just go buy then drink beer/wine instead.

In Wyoming we don't have any 3.2 beer, or any beer or alcohol in grocery and convenience stores, but we have drive up windows where you can buy booze from liquor stores without even getting out of you car. It's illegal to open it though, recently we joined the rest of the US in that the passenger can't even open one.

Next door in Nebraska, they don't have the drive ups at liquor stores -- well they do sort of, you can drive up to a door instead of a window and step in and buy something. Or they may step out and see what you want. It's kind of the same thing except for the person handing it to you doesn't get to hand it through a window. They also get booze in the grocery stores over there.

Here in Kingman we have drive thru and there used to have one in "Bullhead City"

Across the "River" Free Beer and Booze 24 7!

When I lived in Houston, TX in 1981, you couldn't have more than one open container in a vehicle per occupant ..... empties had to go out the window. I was shocked when my boss told me that traffice was bad one day, so he was going to pickup a six-pack for the commute home.

Strange question.

I live in a dry county.

My vote goes to Pennsylvania. Can't buy wine or liquor outside of a store that is owned and operated by the state, aside from purchasing wine from local wineries. When buying 6 or 12 packs from the bar, you can only carry out 2 six packs or 1 twelve pack at a time, though you can purchase as many as you want. Select few "state stores" are even open on Sunday, so you better get you booze Saturday for the Super Bowl. Oh, and since the stores are state run, the selection is often quite poor.

Beer cannot be bought unless it is from a bar or from a "beer distributor", except from one place that I know of. The Sheetz chain of gas stations and convenience stores appealed the PLCB and were granted a liquor license for their "Super Sheetz" store in Altoona, PA because on the grounds it was a restaurant, and not just a gas station. The thing that tops it off is that the PLCB made them install 3"-4" high speed bumps that were the delineator between the gas station and the "restaurant". Un-freaking-believable...

On the bright side, I know lots of folks who make good homemade wine and a few who make decent white lightening, so it isn't all bad I guess..

Nobody from Utah has chimed in yet. Until recently, they had some strange laws. You could only drink in private clubs and then you had to take in your own bottle & have them mix it. The bottles had to come from tightly controlled state stores.
They changed the law in the last year or so, though, and I don't know what the current status is.

Anywhere dry is screwed up. Too many dry counties left in the south!

In Georgia you can't buy anything on Sunday except at a bar. I've heard Jesus will kill all the Baptist if Sunday alcohol are allowed.

I don't want to hijack the thread - but I do want to respond to your observation.

Having a no-smoking section in the interior of a building - makes as much sense as having a non-peeing section in a swimming pool.

Colorado has the 3.2 beer in the grocery too, I hate, now Michigan, you can abuse that evil liver at just about any grocery store, I miss that. We just finally got it to where Liquor stores are open on Sunday's this past summer. I HATE blue laws! Les

Another point for Texas. Titty bars in some places are BYOB. No kidding.

People bring an ice chest full of beer to a titty bar. You can't make stuff this stupid up.

Also concerts. I went to a Willie Nelson concert and it was BYOB for 20,000 people. People standing in line sitting on their ice chest.

Ridiculous.

My guess it would be Florida, as when I lived in Jacksonville in the Sixties there where dry counties and there was wet counties. In the wet Counties almost every bar Had a drive up window where you could buy Booze. In Jacksonville or Duval County you couldn't buy a drink or a beer in the county on Sunday unless You were at either a Hotel, at the Beaches or a Fish Camp. Anywhere else in the county all the Bars and package stores where closed. Grocery and Convenience stores had to either cover or put up signage that it was illegal to buy beer or wine on Sunday. If you went into a fish Camp on Sunday on the St Johns River you could buy a beer or a case of beer, but if you wanted to take it off premises you had to pop the top on each can in the case. Yet if memory serves me right you could go across the county line to either Volusia County or Clay County and buy anything you want.

Yes Texas also has some strange liquor laws as I can remember going into Bridgeport, TX one time on a Monday Night and couldn't get unloaded until Tuesday morning and found out that the county was a dry county, but that I could go out to the Yacht Club and buy a a three day visiting membership for $5.00 and get a drink. I so I paid the $5.00 and got two Budweisers for half price, watched the Monday night football game and a free home cooked diner as the ladies of the yacht club brought in a Potluck Diner for those who watched the game. It was one of the best $10.00 I've spent in a long time

Yep, there was one in Killeen, TX I used to frequent, used to crack me up Harker Heights was dry, and Killeen was far from it.

No state liquor stores in Texas. There are still some beer and wine bars in Texas. Its not all bad; if you really want to get screwed; you bring your own good whiskey and wash it down with what ever beer the bar serves.

There is a good restaurant about 2 miles down from my house where I can pull up to the drive-thru and get dinner and frozen drinks at once. The adjoining gas station has a full selection of beer, wine, liquor, and frozen drinks, as well as their own drive-thru. The two surrounding towns have recently repealed their Sunday laws, but my town has not, so I have to drive an extra 6 minutes to the next C-store or the grocery store, both of which carry everthing and sell on Sundays.

It was only recently that the open container law was changed to include passengers, but most folks don't worry about it.

I'm not sure exactly when they changed it but used to be that in OK all the clubs were byob. All the clubs had to have signs on their doors that all said:

Private Club
Members Only
Guests Welcome


Probably still is that way in some TX counties...................DJ

-I liked the 2 Baptist fishing joke...................

The LQ laws suck here, just got back from CA and while I was there I could buy booze at Costco. You could buy 1.5 liters blended scotch and Crown Royal for the same pirce as 750ml at the grocery store!

Colorado blue laws suck but they're getting better but if they completely repeal them I think it would really hurt a lot of the locally owned LQ stores. Like my fav on Union and Dublin!

Unless the building is your private property and you don't need the Gov't telling you what you can do there. You could always go to another pool, stay out of them all, support like minded businesses, or build your own if you had a mind too.

Or at least that's my take on "The Land of the Free"!

I was in a little bar in a little town in Wyoming the other day that was a no smoking bar even though the law here doesn't require them to be -- I mean, the lady that bought the property recently came up with that one on her own, and I respect her right to do so 100%-- It's her property.

The bartender said that it had cost the new owner half of her business to do so though. Those of you that care to go to a no smoking bar, should stop into Hawk Springs Wyoming (there is only one bar there, you can't miss it, it's also the town scale-house, so don't park on the scales ) and tell her that she done good. I probably won't be back for a while though, unless I need to weigh some hay.

If you want to have a smoke, just keep going through Hawk Springs 6 or 8 miles to Yoder Wyoming. They only have one bar as well, and their business has nearly doubled in the last few months.

I lived in Utah for 5 years and it was the longest 5 years of my life.

Some of the goofy things I encountered:

Club Memberships. You had to be a member, but if you were out of state you could get someone to "sponsor" you. Typically it was the bartender or another patron who volunteered-even if you never met them before. Otherwise you paid a membership fee of $5 or so.

You could not be served a "shot and a beer" at the same time. You had to down the shot, and then the bartender could put the beer down in front of you. IIRC the rule was that you couldn;t have 2 drinks in front of you at any time.

At a brewpub, you couldn't just order a Beer, you had to order food too. IIRC they had soft pretzels which you could buy... WARNING: Red Rooster Chocolate Stout will make you fart for a full day.

No liquor except at ABC stores, and anything above 3.2 beer had to be sold at ABC stores. You could get 3.2 water at the grocery store.

The grocery stores must card everyone purchasing Beer. I saw a guy that had to be in his 70's get turned down for beer because he didn't have his driver's license.

At a restaurant that served alcohol, you couldn't have a combined receipt with alcohol and food on it. Not sure if this was law or just policy.

Laws changed after I left, primarily due to the 2002 Olympics.




In North Carolina no buying beer or wine on Sunday's before noon and no booze sales at all. - No Hunting on Sundays at all either - but you can go fishing, golfing, or go to the track.

All legal liquor must be purchased through the government. Moonshine can be sold all week including Sunday mornings and you don't have to get it through the guvment.

There are no "bars or Taverns", but their are restaurants who can sell beer and liquor if it's less than 50% of revenues. There are private clubs that sell by the drink.

In SW Wisconsin in the 1970's I came across a store that sold firearms, ammunition, liquor, beer, and beef jerky. They had rifles displayed above the beer coolers. One-stop shopping for the weekend.

The laws in UT have rationalized a lot in the past few years, to the extent that I don't think they rival the old blue laws from back east. Private clubs are gone. One odd residual law deals with wineries with on-premises sales. They have to pretend to be state liquor stores--charge retail, but only keep the wholesale amount, and can't be open any day the state ABC store is not open. That includes the Mondays of three day weekends, which should be good business days for them.

How about the requirement that a license must be current to "prove" age? The very same card that works one day is no good the next. Logic? Hell no, it has to do with a liquor law.

Mathman...its not a state law, but a county ordinance here that you have to put ice in bourbon..


Ingwe

A store that both liberals and conservatives want to see shutdown.

Thats one of my favorites too, that and crown Liquor next to King Sooper. Les

I hear that in Arkansas you can't drink and have relations with farm animals, at least not at the same time. It's legal for the animal, but not for you, and not before 12 on Sundays. It is also your responsibility to know the Law, not the animal's. You can't just take their word for it....

But a store thae would be supported by anyone that believes in personal responsibility and libertarian viewpoints.

Our gun club used to have a sign up that read:

After Beer
No Skeet


Seemed to make a lot of sense to me compared with complete alcohol bans at a lot of ranges. Be an adult have a drink AFTER you're done shooting no problem.................dj

All right....this is a subject where Ca does'nt suck. Stores must have a beer/wine license AND a liquor license so sometimes you'll have a store that only sells beer/wine and no liquor. Other than that its 7 days a week all year long except from 2am to 6am. Drink up.......

Texas here. Wet and dry counties are not black and white. For some reason they serve beer and hard stuff at restrants. But at the gas stations you can only buy beer. If you want hard stuff or wine you have to go out to eat or drive 30 minutes to a little town (in the same county) to get it. F'ed up as a soup sandwich

In the 70's I belonged to an Elks club here that could not sell liquor, but had bar, a bartender, rows of small liquor lockers with locks. Each member had a locker. How do you suppose that bartender supplimented his salary?

I live near the PA border. On all of the local roads that cross the border, there are convenience stores on both sides of the line. The gas in PA is usually quite a bit cheaper so I always wondered how the stores on the NY side stay in business. I just realized why. Folks from PA can cross to get beer at the NY stores. Folks from NY can cross to fill up with cheaper gas in PA.

No carry out allowed in Indiana on Sundays either. Been more than once I had to have the wife drive me for a beer run on Saturday night because all my beer got drank Saturday afternoon.

Actually the carryout limit is 144 oz. So you can carry out 2 six packs if they are 12 ouncers but only one if they're pounders. Of course you can add a quart to the pounders since that only totals 128 oz.

The state stores are only open until 9PM, there are some beer distributors open on Sundays but you definitely need to plan ahead.

When I've been in Va. it's nice to grab a case from Sheetz. No doubt in my mind that Pa. has goofy liquor laws.

Dale

Indiana - can't buy beer or liquor from package/liquor store or grocery/convenience store on Sunday. But you CAN buy booze at any pro sporting event or at a bar/restaurant if the bar serves food.

I went to college in Terre Haute and we made the Sunday trip to IL so often, our tires wore out...

SC- no alcohol sales on Sunday and, unless it has changed recently, bars had to pour from the airline sized "mini" bottles.

liquor? I don't even know 'er!

I guess not many of ya'll have suffered through a trip to Utah. You have to be a native and be able to read Morman to even find a bar, and then the rules make probition sound like a good idea.

Wayne