Drive thru daiqiries still exist in many parts of Louisiana, yes.
That’s good to know that after staggering out of a bar on Bourbon street one can get a nice refreshing beverage or two for one’s drive home.
Moving from Utah to Washington exposed extremes in liquor laws. In Utah liquor, wine, and full strength beer are only available from State operated stores, which are closed when demand is highest.
In Washington you can buy liquor at Costco, Safeway, and many gas stations.
Another odd thing in Utah is that car dealerships are all closed on Sunday. Wouldn’t that be an illegal religious restriction, you might ask. Well, the way they wrote the law, dealerships are only allowed to be open one day per weekend, Saturday or Sunday, and while which day they close is their choice, it is pretty much a restriction on Sunday operations.
By the way, when the law passed, it was sold to the public as a pro-consumer, as opposed to religious, bill. The argument was that closing one day a week would result in savings to the dealerships, which savings would be passed on to the public. Oddly, I haven’t found cars to be cheaper in Utah than other places. Go figure.
A lot of states don’t do car sales on Sundays. I was surprised to learn recently that Florida allows them.
I have a friend who owns dealerships in Colorado (Sunday sales not allowed). He never wants them allowed. He said he will not sell any more cars if they can sell them 7 days per week rather than 6. Colorado now allows liquor stores to be open on Sundays, and they don’t sell more liquor because the stores are open on Sundays; in the past, people just bought their liquor on saturdays.
If you want to see Blue Laws in action, look to Maryland.
WA used to have only state liquor stores, when they fought for the new law to allow anyone to sell liquor, they added $$$ in taxes such that most stores show the price and then the taxes so people know what to expect at the cash register.
Iowa also does not allow car sales on Sunday. I always heard that is was because the banks were closed and they couldn’t do financing, which does not make sense to me because they are open into the evenings after banks close on other days The car dealerships are also open on holidays like Labor Day and Memorial Day, when banks are typically closed.
No car sales in NJ on Sunday also. Liquor licensing varies tremendously by cities/states. In NYC or Seattle, you can buy beer at the local CVS or Target and every imaginable kind of store. In NJ liquor licences for food places are handled by local governments who keep them very limited, I have seen companies buy a local restaurant just for their liquor licence.
If you want your head to spin, try buying liquor in PA. Beer by the 6-pack in this store, by the case in that store, champagne over here, liquor at yet another store…and no liquor sales or even drinks in bars on election day.
For this reason (and the cost) my grandfather was the booze runner on Saturday nights. We’d go to Mt St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg MD to church (no Sat Mass in PA, at least where we were) and he’d stop at the liquor store for booze and cigarettes for my cousins. Wild days in the Dodge Dart with a 70+ year old man and a 10 year old girl, out running the law.
^I don’t understand PA liquor laws at all. Whenever we go to my mom’s for a family event, she tells us what to bring from NJ. (though our liquor license laws are definitely a pain for restaurants, take-home is simple–every liquor store sells everything. OTOH, only a very few grocery stores can get licenses–each chain can only have two licenses throughout the state .)
PA has changed since the last time I was there. You can now buy liquor in some grocery stores, but you have to pay for it at a register where the liquor dept is, then continue shopping and purchase your grocery items at the main registers. Huh?
Gas won’t be cheaper much longer in NJ - raising the newly imposed gas tax almost another nickel soon. I believe Bergen County, NJ still doesn’t allow retail stores to be open on Sunday. The whole mall is shut.
One thing I learned from the TX weed thread - in NJ everyone in the car is charged with possession if drugs are found, whether you knew they were there or not, if it was your car or not.
In PA you can buy liquor in “wine and spirits” stores. You can buy beer in quantities of a case or larger (keg) at beer distributors. For quantities of beer smaller than that, you can purchase at restaurants, bars, or retailers who are licensed. As stated above, some grocers are permitted to sell alcohol, but there are very specific requirements for doing so - separation from the rest of the supermarket, separate cashiers, and seating for I think 30 patrons.
We were on a long drive through Oregon recently and it was a bit scary concerning the gas pump attendants. We noticed that many of the gas stations closed earlier so we had to plan for that.
Drive through Daiquiris are legal in New Orleans, but if you put the straw into the Daiquiri you will get a ticket (unless you’re a passenger). Keep the straw out while you’re in the car! And yes, you can walk around with open alcohol but NO GLASS.
NYC speed limit is now 25 everywhere except the few highways. Don’t ask me how I know…
I find byzantine liquor laws very annoying. You shouldn’t need to visit 3 different places for wine, beer, and spirits.
A couple of things got us:
In NY they only have to post driving and parking rules at the entrance to the town. As you are driving by the town line at night you will see a sign with a bunch of 1/2" high print. Those are the town laws you have to obey. If you come into town a different way and don’t pass the sign you still have to obey those laws.
When we moved to WA, we found out that kids are not allowed to be brought into bars at all, something we routinely did during daytime hours in NY for the right pizza. In order to have a bar/restaurant combination there has to be a wall dividing the two.
The separation in WA doesn’t have to be a wall, it just has to be some kind of barrier between the bar area and the restaurant - even metal pipes work.
Two of our favorite places to eat are classified as bars; I love the adults-only aspect.
In Wisconsin not only can you bring that 8 year old into a bar, you can buy him a beer!
Skieurope mentioned Romeo & Juliet laws. The age of consent to sexual activities also varies from state to state. It’s 17 in New York as a lot of Connecticut and New Jersey men have found out.
The Pennsylvania liquor laws are nuts, no question about it. And it’s all wrapped up in weird politics, too, so it has proved hard to change.
The state has a monopoly on sales of hard liquor and wine. (That includes “coolers” based on hard liquor – usually vodka – or wine, but not coolers based on beer. Luckily, no one drinks that stuff anymore, but when they did people could find different brands that were direct competitors in completely different stores.) So those things are sold exclusively in “state stores,” and the state stores are all 100% union staffed and subject to all sorts of regulation originally enacted specifically to suppress alcohol sales (like blue laws, limits on using credit cards, treating pint bottles like prescription drugs, etc.) Bars and restaurants with liquor licenses have to buy their wine and liquor from the state, at retail prices.
Beer in cases and kegs is sold by licensed beer distributors, of whom there are many (but not that many). They are well organized small businesses, and do not want their rice bowl broken by grocery stores or the state honing in on their business. Bars and some bodegas can sell beer by the bottle or six-pack (maybe two six-packs at a time, but not more). And of course restaurants with liquor licenses can sell everything.
There have been various attempts to rationalize and privatize the system, but all of them founder on the same rocks: No one wants to compensate the beer distributors for destroying their businesses. The unions implacably oppose privatization of the system, and really any other attempt to expand alcohol sales in non-union places. And the state liquor store system is immensely profitable. There’s no way anyone would pay enough for a hard liquor license to make it worth while for the state to give up the business. And anything less would be called (and would be) a giveaway to rich and powerful corporations. In addition, there are still a fair number of rural legislators who affirmatively do not want to make liquor easier or cheaper to buy.
One of Utah’s strange alcohol laws is that you can’t have more than one drink at a time. A waitress stood with my second drink and wouldn’t give it to me until I handed her my unfinished first drink. There wasn’t that much left of the first (and it was mostly melted ice anyway) but still!
Wait, some of you can’t go car-shopping on Sundays? That seems very 1970.
Liquor buying - we had to google it when we were in MA this summer… I guess it is legal to sell in grocery stores, but only up to a certain amount of stores per chain, so you don’t really know ahead of time whether such and such grocery store is one of the ones that has the license.
CA has a law that if you have 5 or more people behind you on a 2 lane rural highway you are meant to pull over at the soonest safe location to let them pass. Great rule, wish more places did that. We also have a law that if your windshield wipers are on, your headlights need to be also.