Bye-bye Blue Laws

[bloviatrix]

We all knew it was only a matter of time after NYS allowed wine stores to be open any six days of the week, that they would further liberalize the law. Well, it's happened.

Yesterday, while strolling down Broadway I noticed that all the wine stores were open. And they all have new posted hours. This means you will no longer have run out on saturday night when you realize you need that bottle for sunday.

Drink up!!

[docsconz]

Cool. I'm sure some will disagree. I was glad when they allowed stores to open on Sundays. I thought it reasonable that they requireed at least one day closed, though.

[Gifted Gourmet]

Heart of the Bible Belt here in Atlanta and no Sunday sales still in effect ... I don't see that situation changing any time soon!

[oakapple]

Cool. I'm sure some will disagree. I was glad when they allowed stores to open on Sundays. I thought it reasonable that they requireed at least one day closed, though.

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What did you find reasonable about that?

[docsconz]

What did you find reasonable about that?

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Even wine shop owners and salespeople need a life. I'm sure there are ways around that. My personal peeve was legislation that a specific day is off limits. I don't really have a problem with the idea of it being any day of the store's choosing. On the other hand, I don't have a problem with eliminating blue laws entirely.

[Daniel]

Even wine  shop owners and salespeople need a life.  I'm sure there are ways around that. My personal peeve was legislation that a specific day is off limits. I don't really have a problem with the idea of it being any day of the store's choosing. On the other hand, I don't have a problem with eliminating blue laws entirely.

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So do you think all stores and businesses should be forced to close one day a week.. And do you think the landlord should still charge them rent for the day they are closed.

[slkinsey]

To restate Daniel's sentiment in perhaps a less confrontational way: Why should the law force liquor stores to close one day a week when there is no law for grocery stores, drug stores, bodegas and korean delis, restaurants, etc? In my opinion, they kept in the "one day closed a week" provision to appease the religious types who believe liquor shouldn't be sold on the (Christian) sabbath, because if liquor stores have to pick one day a week to close, most of them will choose Sunday.

Now that we have (mostly) knocked down that silly law, how about allowing liquor stores to sell beer?

[bloviatrix]

Now that we have (mostly) knocked down that silly law, how about allowing liquor stores to sell beer?

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Actually, a law has been introduced that will allow supermarkets to sell wine. As you can imagine, the liquor store owners are none too pleased.

[JesseNYC]

I was in California last week and was thrilled to see wine, beer and liquor sold in every supermarket. It was fantastic. The blue laws here are just archaic.

[Todd36]

In Connecticut, where wine/beer/liquor sales are time restricted (as in 8PM closing), the law is a result of 1960's armed robberies and murders at stores late at night (it's a cash business, or at least it used to be). According to an article in the Hartford Courant a few years back, store owners liked the short hours because they permitted easy owner-operated stores and/or one shift of employees. I think the same reason is behind the traditional short hours of many stores in Europe. Mom and pop type stores really like these laws.

[melkor]

I was in California last week and was thrilled to see wine, beer and liquor sold in every supermarket. It was fantastic. The blue laws here are just archaic.

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Supermarkets with proper wine storage are very rare in CA - all of them sell wine, but most of them are selling wine that has been on the shelf upright, under bright lights for 6+ months. There are far fewer reasonable wine shops in rural CA than there are in rural NY because grocery stores carry wine and both storage and selection suffer because of it.

[JesseNYC]

Supermarkets with proper wine storage are very rare in CA - all of them sell wine, but most of them are selling wine that has been on the shelf upright, under bright lights for 6+ months.  There are far fewer reasonable wine shops in rural CA than there are in rural NY because grocery stores carry wine and both storage and selection suffer because of it.

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WHile I won't argue with you about the storage of wine in supermarkets in CA, it's still a nice feeling to go to a Von's and get anything I want, be it a bottle of improperly stored Chianti or a bottle of Grey Goose.

[Bux]

WHile I won't argue with you about the storage of wine in supermarkets in CA, it's still a nice feeling to go to a Von's and get anything I want, be it a bottle of improperly stored Chianti or a bottle of Grey Goose.

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It assumes you don't want a bottle of some remotely upscale wine. The result of forcing mom and pop liquor stores to compete with supermarkets on the plonk, means that they will have to make all their profits on the upscale stuff. It helps a certain consumer and hurts another, but that is the nature or our economy in most marketplace issues. Once you remove a personal interest, the question is, "why should the retail wine market be so different from that of butter, eggs and underwear?" To what extent should government protect consumers, retailers and distributors and in states where the government owns the liquor shops, "why?"

[jhlurie]

Heart of the Bible Belt here in Atlanta and no Sunday sales still in effect ... I don't see that situation changing any time soon!

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I live in a county (Bergen County, NJ) with some of the most restrictive blue laws in the country, and it's only 10 minutes from Manhattan. And it's not changing anytime soon--probably never.

So it's not just the Bible Belt.

In the case of Bergen, they don't even pretend it's religion related. It might have been 100 years ago, but these days it's some built-in life-long movement to keep the New Yorkers away, and the streets relatively traffic-free, at least one day a week (not only can't you sell booze, but also a great enough collection of other goods that most stores, other than supermarkets, are forced to be closed on Sundays)

It's actually strange that the one part of the local blue laws they could probably loosen up on without interfering with the REAL goal of the laws (to keep people away) would probably be alcohol sales. Oh yeah... and batteries. Believe it or not, at the epicenter of the Blue Laws (Paramus) you can't sell batteries.

Here's a tale of someone who visited a local BC grocery store on a Sunday and couldn't buy a spatula... (take a look at the first comment down after the blog entry)

[bloviatrix]

Bergen County's blue laws are a very sore point with me. And I don't even live there.

[tommy]

(not only can't you sell booze, but also a great enough collection of other goods that most stores, other than supermarkets, are forced to be closed on Sundays)

It's actually strange that the one part of the local blue laws they could probably loosen up on without interfering with the REAL goal of the laws (to keep people away) would probably be alcohol sales.    Here's a tale of someone who visited a local BC grocery store on a Sunday and couldn't buy a spatula... (take a look at the first comment down after the blog entry)

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you can indeed buy alcohol in bergen county on sundays.

as suggested, this law has very little to do with religion, or the government's desire to make sure that people selling shoes get at least one day off a week , but rather it's an attempt to keep the traffic down in an area that is by most barometers much too congested due to its many retail outlets. bergenites have been arguing the pros and cons for years, and i, for one, like the "law." it should be noted that if you need batteries on sunday, you can buy batteries at many places. the law has so many loopholes and exceptions that i've never found myself on a sunday wanting for anything, except for maybe shoes, which i could drive 20 minutes in either direction and buy anyway.

Edited October 12, 2004 by tommy (log)

[robert brown]

As far as I know, you still can't buy beer in a New York supermarket on Sunday morning. So if you want one with your take-out from the local appetizing, you're out of luck.

[neep]

As far as I know, you still can't buy beer in a New York supermarket on Sunday morning. So if you want one with your take-out from the local appetizing, you're out of luck.

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Between 4 in the morning and noon (or thereabouts) beer sales are forbidden in NYC. I suspect the liquor stores can open earlier than that. Of course you can't buy beer in a liquor store.

[Susan G]

Here in New Mexico (Land of the Liquor Store Drive-Thru Window), a vestigal blue law remains: No liquor sales between 2am and noon on Sunday. The supermarkets have yellow tape like the crime scene stufff to keep customers away from the goods.........other places use tarps.

Not that it cuts down on the drunk driving on Sunday mornings!

[mascarpone]

Some interesting history from-- Alexis McCrossen, Holy Day, HolidayThe American Sunday. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000.

'During the middle decades of the (nineteenth) century, "the Continental Sabbath" augmented the cosmopolitan Sunday of disorder and crime, rallies and lessons, libraries and lectures. As cities swelled with German, Irish, Jewish, and French immigrants, certain neighborhoods came alive each Sunday with a variety theaters and dance halls, small entrepreneurs offering chances to win prizes in games of chance, "museums" displaying midgets, Indians, or treasures from far-away places, and daguerreotype establishments where a portrait could be made. New York City's "Kleindeutchland" (Little Germany)--with hundreds of beer halls, saloons, and wine gardens--provided public space for the intensive social life of the Geman community. Staten Island became the home of several lager breweries, which built lavish resorts. Sundays were especially busy in these places, for it was then that entire families went to drink beer, visit with friends, listen to music, and dance, just as Gemans and others did in Europe. It was widely assumed that "rhine-wine is the religion fo those [Germans] who can afford to pay for wine, and lager-beer of those who can't." Passion for the Continental Sunday ran deep. When the New York state government introduced a police force to New York City in 1857, crowds, incited by rumors that beer would no longer be sold on Sundays, rioted. After nearly a decade of conflict over Sunday drinking, many Germans cast their ballots in favor of the Democratic Party during the elections of 1866 because Republicans had passed laws forbidding the sale of liquor on Sunday.'

'In reaction, some native-born urbanites denounced the efforts of Germans in American cities "to have our method of keeping sunday done away with, and their method adopted in its stead." An essay titled "The Foreign Movement on the Sunday Question, " published shortly before th Civil War, neatly expressed the differences between the "traditional" American and the newly imported Continental Sabbaths. It contrasted native-born Americans' regard for Sunday--"as a day of rest, of religious exercise, and of abstinence from labor and public diversions of every kind"--with that of the "natives of Continental Europe," who dared to make it "a day of pleasure and enjoyment." Patriotic Americans were called to fight a battle against German, Irish, and French newcomers who were trying to "regulate our social life, make us open theatres on Sunday, substitute lager bier saloons for churches," and turn American cities into "German towns." It seemed as though the "holiday of despotism"--smuggled into the United States by refugees from war, tyranny, and oppression--would obliterate the "holy day of freedom". The "American" Sunday deserved protection. The passage and enforcement of Sunday laws was considered the best approach to this vital task. During a fictional family discussion, one participant exclaimed that the Continental Sabbath "does not suit democratic institutions." Rest, not recreation, cultivated virtue among the citizenry. "If the Sabbath of America is simply to be a universal loafing, picnicking, dining-out day, as it is now with all our foreign populations," he argued,"we shall need what they have in Europe, the gendarmes at every turn." Powerful groups of Americans believed the Continental Sabbath threatened American liberty and democratic institutions.' McCrossen, Holy Day, HolidayThe American Sunday (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 42-43.

We've come along way, baby!

[tanabutler]

Even wine  shop owners and salespeople need a life.  I'm sure there are ways around that. My personal peeve was legislation that a specific day is off limits. I don't really have a problem with the idea of it being any day of the store's choosing. On the other hand, I don't have a problem with eliminating blue laws entirely.

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Surely there are ways to staff so that everyone gets days off. It isn't a problem for the guy who owns K Wines, my favorite shop in the county.

Blue Laws = a bad thing, as sanctimonious and as hypocritical as was Prohibition, methinks.

John, you know I'm not mixing you up in that statement. Supercilious, yes, but sanctimonious, no.

[phaelon56]

you can indeed buy alcohol in bergen county on sundays.

Yeah. My weird experience shortl after moving into Bergen County... I headed up to the register on a Sunday morning and was told, among other things, that I could buy the soap but not the towels, the cookies but not the bookshelves.... and all the whil a guy is at the register next to me buying a half gallon of Jack Daniels.

And those who've mentioned "any six days of the week" regarding liquor sales in NY state are 100% correct. They've long been able to be open on Sundays but only if they closed on some other day.

It used to be that bars were not allowed to open until 6 PM or 8 PM on Election Day as well but I think that's been rescinded.

[bloviatrix]

Mascarpone, that's fascinating. And really quite relevant to some current societal attitudes. But I won't get into that as it's completely off-topic.

[mascarpone]

Mascarpone, that's fascinating.  And really quite relevant to some current societal attitudes.  But I won't get into that as it's completely off-topic.

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It is a facinating read. McCrossen really did a first class job.

[mascarpone]

More history on the origin and meaning of "blue laws":

'Along with many other long-lived customs, the Puritans brought a strict form of Sunday observance to the New World that influenced how the other British North American colonies developed their own blend of Sunday regulation. Sunday laws--know as "blue laws" because of the supposed color of paper on which they were published in colonial Connecticut--emerged out of widely shared respect for Sunday. Both law and custom set the day appart from the rest of the week; even Quakers (who were suspicious of civil laws regarding religious belief and observance)passed a Sabath Law in 1705 in Pennsylvania, and Catholic-dominated Maryland did so shortly thereafter. By no means was Sunday observance uniform--Virginians raced and gambled on horses, the enslaved in North and South tended their own plots and went to market in nearby towns, and fishermen in Marblehead, Massachuesettes, repaired to taverns rather than church. It was, however, common.' McClossen, 10.

The designation "blue laws," which colloquially refers to those laws that regulate morality, suggests Puritan and Pilgrim influence. Sometime during the first part of the nineteenth century, many Americans came to believe that "tradition" included abstinance from alchohol, strict Sunday observance, and rigid separation of the sexes, and either rejected or cleaved to these imagined traditions. The association of strict Sunday observance with Puritanism persists to this day.' McClossen, 11.