You know those Microsoft commercials where they build a PC store inside your house? Well, Costco’s Initiative 1183 isn’t like that. Frizzelle isn’t going to open his door one day to find his apartment conveniently transformed into his own personal liquor store, his walls lined with shelves of exotic single malt scotches with unpronounceable names, and foofoo looking bottles of artisan gin. In fact, for most of us here at The Stranger, I-1183 will actually make it less convenient to buy booze. Gone will be our trusty old state store a mere one block away—under I-1183, our closest liquor outlet will be the QFC at Pike and Broadway, almost three blocks away… even further depending on where they place the liquor aisle within that cavernous store.
Yes, for all its promise to liberalize liquor sales, I-1183 will actually make it three times less convenient for Frizzelle to buy the booze he relies on to get himself through the day. That’s why I’m voting no on I-1183. Shouldn’t you?
But they’ll be open on holidays. Right?
I still don’t understand why I’m supposed to expect QFC to have a better selection of booze than the state stores do. The wine section of QFC is half the size of a state liquor store.
But, you do have to go to the grocery store regularly, right, to buy coffee and milk and frozen waffles? So, at least it’s not a special trip. That’s what bugs me about the liquor store – I can buy tequila, but not limes; whiskey, but not ice.
May have already been said at one point, in the northeast, where I grew up, my family and friends always made a point to stop at the New Hampshire state liquor store if anyone happened to be going anywhere near New Hampshire. Their stores were known for having the best prices around.
Goldy, would you support an East-coast style system? If not, why is the WA system (or the current Costco vision or the previous Sharkansky vision) better? Cite reasons beyond “booze bad”. The levels of drunk driving and general drunkenness weren’t any worse or better back home and it was ridiculously more convenient to get stuff as an adult. I used to go to a big store–literally, huge, the size of a Safeway–and have my choice of easily hundreds of types of wine, beer, liquor. I could buy an Armenian table wine (red or white!), a bottle of South African whiskey, and a sixer of ale from the Orkney Islands north of Scotland if I wanted to. I can’t do that today at the state stores.
In NY & CT, basically, if I pass background and finance checks, I can open a retail storefront and sell booze. If that store is the size of a current WA state store, the size of a Safeway, or the size of a smoke shop on Broadway, I can do it. In both you have limits on distances from schools and places of worship; in CT you can only sell liquor between 8am-8pm Monday-Saturday. Both have comparable overall tax markups to fund services from booze sales and general budget needs.
In 2011, morally, economically, and philosophically, there is no reason for the state to be in this private enterprise a second longer.
Goldy, that’s not an argument against I-1183; it’s an argument to move The Stranger’s offices closer to a QFC, Safeway or Costco.
@6 Incorrect. In 2011, an 80 year old constitutional amendment gives states the specific and fundamentally unique legal right to make a shit-ton of money off of alcohol regulation and sales in a way they cannot with any other product. That is the reason for our broke-ass state to be in this public/private enterprise.
@8, That’s why I left out “legally”.
@5: Yes, I would support “an East-coast style system” like that in my native Pennsylvania.
And here I thought the Stranger wised up and didn’t let Goldy near this topic anymore.
@10 Seriously, what is this farcical appeal of state stores selling liquor, over private? Is Pennsylvannia or Washington some mystical nirvana with less underage drinking and DUI deaths than Connecticut, or Massachusetts, or New York?
I just want to know how much the beer conglomerates are paying Goldy. Basically, all beer is made by what, three companies? They’re very rich.
One nice thing about New Jersey are the private liquor stores. I can shop for the best price, frequent the stores that stock my brand of Scotch and know that I’m supporting private enterprise in Jersey.
Washington state liquor stores are as esthetically pleasing as the drivers license bureau, the staff have all the charm of Nurse Ratchet and the selection and pricing reflect the very worst of a monopolistic system.
But somehow I don’t think that matters to Goldy. So long as whatever it is establishes, maintains or expands government control, taxation or authority, he’s for it. When push comes to shove and over the years, that’s been the case.
A reasoned argument in favor of privatizing liquor stores, or anything else in government, for that matter, falls on deaf ears when its addressed to him. Yet he continues to scab The Stranger by not organizing the place and demanding a union agreement that puts journalists and others on par with those who work at union establishments such as The Seattle Times.
Call the NLRB, Goldy, and ask for the officer of the day – she’ll tell you how to get a campaign started. Unless, that is, you only like ranting about going union instead of actually doing it, which would necessitate a lot more trips to a liquor store and a quick realization on your part that competitively-driven prices inure to your favor when you buy in bulk.
The big grocery stores and food suppliers don’t care about selling liquor so much as they want its loss-leader potential for getting customers into chain stores and selling them more soft drinks and junk foods with a higher profit margin. I’d say the initiative to replace state liquor stores with grocery chains has little or nothing to do with improving selection or convenience for liquor customers. It’s about retail profits.
@14 the staff at the liquor store on Broadway, across from the QFC are extremely friendly. If I’m planning a party they let me know when my favorite liquors will be on sale, are knowledgeable about their products, and even wave when we meet on the street. I’m with Goldy on this, if you sell the cow, you’ll have to buy your milk.
Would we be able to buy liquor after 7pm? Like maybe 2? Also, could I grab my weekly bottle of liquor when I make my weekly grocery trip? Such a cut in my greenhouse gas emissions!
@16 But will they special order for you? Do they run deep-discount sales? Do they sell other, complimentary products? State liquor stores can’t and won’t do any of these because they’re run with Soviet-style central planning. Cheers, comrade – if you like state liquor stores then you would have loved Moscow’s GUM during the heydey of communism.
And what’s with the goofy cow analogy? You’re buying the “milk” already, but you’re paying more for it. Since the state – all government – is lousy at doing well in business but does a great job at being lousy at it who wouldn’t want it out of the liquor business?
@2, but the wine selection of state liquor stores is LAUGHABLY BAD. Seriously, if you hate the WSLCB’s selection of liquor, their wine aisles are a hundred times worse. Fortunately, no rational person buys wine there; they go to a wine shop or a grocery store. I think even Safeway has better wines than WSLCB.
They claim to have some sort of fancy wine selection board including representatives from the industry but I honestly believe those reps deliberately stock the state stores with weird junk wines to protect the grocery business.
@18, state liquor stores do special-order, almost certainly more than a grocery will ever do for you, and DEFINITELY more than Costco. Special orders at Costco? Hilarious, bro. That’s why I’m still voting no even though state liquor stores make me madder than an oven full of hornets. The only thing that makes me madder? Big box stores.
Remove the 10,000 square foot stipulation and start over.
Anyone who votes for this initiative deserves to lose their job. Karma happens when you vote to kick people in the teeth in this bad economy.
Washington’s LCB system is already much like Pennsylvania’s; PA was the model on which the WA system was erected. That said, Washington’s system is much more sensible.
As Goldy knows, in PA you can’t buy any form of alcoholic beverage in a convenience store or in a supermarket. Not wine, not even beer.
For beer, you have to go to either a bar (for a maximum of two six-packs) or to a beer distributor (for a case or more). I think it may have been loosened up recently to allow cups and maybe even snacks, but it used to be that the only products available at a beer distributor was drinks with alcohol below a specified percentage. Thus, wine coolers are sold by beer distributors.
Liquor and wine is sold only at state stores in Pennsylvania. Again, they’ve loosened the regs a bit in recent years, so state store employees may now be allowed to make recommendations, or at least give their opinions on specific wines.
If we were to privatize, I’d immensely prefer the Massachusetts model over Costco’s. In short, a person or corporation can own no more than three liquor stores in the state. If the owner is a person, he/she must be a resident of MA. If the owner is a corporation, it must have been incorporated in MA and a majority of its board of directors must reside in MA.
IOW, the Massachusetts system strongly encourages small business. The size of the store doesn’t matter — you can open a hole-in-the-wall or a megastore. The orientation of the store doesn’t matter — you can specialize in microbrews/artisan liquors/fine wines or sell lowest-common-denominator swill, or anything in between.
If that model was applied in WA, Costco would be perfectly free to apply for liquor licenses (I’m pretty sure they’re incorporated here, and just over half of their directors live in WA). But they could so it in no more than three locations in the state.
I live in northern queen anne: not the center of the city, but hardly the far flung burbs. I walk to a grocery store a few times a week, just under a mile away. The closest liquor store is about 3 miles away. If you live next to a state run liquor store, of course you’ll have to go a little further for booze. But pretty much everybody lives w/in convenient distance from a grocery store — we choose our living arrangements in part based on that; not so much the booze store. It’s not as if 3 blocks is an unreasonable distance to buy booze. (3 miles, on the other hand, kinda is.) Silliest argument from Goldy yet.
STOP LYING.
@21,
That would be a great option for the legislature to pass if it could ever manage to tell the WSLCB and the anti-liquor nutters (*cough* Goldy *cough*) to go fuck themselves.
Unfortunately, the legislature is going to sit on its hands and let Costco craft its own legislation.
I will be voting yes, because I know it won’t pass, but I want it to be close enough to make those motherfuckers at the WSLCB sweat.
Except it’s NOT why you’re voting no on I-1183. Are you that desperate that you’ll resort to rapidly shifting your point to gain traction with your readers, WHO CLEARLY DISAGREE WITH YOU ON THIS ISSUE? At least when you were making the same point every single week I could pretend you were being intellectually honest. Well-intentioned but misguided. Now you have denied me that option.
I’ve given up caring about this issue. But I will vote to privatize because of those annoying ads with the pious police and EMT gassing on about how the children might get a hold of liquor.
Goldy you are such a shitbag. I actually hate you. You are a perfect example of a muckraker. I hope you fucking step on a lego. I hope your entire family gets a urinary tract infection. I wish nothing but misfortune to you.
My thoughts on you personally, aside, Here’s a little story. I was in a liquor store the other day and I asked the clerk about a specifc gin they had in stock. He replied “I can’t tell you, I haven’t had a drink in forty years!”
Why the flying fuck do you work in a liquor store then? I had relatively the same experience at another store the next week. “I don’t drink I have no idea.”
These state retail clerks, rather than being encouraged to familiarize themselves with the product they are selling, are trained as ENFORCERS. The state has no incentive to train or hire competent retail clerks because, at it’s root (and because of teetotalling dickbags like you) it wants to limit access to everyone as much as possible.
The passage of this initiative will serve as a crack in the oppressive morality law stranglehold the WSLCB has. A crack that we can put our hands in and pull apart, and eventually, hopefully within six years, completely tear down.
So once again, fuck you Goldy, fuck your politics, and fuck you for trying to limit my freedom to buy liquor whenever and however I please.
I want to vote for N in Seattle’s liquor initiative. It’s PERFECT. And I remember going to a couple of truly fantastic liquor stores when I lived in Boston, both well under 3,000 feet, let alone 10,000, but both with a wider and weirder selection than any WSLCB. Costco? Costco is going to have four brands of liquor.
Hhhmmm…
Am I the only one who detected more than a whiff of satire in this post of Goldy’s?
Apparently so….
@ 30, I got it – my response @ 1 was in the same vein.
@18 When was the last time Costco special-ordered anything for you?
The cow and the milk analogy is that the current system creates a lot of revenue for the state, which we should keep. I don’t see any reason to pricatize a sound source of income. The sale of licenses will create short turn gain, but the state will lose in the long-run. It will be very easy for private retailers to run initiatives to lower liquor license fees in the future.
Fnarf, I appreciate the support.
But I have to tell you that I wouldn’t sign the petition for an initiative to introduce the MA approach. I never, ever sign one of those petitions, no matter how much I might agree with its intent.
The I&R system in WA is a blight upon our political culture, truly the worst aspect of life hereabouts. Its one small bright spot is that we’re not California, that the state constitution can’t be amended by initiative. I’d vote for such an initiative if it was on the ballot, but I sure as hell wouldn’t lift a finger to get it there.
How much do I detest Initiative and Referendum? How adamant am I about not abetting its use? I wouldn’t even sign a petition aimed at outlawing I&R. (Not that that would be allowed … it would amend the constitution.)
@32 Safeway/QFC/Fred Meyer/Albertsons are eager to special order products. Try special ordering a brand of scotch not regularly stocked by WSLCB. They give you a stunned-cow look then laugh.
Since I don’t care about revenue to the state – it spends too much as is – that argument has never been persuasive.
The system is a silly holdover from the end of Prohibition. Opponents of the initiative sound like bluenose members of the Womens’ Christian Temperance Union. What’s next – closing bars on Sunday?
And every bar/club owner on the Hill should be voting NO too!
I know, I know… you think your liquor costs are going to go down and it’ll help your bottom line. But think it through all the way for a second:
How many Jack & Cokes do you think you’re gonna sell at $5 a pop when any ol’ poor hipsters kid can just go to QFC — one block away — and get a whole pint of Jack AND a liter of Coke for under $10? (And then get drunk in the parking lot behind Cha-Cha before going into your bar, buying the cheapest beer that you sell and puking all over you bathroom walls!)
the piper-troll @34:
I can’t address the alleged eagerness of the grocery chains, but the LCB even has a webpage about special orders and how to make them. Looks like there’s a form available for filing your order, right there in your nearby liquor store. Maybe you’ll add to their average of 1293 special orders per month.
And what can you order? Maybe you’ll be able to find it somewhere on this 116 page list.
Maybe that look and laugh had more to do with the visual impression of your bagpipes and kilt than with special orders.
@36 (Who’s jealous of my Highland heritage – most girly-men are) When I’ve tried to special order Haig & Haig Pinch, I’ve been told the WSLCB stopped stocking it in fifths and so I was SOL. But I can walk into every privately owned liquor store in Jersey and buy it AND in this hyper-expensive part of the country, I can buy it cheaper than Washington state where everything is priced not by the market but by some bureaucrat in Olympia.
I’ll take the private sector every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Better selection, better price, vastly better service and better for the economy.
People keep talking as if Costco, and only Costco, will ever be allowed to sell liquor once this passes. But I would be willing to bet that BevMo, among other liquor superstores, is watching this very closely, and within a year of this passing, will have at least one store opening in the Puget Sound area. There go all the complaints about specialty products, right out the window. Anyone who’s ever shopped in a BevMo knows what I mean.
@38, not all BevMos are created equal. I was in one recently, in Sherman Oaks, a fairly affluent area, and they had a decidedly middling selection. A couple of items that WSLCB doesn’t have, but loads of gaps where a good WSLCB beats them hollow.
@37, your Pinch story illustrates one of the biggest problems with the Washington single-point distributorship system, which isn’t specifically crappy because it’s state-owned, but simply because it’s single-point. When for whatever reason they’re out of something, and they for whatever reason decide they’re not getting it back in, which is what’s happening to Pinch Dimple, you’re SOL. This is not a particularly obscure brand. Neither is Campari, which the WSLCB was out of stock in FOR A YEAR a while back, which is just freaking mental. It’s like being out of stock of bananas, EVERYWHERE IN THE STATE FOR A YEAR. No recourse.
BTW, if you hurry on up to the Edmonds store, they have one bottle left on closeout, for less than you’ll ever pay in Jersey.
@36, special orders through the WSLCB are SUPER-AWESOME, because the MINIMUM ORDER IS ONE CASE, and who doesn’t want to buy a whole case of some obscure amaro that costs $45 a bottle ($540 total) and may or may not taste like horrible piss? I’m sure our bekilted friend is dying to drop half a grand for his tipple of choice. What could be more reasonable than that?
Oh, that’s right — PRIVATE RETAIL STORES.
We’ve been over this “special order” business before. The one-case minimum is stupid, but also stupid is the fact that there are still hundreds of rare and interesting liquors that are not available on that list, however long it is, and more every day. These are legal products that Washingtonians are not allowed to buy. Because?
i just want to be able to buy a bottle of rum on a sunday at 10pm. what happened to separation of church and state… this is way over due ppl.