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No wine cleanup in Aisle 12
By adamg on Wed, 11/08/2006 - 8:57am
Mass Marrier analyzes the defeat of the three statewide ballot questions; he says 2 and 3 were just too confusing for most people. As for 1:
... Voters bought into Chicken Little-style claims of bodies on the highways and drunken teens in an updated version of Reefer Madness. ...
Talonvaki was glad to see Question 1 defeated, but for a different reason:
... The small liquor stores have something the supermarkets don't have: character. I have grown to love the local packies. The one near my house, where I've been going for 6½ years, and they know me (the woman remembers when I moved in!), the shop on Mass Ave., where until recently Dixie the cat lived, the shop in Southie with the autographed photo of Bobby Orr in midair (and a story to go with it), the store across from the Star Market on Beacon in Somerville that's a shrine to firefighters ... every time I go into one, it's not just to get booze, it's to connect with the neighbourhood and have a conversation.
You can't do that in the supermarket. And now that you can buy liquor on Sundays, there's really no need to. ...
... I live in Mission Hill, so the booze runs plentiful, and already having a plethora of liquor stores and bars doesn't really elicit a reaction of "omfg we need Stop & Shop to have crap wine too!" The scare was that bringing wine and beer to convenience stores would have been big trouble for little mom n' pop shops.
Ed. note: You can buy wine in a few supermarkets; if you really want to pick up some wine with your Stouffer's, try Omni Foods on Rte. 9 in Chestnut Hill. Also, does anybody know if Melvin Drugs on Comm. Ave. in Brighton still sells hip-flask bottles of hard liquor?
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Comments
Melvin Drugs
Last time I was there, they were still selling the JD, but I'm not sure how long ago that was (within a year)
liquor at grocery stores
For your shopping convenience on the North Shore, Marblehead has two stores that sell wine and beer in addition to groceries. Shubies (thought that is really more of a specialty food store, selling prepared foods, cheeses, crackers, mustards and dips, chocolate and other nibbles) and Crosby's Supermarket (which has a full range of traditional groceries in addition to a half aisle of wine and beer).
another grocer with liquor
Pemberton Market, at Mass. Ave. and Rindge Avenue in North Cambridge, sells a full line of groceries, along with beer and wine. I don't remember if they sell any other alcohol.
This old store is not to be confused with the newer Pemberton Farms on the other side of Mass. Ave., which has no liquor license.
Thanks again for telling me what's best for me
If the majority of voters are so concerned about small liquor stores, then people will still go to their local packies even if larger stores are given licenses to sell wine, right?
Be wary of when people may personally be against something but won't rest until everyone in society can't make those decisions for themselves. I'll add wine purchasing to the growing list of choices taken away, like abortion, same-sex marriage, and smoking in bars. Fast food is probably next.
In Massachusetts
Same-sex marriage hasn't been taken away!
(woot)
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
why Q1 failed
I'll repeat here the comment I posted at Mass. Marrier's blog:
People don't mind the idea of selling wine in Stop & Shop, Trader Joe's, or Whole Foods. But the Massachusetts Food Association overreached, proposing to create far more new licenses than there are supermarkets, and defining a "food store" so loosely that most 7-Elevens and Gulf stations would qualify. Voters didn't want that.
TJs
Trader Joe's in Brookline for your wine, beer, eggs, bread, and cheese happiness.
Omni closing
The Omni on Rte. 9 is closing. However, you can get beer and wine at the Harvest Co-op in JP.
Omni is closing?
NOOOOOOOOOOOO! (Done in William Shatner's KHAAAAAAN yell).
Re: Omni is closing?
Yup. And as of last Friday, all they had left was some half-price baked beans and matzoh meal. So Omni may already be closed.
I know. The sadness. Who wants to go to Star?
There's always Roche Bros.
Sure, they often run out of staples (dudes! How in the world can you run out of diet Coke?), but nothing beats the prepared-foods (i.e., the "I'm too lazy to cook tonight") section the size of Rhode Island. Although I always feel weird when the old guy wheels my groceries out for me. So when I'm feeling melancholy, I'll go to the Shaw's on Spring Street in West Roxbury - it's getting crushed by Roche Bros. on one side, the SuperDuper Stop & Shop on the other and probably even by THE WORLD'S LARGEST STAR MARKET, SO LARGE IT BENDS GRAVITY down in Dedham, so it's always near empty and worn down by all its troubles.
I always found it creepy in there
City's grocery options shrink
It was always a little creepy at Omni but its better than the HellHole that is Shaws.
Johnny's
Foodmastuh on Beacon Street in Somerville has a halfway decent selection of wine (and some beer - got my Guinness for St Paddy's there this year). It's not the wine that draws me, though. It's the wall-to-wall carpeting, which I'd never seen in a grocery store before.
Carpeting in a grocery store?
What do they do when somebody knocks down a jar of tomato sauce?
It bounces back?
Honestly, I don't know.
It's some sort of indoor-outdoor carpeting, and I'm sure that it gets cleaned occasionally, but it still kind of freaks me out, as there are no spots or funk.
Johnny's and their Dorian Gray carpet are scary, but they do carry wine and they're much less scary than the Stah on Broadway (we call it GUM) or Market Basket on Somerville Ave.
We get Farked
Fark users can't understand how we could reject such a sensible, logical proposal - why, in Louisiana, you can pick up hooch at your local gas station (thanks, Abby!).
Sigh ...
Almost none of the Farkers understand the issue properly either.
Par For the Course
I've been on and off Fark for a while. For a lot of them, what they don't understand properly could fill several large warehouses.
In addition to the reasons
In addition to the reasons stated in the post and in the other comments, I think the idea of in many cases doubling the number of liquor licenses in a city or town was troubling to voters. To many people, the potential benefits of convenience and cheaper prices was outweighed by the unknown effects of adding many more licenses across the state. People decided that they were not willing to take this risk.
Personally, if we were to add more licenses, I would rather see them go to restaurants than to supermarkets. Being able to buy wine in a supermarket is of little added benefit to me, but being able to have a drink with dinner at the latest new local restaurant is huge.