No, not the hypocrisy - we've been over that. No, I'm talking small business ownership. Specifically convenience stores. I'm in Liverpool overnight, examining a PhD thesis student tomorrow. It was my intention, as is frequently the case, to purchase a bottle of fermented grape juice. Should not be difficult, in a city famous for the Beatles and alcohol abuse. And only those things. First THREE convenience stores I walk into are owned by Muslims or Hindus. Two have no alcohol (despite the sign on one proclaiming it to be an off-licence, which means can sell booze as long as you aren't drinking it there). Third has beverages but no pricing and can't just scan the barcode to tell me the cost, he has to ring the manager... I put this down to an aversion to alcohol in these faiths, meaning the proprietors fail to understand the need of a man to locate an easily purchaseable bottle of libation halfway through the night. Or if they DO, they're taking the piss situating themselves next to a kebab shop. This got me to thinking that the Christian faith is not performing well in the convenience store arena. I mean, FFS, Catholics give booze AWAY at Mass, so don't tell me they're against it! Buck up your ideas, ye faithful.
Maybe it's a Liverpool thing. Here in Georgia nearly every convenience store is ran by dot Indians and they all sell booze. I don't think Hindus have a thing about booze. The only stores that don't sell it are because they are too close to a school or church.
Yeah, I dunno. Liverpool is, in the UK, synonymous with high-pitched nasal whining, the Beatles, football and booze, so it came as a shock.
Lotta Irish Catholics in Liverpool traditionally, ain't there? With names like McCartney ... This whole bar-code thing is inexcusable. Not in Liverpool, but in London I've found myself more than once having to leave a restaurant (the rest of the party staying) and seek out a freaking "off-licence" to get something alcoholic, then bringing it back to the restaurant and plunking it on the table. Because the restaurant doesn't have a licence and doesn't care if you do this. Mighty weird. Have you ever read Bill Bryson's account of getting drunk while visiting Liverpool? (...) In another bout of extravagant madness, I had booked a room in the Adelphi Hotel. I had seen it from the street on earlier visits and it appeared to have an old-fashioned grandeur about it that I was keen to investigate. On the other hand, it looked expensive and I wasn’t sure my trousers could stand another session in the trouser press. So I was most agreeably surprised when I checked in to discover that I was entitled to a special weekend rate and that there would be money spare for a nice meal and a parade of beer in any of the many wonderful pubs in which Liverpool specialises. And so, soon afterwards, I found myself, like all fresh arrivals in Liverpool, in the grand and splendorous surroundings of the Philharmonic, clutching a pint glass and rubbing shoulders with a happy Friday-evening throng. The Phil (you can call it this if you have been there twice) was in fact a bit too crowded for my liking. There was nowhere to sit and scarcely any room to stand, so I drank two pints, just enough at my time of life to need a pee — for there is no place in the world finer for a pee than the ornate gents’ room of the Philharmonic — then went off to find some place a little quieter. I ended up in a place called The Vines, which was nearly as ornate as the Philharmonic but infinitely quieter. Apart from me, there were only three other customers, which was a mystery to me because it was a very fine pub with wood panelling by some Grinling Gibbons wannabe and a plaster ceiling even more ornate than the panelling. As I was sitting there drinking my beer and savouring my plush surroundings, some guy came in with a collecting tin from which the original label had been clumsily scratched, and asked me for a donation for handicapped children. ‘Which handicapped children?’ I asked. ‘Ones in wheelchairs like.’ ‘I mean which organisation do you represent?’ ‘It’s, er, the, er, Handicapped Children’s Organisation like.’ ‘Well, as long as it’s totally legitimate,’ I said and gave him 20p. And that is what I like so much about Liverpool. The factories may be gone, there may be no work, the city may be pathetically dependent on football for its sense of destiny, but the Liverpudlians still have character and initiative, and they don’t bother you with preposterous ambitions to win the bid for the next Olympics. So nice was The Vines that I drank two more pints and then realised that I really ought to get something in my stomach lest I grow giddy and end up staggering into street furniture and singing ‘Mother Machree’. Outside, the hill on which the pub stood seemed suddenly and unaccountably steep and taxing, until it dawned on me, in my mildly addled state, that I had come down it before whereas now I was going up it, which seemed to put everything in a new light. I found myself, after no great distance, standing outside a Greek restaurant and surveying the menu with a hint of a sway. I’m not much of one for Greek food — no disrespect to a fine cuisine, you understand, but I always feel as if I could boil my own leaves if I had a taste for that sort of thing — but the restaurant was so forlornly empty and the proprietress beckoned at me with such imploring eyes that I found myself wandering in. Well, the meal was wonderful. I have no idea what I ate, but it was abundant and delicious and they treated me like a prince. Foolishly I washed it all down with many additional draughts of beer. By the time I finished and settled the bill, leaving a tip of such lavishness as to bring the whole family to the kitchen door, and began the long process of stabbing an arm at a mysteriously disappearing jacket sleeve, I was, I fear, pretty nearly intoxicated. I staggered out into the fresh air, feeling suddenly queasy and largely incapable. Now the second rule of excessive drinking (the first, of course, is don’t take a sudden shine to a woman larger than Hoss Cartwright) is never to drink in a place on a steep slope. I walked down the hill on unfamiliar legs that seemed to snap out in front of me like whipped lengths of rope. The Adelphi, glowing beckoningly at the foot of the hill, managed the interesting trick of being both nearby and astonishingly distant. It was like looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope — a sensation somewhat enhanced by the fact that my head was a good seven or so yards behind my manically flopping appendages. I followed them helplessly, and by a kind of miracle they hurtled me down the hill, safely across the road and up the steps to the entrance to the Adelphi, where I celebrated my arrival by making a complete circuit in the revolving door so that I emerged into open air once again, before plunging back in and being flung with a startling suddenness into the Adelphi’s grand and lofty lobby. I had one of those where-am-I moments, then grew aware that the night staff were silently watching me. Summoning as much dignity as I could and knowing that the lifts would be quite beyond me, I went to the grand staircase and managed — I know not how — to fall up them in a manner uncannily reminiscent of a motion picture run in reverse. All I know is that at the very end I leapt backwards to my feet and announced to the craning faces that I was quite all right, and then embarked on a long search for my room among the Adelphi’s endless and mysteriously numbered corridors. (...)
It doesn't, it's the temperance movement, I think, that started this. At least in the US. Although there's also the idea of your body being a temple.
well if your body is a temple then in addition to booze, we shouldn't shove into it anything bad for it, like high octane sugary snacks. Something like 2/3 of the US citizens aren't treating their bodies like temples according to their waistlines. Hell I think cows are going to go extinct soon because of all the leather we use making extra long belts for these gluttonous fuckers!
The Bible warns against drunkenness but doesn't forbid the consumption of alcohol. Jesus himself drinks wine on more than one occassion. I believe the more fiercely abstemious denominations rationalize this by claiming the wine in those days was only mildly alcoholic.
Raised a Presbyterian, I can attest that -- depending on the degree of wackiness of the branch you belong to -- alcohol definitely is frowned upon in certain quarters of Protestantism, as is tobacco. I had one uncle who "took the pledge" at 17 and never drank a drop his entire life. And believe me, if you'd known his wife you'd join me in feeling sorry for him on this point. On a visit to Canada I was astounded to discover that there's such a thing as "organic" tobacco, i.e. not grown with chemical fertilizers or pesticides. That really made me laugh. "No such poison shall be inhaled into this temple."
Yeah, just do not try to buy it on Sunday or at specific hours on other days. It is not even a personal choice by the business owner to not sell, it is the law forcing their religious choice down your throat. It is just not good enough for American Christians to practice their a abstinence even though they do drink. No they have to force everyone else by law to obey their church edicts.
Here even the Muslim Quicky Mart owners sell booze because, if they do not, they lose money and go out of business. It is a fine solution. The city gives away off premises licenses like candy so most stores sell it and that is their money maker. The chips and what not are generally money losers or break even items due to competition Here a lot of Chaldeans, Indians, about a 1/3rd white Americans, and a few muslims. Like I said, they all either carry booze or they go out of business because the other stuff won't pay the rent.
Yes "blue laws" are lame, but fading away fast here in the Augusta area. More & more transplanted heathen Yankees (like myself) are making up a higher percentage of the population now.
I don't understand this. An off-license never allows drinking on the premises. Why do they call themselves that if they don't sell alcohol?
Assyrian speaking eastern rights Christian from Iraq and/Syria. Their language is closely related to Aramaic which was the language Jesus spoke and their ethnic group used to have the Assyrian Empire in the BC period. Don't you play Civilization, dude?
We have bblue laws in the county I live in, but not in the next county over. I never really understood the categories that were restricted on Sundays. I went to a dept store to buy a picture frame one Sunday. The store was open, but the picture frame aisle was roped off.
Precisely my point of confusion. I can only speculate they copied their signage from other similar stores without understanding what the words meant.
Very interesting report about Liverpool. I wouldn't be surprised if some Moslem store owners didn't want to sell alcohol simply for reasons of their faith. I'll have to look it up, but I'm not sure if alcohol is taboo in Hinduism too. Less religious Muslim, &/or people who are Islamic In Name Only, store owners sell alcohol just because doing so is good for business & profits.
It's right there in the Bible. Daytonians, 8:11. "On ye Sabbath day, thou shalt not enclose any graven image within a fashioned border."
