Secrets of the City

The Rat has no sympathy for anyone who so poorly organizes their drinking activities that they need to blame the “Godforsaken State” for not having enough for Sunday.

But Rat, why should people always have to plan?

What happened to spontaneity?

They can go to the pub. Sit in those outdoor patios everyone seems to like for some reason.

Because of the Blue Laws, Minnesota has mostly developed a honed and disciplined Drinking Class. No reason to change.

I thought you were against the gov’t getting all up in our business.

No, Rat’s only consistent theme that I’ve picked up on is he’s for things the way they are, no matter how idiotic it is.

I think it has more to do with being a troll/devil’s advocate or whatever.

No, I’m just in a good mood.

How are you guys, today? Got plenty of beer?

A contrarian. I’m a bit like that, too, but I blame it on being a Libra.

To be fair, I’m sometimes mistaken for a devil’s advocate slash contrarian, when really everybody else is just wrong all the time.

Because of the Blue Laws, Minnesota has mostly developed a honed and disciplined Drinking Class. No reason to change.

Oh, please. If North Dakota can handle off sale liqour on Sunday without going to hell in a handbasket, so can MN.

I’m guessing that there is so much less to do on a Sunday in North Dakota than i Minnesota, hence the availability of off-sale alcohol on Sundays in NoDak.

When I lived in ND, most of the stores couldn’t even open on Sundays. It was actually kind of nice to have one day a week where it was so quiet and peaceful.

So, you can buy booze in NoDak on Sunday but you can’t buy a pair of shoes?

You couldn’t buy either until the early 1990s. Now you can buy both.

Not sure when exactly they made the change. After 1993, when I left. There was talk about repealing the blue laws from the mid-1980s on, but I think it was ultimately a N.D. Supreme Court decision that did it. It happened a little bit a time, including a funny time when casinos and porn stores could open on Sunday but not bible stores.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, ND restaurants couldn’t even serve alcohol with food purchases on Sundays… so a lot of restaurants didn’t even open.

Interestingly, Minnesota was a big argument for dropping all the blue laws. Everyone was just going to East Grand Forks/Moorhead and spending their North Dakota dollars on Sundays (a sizable percentage of the ND population is close to the Mn border).

I believe that stores can’t open until noon on Sundays.

Kurtis, I believe the change for general retail was in the early to mid 80s. Pretty sure it happened while I was in HS.

First, they let grocery stores open, then general retail. I don’t remember liquor stores being open when I moved back to Fargo ‘96-’98.

Dave, most stores were closed on Sundays right up until I left in 1993. The grocery stores were open, though. Gas stations and movie theaters were open, too.

hmm, maybe my mind is going, but I’m pretty sure I remember going to West Acres on Sunday in HS.

Wikipedia says the laws were repealed in 1992. I’ll take their word for it. I only lived in ND for two months in 1993; funny I didn’t remember that stores were suddenly open, but probably because I was broke all the time anyway.

Would our world suffer greatly if we could all have one day off from work each week?

That’s weird, kurtis. Because that means that the law was changed after I left for grad school. I could have sworn it happened sooner.

It did happen in stages though. The first change was allowing grocery stores to open at noon on Sundays. I do know that happened when I was in HS, because my brother worked at Hornbacher’s up though Jan ‘86

The blue laws we have on the books are ridiculous. I move for repealing all state laws restricting beer and wine sales in grocery/convenience stores and those which prohibit the sale of alcohol on certain “holier” days of the week, which would also end my embarrassed explanations of the existence of 3.2 beer to people from less provincial regions of the country.

The arguments for restricting personal freedoms have to be stronger than “it won’t kill you,” Noodle.