Actually, I've been to several restaurants in the area that didn't have bars attached to them, but either allowed brown-bagging or had a license to sell wine or beer.

To me, it seems normal for people to be having wine or beer with dinner, even though most of the time I pass on it. I just can't imagine feeling so much discomfort over it. It seems so limiting.

If you lived in Europe, you'd be miserable. It's much more a part of daily life there.

Eddie

quote:

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It bothers me when I am in a restaurant with a screaming child sitting next to me. Should restaurants not let children in because it might disturb other people?

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I'm also against juke boxes in places to eat, I think this detracts from the meal and makes me uncomfortable.

Fawn I guess you didn't read all of my post, this IS about Bars, have you been to Mike's Seafood since he moved into his new place??? I guess someone told him ahead of time to build a bar?? Don't get me wrong, I love the food at Mikes and have no problems with Mike or his employees. Go to most of the chain restaurants that serve alcohol and they will have a bar. Hooters is a restaurant as is Applebys and other such places, I know of friends in other cities that have had to be picked up because they had too much to drink in "restaurants". Luckly they had enough sense to call or have someone call for them.

The least we should strive for in allowing drinks is that one must order a meal before being served a drink.

Wildflower, I've also been to many places that allow brown bagging or have a license to pour that do not have bars, but these are usually up scale restaurants. As for living in Europe, I have no desire to even visit there. I haven't been everywhere in America yet. I'd be pretty miserable in those countries that think drinking warm ox blood in OK also.

I know that I'm not changing anyones mind here and I can assure you that you arn't going to change mine.

Actually if memory serves me right, Lamar stated when he was running that he would NOT sell alcohol licenses. May be I'm wrong but if this passes he will be breaking that promise.

Too each his own, I will live with the out come of the vote now that it is forced on us. I think that if we are going to vote on this we should be able to vote on the other ordinances put into affect lately and if you need to post signs that you are requesting a pouring license then you should have to post signs you are going to distroy a mountain side to build houses. People on this forum complain about the litter on our road sides but overlook the litter hanging on the mountain sides. Sorry this is off topic, I'll hush now and go on about my business. I shouldn't start my day this way anyway.

Don't know why

why

I was just thinking about your posts about people getting drunk in restaurants.

I've never personally witnessed anyone who was obnoxiously drunk in a restaurant. If anyone was drunk, they must have been keeping it to themselves. ;)

I've lived in Miami, Orlando, Dallas, and now here, and I've always eaten out a lot. In the cities, most of the restaurants served drinks and had a license. The restaurants I go to here either have a license or allow brown-bagging.

I have NEVER had a dinner in a restaurant that was interupted by anyone's drunk obnoxious behavior. If it did happen, I would expect the manager to escort the person out of there.

Now, I didn't hang out at Hooters, so I can't say. As to places that are ONLY bars with no restaurant, I didn't do that very often unless there was some reason to be there. Even in the places that were strictly bars, if there were people who had too much to drink, it rarely turned into obnoxious behavior.

Since Blairsville isn't voting on stand-alone bars, I guess the bar scene isn't a worry.

I just don't think most people go to restaurants to "get drunk".

But, like I said, I don't hang out in places like Hooters. You have to keep in mind what sort of mentality a place attracts. I go to the places where people are looking for good food and the wine is part of the dinner.

I have been far more affected by screaming children or loud people on cell phones in restaurants than drinks. ;)

The point is not just their actions in the "restaurant" but also after they leave. Their actions may never have a direct affect on me but may harm someone else. If it were only being bothered in the restaurant while eating that was the problem, I could just stay away from that by not going to that restaurant. Its also the results that bother me. I have to be on the road with these people and so does my family. I have been around several places in the past that just used selling food as an excuse for being able to serve alcohol. May be I've lived too wild a life in the past and have seen too much. I been to places in border towns (not that kind, I'm talking to the border of wet/dry counties and/or state lines) that reminded you of places that search you to see if you've got a knife, if not they give you one. These places serve food, usually only a few dishes, but food. You figure out how to tell if a place is selling the right percentage of food.

Hooters wings are very good and worth going in to eat but, they would still be good if they didn't serve alcohol.

When I think of drinks, nice restaurants come to mind. When you think of drinks, wild places come to mind.

I don't know, I live in Towns Co. and we don't seem to have problems with crazy behavior in spite of all the places that serve alcohol.

You serve it in Blairsville too - they just buy it in Towns and brown-bag it in Blairsville.

Since I am not impacted by whatever Blairsville decides, I am not trying to change your mind; only to throw out some ideas about the issue.

I thought they were breaking the law the first time I saw someone bring a cooler with beer in it into the old Fishermans Kittle. I guess I was wrong. By the way, if you never got to go the the Fishermans Kittle you missed some good food.

If you have read my past posts in other topics, you will find I have objections to most everything that will add to the already overgrown (my opinion) nature of, and add traffic to, our area. Let the Towns counties or ellijays or blue ridges or murphys have all the big city places, leave my area country. Just how long does it take to drive to blue ridge or murphy or to towns county. If I want something I can't get here then I go to these places. I really dont' care if the county loses the tax money, I can't base my beliefs on money. Money wise I stand to neither lose nor gain from alcohol sales either by the drink or the tanker truck. As far a drinking goes, I wish no one did it, I know thats not a real posibility, so drink what you will, but do it in such a way as it harms no one else. (no I didn't say I was being harmed)

Actually, I've begun to notice that more of the natives talk about wanting chains coming in than newcomers do!

Anyway, one issue I brought up before, but I haven't seen addressed is . . . what do you all think about the divided vote. I understand you are voting YES or NO separately on wine/beer and mixed drinks.

Is there anyone planning to vote YES to one and NO to the other?

Why,

You know, you've put words to an idea that's gone through my mind a few times in this discussion.

What so much of this comes down to is a true culture clash. The way a person grows up decides what they perceive as "normal" and "right"; anything outside of that is often perceived as "wrong".

From some of the things posted here, I have noticed that a lot of natives refer to drunkeness and to having witnessed it.

Newcomers just want to get some wine or beer with dinner and don't understand all the unrelenting focus on getting drunk.

Maybe growing up here has colored the views of drinking in a way that most city people can't relate to.

It seems to me that if you grow up in a small town dominated by churches that preach the evils of drinking, backed up by laws forbidding the sale of alcohol, you just never observe people having wine with dinner on a regular basis.

Wine/beer/liquor is presented all your lives as "the forbidden fruit" and something you must actually leave to county to obtain. It isn't presented in the context of being a normal companion to good food.

In such an atmosphere, where drinking is a "sin", those who want to taste the forbidden fruit drive to the nearest county with a bar. What will they see there? Other escapees indulging to excess. That's what they have been taught that drinking is - it's about getting drunk. So that's what they do.

If the only drinking you ever witness is people getting drunk and rowdy in a bar, then it perpetuates the churches message that's it's evil.

But for people who belong to other denominations that don't prohibit drinking (just the abuse of it) or people who live in cities, it's normal to see people having dinner and wine. People take pride in serving a wine that complements the food and will spend some time in learning how to do that.

My parents were not really drinkers, and myself and my siblings can take it or leave it. Usually we leave it. But, my parents never preached against alcohol and none of us ever had a problem with it.

Contrast that with a friend of mine in high school whose parents constantly told her how wrong it was to drink. So what did she do? She got insanely drunk the first chance she got.

As 16-year-olds, we attended a party where there was drinking. I didn't have any, but she got smashed. It had been arranged for her father to pick us up from the party. He drove me home before driving back to their home and she tried to act normal so he wouldn't notice that she was intoxicated. She told me later that as soon as I stepped out of the car, she threw up. Her parents were very angry at her and happy with me.

I certainly thought she was stupid. But even at that age, I felt her parents had it coming to them by presenting the subject the way they did. It ensured she was obsessed with getting drunk. Getting drunk was all she had been taught that alcohol was for.

Wildflower, you have made some good points, the average older adult in this area remembers when this county had beer sales. There were clubs and over the counter sales. There was a fair amount of trouble caused by drinking. No one thought of drinking with a meal except to get started on the drinking to drink.

You may also be correct about the younger generation, many have developed a taste for wine or beer with a meal. I also know of many who developed more than a taste for getting dog drunk also.

When I was 16 I could buy beer and malt liquor in Tenn. just across the line. By the time I was twenty five I had figured there were cheaper ways of getting sick.

I've been the designated driver for many years and its tought me that those drinking arn't having as much fun as they think they are and those around them arn't either.

Not growing up as a strict church person, I only went by what Granny or such said about the problems of drinking. I experenced it with relatives and such.

Got to go now, I'll try to talk more tomorrow about this and other things.

Night everyone, sweet dreams, may morning be given to you and may you have a brighter day tomorrow.

Just why

If you grew up in a city and your family belonged to a denomination that frowned on drinking, you would still witness other people having wine with their meals in restaurants.

That is going to put the idea in your head that there is another side to the question of drinking. So the influence of your family and religion would be moderated some.

Nowadays, there are enough really great restaurants in the mountains that more and more people see wine being served with a meal. In the past, there weren't very many fine dining restaurants here.

Of course, that is still an American thing to regard wine as part of "fine dining" whereas in Europe wine is part of everday casual dining - because it's part of a meal.

I read that Georgia used to produce a lot of wine before Prohibition. Many vineyards were destroyed then.

One thing that bothers me about people saying they can just go to a surrounding county to drink, is that will push the true problem drinkers to drive longer distances after they leave an establishment.

Problem Drinkers May Consume Almost Half Of All Liquor

POSTED: 4:36 pm EDT May 2, 2006

Between 37.5 and 49 percent of the alcohol sold in the U.S. goes to those under the legal drinking age or those with alcohol problems, according to a study.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that those groups account for $48.3 billion to $62.9 billion in sales, based on data from 2001.

"Underage and pathological drinkers are the alcohol industry's most valuable customers," said Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA's chairman and president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.

Prior to this study, no research looked at the commercial value of these drinkers, CASA said in a news release.

The study also says that alcohol abuse and addiction cost the nation $220 billion in 2004. Cancer and obesity have estimated costs of $196 billion and $133 billion, respectively, the group said.

The group also reported that 9.6 percent of adult pathological drinkers consume 25 percent of alcohol drunk by adults.

Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press.

Instead we're voting on whether our government should get any revenues from the sale of alcohol in our restaurants. We're voting on being able to limit how much a patron drinks (which is not possible with brown-bagging). I think it was our Commisioner that pointed out that problem drinkers aren't going to be trying to feed their "addiction" by buying wine or a mixed drink in a restaurant because it'll be too expensive. They'll still be going across the line to the package store and stretching their alcohol dollars that way.

Shadow

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