A message to Harvest Homecoming food vendors ... and your PourGate update for Monday, September 30.

Harvest Homecoming food vendors, take note.

You'll soon be paying $20 per day to sell food during New Albany's annual fest.

You should know that earlier this year, the Floyd County Health Department decided that beer qualifies as food, but when NABC took them to the mat, they offered a feeble compromise in an effort to keep us quiet. Now they say beer is food, and beer pourers must get a temporary food serving permit -- but we beer pourers don't have to pay the $20 fee.

The rest of you? You still do.

That's really dumb, isn't it?

If beer is food, isn't food also beer? If so, exactly why are YOU still being compelled to pay for these temporary food permits when beer pourers are not required to fund the department's rampant slush?

Really, shouldn't you ask the health department flunkies this very question when you go to the Taj Mahal on Bono Road to pay for a permit, one that according to Dr. Tom Harris at our July hearing isn't "about the money" at all?

If it isn't about the money, then why should any of us pay?

And, for anyone else contemplating a temporary beer event: If the fine for not having a temporary food serving permit is half the cost of the permit, and it there is no charge for the permit, then what's the fine? Think carefully, because after all, careful thinking puts you five steps ahead of the Floyd County Health Department.

Meanwhile, as I've indicated on several occasions, NABC is perfectly content to fight the ongoing Cold War with the health department, and do so for the foreseeable future, as we await the relevant state agencies reaching what (to us) is the inevitable conclusion that only the Indiana Alcohol & Tobacco Commission has statutory control over temporary permits for pouring beer. State wheels can turn slowly. No matter; it's only a question of time. Since June 14, the issue primarily has been one of hidebound bureaucratic control, and secondarily, enhanced future revenues once the precedent of control has been accepted.

We do not accept the precedent, and we'll continue to fight. Note that the other side of the coin -- the health department's juvenile on-line defamation -- still remains very much in play. It isn't going away any time soon, which is just fine with us ... because neither are we.