BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: An "away" game at IU Southeast (my beer chat for the Institute for Local and Oral History).

It is highly flattering for the newspaper at one's alma mater -- a Latin phrase literally translated as "nourishing mother" -- to send a reporter when he offers a lunchtime beer chat ... without beer.

Thanks to Logan Stephens of the IUS Horizon for his coverage, and also to Dr. Elizabeth Gritter for the invitation. I was rusty, but covered the main areas and got them to hit the ball on the ground. With just a bit of polishing, the starting rotation beckons.

Beer expert Roger Baylor speaks about the history of beer in New Albany during IUS visit

Roger Baylor and his knowledge of beer were on full display during his visit to IU Southeast on Thursday, Feb. 27. Baylor discussed the history of beer in New Albany and the surrounding Kentuckiana area during the event.

Baylor has been in the beer business for decades. He recently departed from New Albanian Brewing Company after 25 years. He said he likes to refer to himself as “The Beer Guy” due to his vast knowledge and experience in the beer industry.

The event, presented by The Institute for Local and Oral History, was free for all IUS students, staff and faculty. It allowed them to learn about the history of beer in the area as well as how prohibition affected the local breweries ...

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Paternalism, classism and prohibitionism in Family Dollar's neighborhood.

Consider this item from the Big Apple in 2012. The topic is soda, not beverage alcohol -- and from a time when hard seltzer was only a glimmer in a cynical marketer's eye.

The Classist Side of Mayor Bloomberg's War on Soda, by Jen Doll (The Atlantic)

Those who've lived in New York City for a while remember fondly a time when not much of anything was banned at all. But there's an even darker side to bans. They widen the divide between the rich, who can find a way around them, and the poor, who perhaps cannot.

 ... there's an even darker side to bans. They have a socio-economic impact, by which I mean, some people are more affected by bans than others. Bans widen the divide between the rich, who can find a way around them, and the poor, who perhaps cannot. And while Bloomberg's tactics are obviously part of what people dub a "nanny state" ideology, in which he's telling us what to do, he's telling some people what to do more than others. Rich people, among whom one is billionaire Bloomberg himself, are not going to be impacted by a soda ban the same way poor New Yorkers are—if the wealthy prefer huge bottles of soda, they'll have no trouble continuing to find them. And the problem that Bloomberg's trying to "fix"—obesity—is, according to the stats and research, a "poor" problem, not a rich one. This makes Bloomberg's move seem ever the more paternalistic. A class of people whom he's judged unable to make the proper decision for themselves is now being told what to do, by someone who knows better.

I mention this because of a local episode three weeks ago, and the obvious symmetry with the notion of top-down classism.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Neo-prohibitionism, foppery and hypocrisy at Indiana Landmarks as Family Dollar on Vincennes gets a perfectly legal alcohol sales permit.

I’m no fan of Family Dollar, but in terms of alcohol sales permits, what exactly has the company done wrong? If the store is located too close to the school, the local ATC board would not receive a recommendation to approve it. If the store elects to sell to minors, you can rest assured the ATC will intervene, as it does elsewhere. There are very few state institutions that perform their functions as capably as the ATC, trust me.

What sort of upper crust prohibitionist’s rationale is being advanced here?

It is my understanding that some form of appeal is being pursued by the group contesting Family Dollar's alcohol permit, all of whom are of a socio-economic status suggesting they'd not set foot in such a store whether or not booze was available.

At one point in a Facebook conversation that I can't quote exactly because subsequently I was blocked from it, a friend of one of the complainants began discoursing about the need for historic preservationists to intervene in situations where low-income people don't know how to manage their own discretionary income.

Really, Fred?

If I'm exaggerating, it's inadvertent, such was the blatancy of the paternalism on display. All in all, the topic is a trip wire for me, as I'm compelled to remind all and sundry that classism of this nature was a key component of America's disastrous Prohibition experiment, and as the Family Dollar situation sadly illustrates, it remains so today as a tool in the arsenal of those do-gooders who maintain one standard for low-income residents and another for the better heeled.

Returning to Doll's soda commentary ...

 ... none of these bans really serve to get to the point, anyway. If we're to talk of equity, we should also ask why healthy, particularly organic, fresh food costs more than packaged, processed food, why lean turkey or chicken is priced higher than the bad, fatty cuts, or why in some cases the cost of milk is greater than the cost of soda. It seems that a better way to promote health to all would by making it easier for everyone to get healthy, good food—not by "outlawing" the bad stuff, or soda, which beverage industry folks say isn't the cause of the problem in the first place, citing reports that say sugared drink consumption has decreased while our obesity issues keep increasing.

In the Family Dollar debate, which ended when I was censored by the leading elements, one point I kept making was that if the alcohol license in question were being acquired by an investor prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to save an old building and serve $15 martinis, there'd be no objection whatever.

In fact, the Indiana Landmarks organization supports such outcomes -- and if enough of these outcomes occur in a concentrated vicinity (for instance, downtown New Albany) gentrification will have taken place, at which point the low income people will be displaced from now-unaffordable housing and compelled to commute from a greater distance to work the same lesser-skilled jobs at the new food and drink businesses.

Here's a definition of classism.

"Sociologists have spent a great deal of time studying how populations become stratified by income level. Classism is defined as a set of practices and beliefs which disadvantage groups based on education and socioeconomic status. Classism is the ability of upper income and/or well-educated populations to maintain their privilege at the expense of less educated, lower socioeconomic groups."

And apparently because we need reminding, here's a very good account of Prohibition's tyranny.

Prohibition Was America’s First War on Drugs, by Kim Kelly (Teen Vogue)

Now that the year 2020 is officially in full swing, nostalgia for the Roaring Twenties has come Lindy Hopping back into view. The 1920s were a decade still fondly remembered in the U.S. imagination for shorter skirts, high spirits, and hot jazz licks, but it wasn’t all flappers and ragtime. The decade was also rife with poisonous bathtub gin, murderous Mafia dons, and the merciless rat-a-tat of tommy guns, as well as myriad political and cultural struggles simmering beneath the surface. A dark current of crime, violence, and government malfeasance underpinned the era, much of which can be traced directly back to one immensely influential federal gamble: the 18th Amendment, which outlawed the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages within the U.S.

The subsequent passage of the National Prohibition Act (nicknamed the Volstead Act after its biggest cheerleader, House Judiciary Committee chairman Andrew Volstead) provided a means to enforce the amendment’s decree. It was the product of xenophobia, racism, classism, and heavy-handed religious moralizing, and had a disproportionate impact on poor and working-class communities. In essence, Prohibition was America’s first drug war — and predictably, once it became the law of the land in 1920, all hell broke loose.

THE BEER BEAT: This humble plinth could be the spot where we memorialize the myriad victims of Prohibition.

It is imperative for the future health and well-being of the municipality that we embrace historical consciousness, hence my contention that the victims of the savage and deranged social experiment known as Prohibition -- surely America's second-worst idea ever, albeit well behind human slavery in terms of ramifications -- be memorialized, preferably adjacent to a watering hole that reminds us of what the heinous teetotalers tried to take away.

This effort may well become the focus of the rest of my life. Less than a year ago, I surveyed the background:

“In a house once standing here, New Albany’s chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union advocated for Prohibition and abstinence from ‘Demon Alcohol.’ But Prohibition proved to be a disaster, and so it is vitally important that we remember the WCTU’s efforts favoring Prohibition, all the better for us to reject Prohibition, now and forever.”

Of course, my permanent departure from the New Albanian Brewing Company precludes the realization of the Prohibition memorial at the precise spot where the WCTU's headquarters once operated; currently, this square footage serves as Bank Street Brewhouse's outdoor seating area.

Perhaps a plaque might eventually be erected there as part of a walking tour incorporating too many vital historical insights to enumerate here. The central point remains: Prohibition was absurd, and every aspect of remembering its lessons is factually verifiable. It is non-fiction.

To return yet again to the words of Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." There needs to be a memorial to the idiocy, because it must not be forgotten.

I suspect the major problem with using the concrete plinth (circled in the photo above) as the base of a memorial art installation is that it belongs to the alley, and hence to the city. However, everything's negotiable, and it costs nothing to ask questions. If the project is deemed feasible, then I'll pursue it.

Until then, savor these words by H.L. Mencken.

The Prohibitionists, when they foisted their brummagem cure-all upon the country under cover of the war hysteria, gave out that their advocacy of it was based upon a Christian yearning to abate drunkenness, and so abolish crime, poverty and disease. They preached a millennium, and no doubt convinced hundreds of thousands of naive and sentimental persons, not themselves Puritans, nor even democrats. That millennium, as everyone knows, has failed to come in. Not only are crime, poverty and disease undiminished, but drunkenness itself, if the police statistics are to be believed, has greatly increased. The land rocks with the scandal. Prohibition has made the use of alcohol devilish and even fashionable, and so vastly augmented the number of users. The young of both sexes, mainly innocent of the cup under license, now take to it almost unanimously. In brief, Prohibition has not only failed to work the benefits that its proponents promised in 1917; it has brought in so many new evils that even the mob has turned against it. But do the Prohibitionists admit the fact frankly, and repudiate their original nonsense? They do not. On the contrary, they keep on demanding more and worse enforcement statutes — that is to say, more and worse devices for harassing and persecuting their opponents. The more obvious the failure becomes, the more shamelessly they exhibit their genuine motives. In plain words, what moves them is the psychological aberration called sadism. They lust to inflict inconvenience, discomfort, and, whenever possible, disgrace upon the persons they hate — which is to say, upon everyone who is free from their barbarous theological superstitions, and is having a better time in the world than they are. They cannot stop the use of alcohol, nor even appreciably diminish it, but they can badger and annoy everyone who seeks to use it decently, and they can fill the jails with men taken for purely artificial offences, and they can get satisfaction thereby for the Puritan yearning to browbeat and injure, to torture and terrorize, to punish and humiliate all who show any sign of being happy. And all this they can do with a safe line of policemen and judges in front of them; always they can do it without personal risk.

"Simply substitute 'War on Drugs' for 'Prohibition,' and see what you think."

THE BEER BEAT: Are barstools even necessary? There ARE alternatives, you know.

Blog readers often must endure the senior editor chiding local officials for their failure to grasp placemaking.

With community-based participation at its center, an effective placemaking process capitalizes on a local community's assets, inspiration, and potential, and it results in the creation of quality public spaces that contribute to people's health, happiness, and well being.

If applied to a barroom, the principles of placemaking imply the direct involvement of customers in an establishment's design, these being the folks who'll be expected to use the space, because if the space doesn't meet their needs, there'll be too few customers and no hope of profit.

Of course, this isn't the way it usually works. For one thing, the build-out occurs before there are customers, based on the best guesses of business owners and contractors. In turn, these hunches are borrowed from pre-existing templates.

As David Wondrich explains, more templates of barroom design than we ever realize actually derive from top-down bureaucratic standards inherited in the aftermath of Prohibition, at times abetted with Hollywood's regimented narrative.

Think of Indiana's outdated floor space allocations, mandating where persons of different age can be, what they see, where they must go to use the bathroom, and dozens of other top-down specifications that have the effect of standardizing barrooms and restaurants.

For Wondrich, the humble barstool symbolizes the tyranny of a decades-long departure from what is true and genuine in barroom layout. It's beer for thought. The author references J. J. Foley's, a Boston pub founded in 1909. This photo illustrates his point about a bar without stools.

Naturally, there are tables and chairs aplenty, just not at the bar. I would do without the television. Aren't the drinkers all looking at their phones, anyway?

This is an excellent read. Thanks to the Bookseller for the tip.

Why I Hate Barstools and You Should, Too, by David Wondrich (Daily Beast)

A convincing case for banning these seats and bringing back bar room civility.

I hate barstools.

OK, let me amend that. I like them well enough at 2:15 on a Tuesday afternoon, when you can pull one up, lay a stack of bills on the bar and let the afternoon pad away on quiet cat feet of jukebox C&W and Crown Royal.

But when 6:30 p.m. rolls around and you’re trying to get a drink and the bar is palisaded with a Trumpian wall of backs; when putting in a simple drink order means you have to stick your head into someone’s side eye-patrolled personal space and yell past their ear; when reaching over the tight-packed shoulders to get your Martini is like playing one of those rigged claw games—then, barstools suck.

They represent, ultimately, a private taking of what should be a public space, like so many Malibu beach mansions, and separate us into the protective haves and the resentful have-nots. If you ask me, barstools are un-American.

And in actual fact, they are. Before Prohibition, with very few exceptions stools were for oyster counters and soda fountains. You sat on stools to eat, not to drink. If you wanted a cocktail or a shot of something, you hoisted your foot up on the brass rail, leaned in, and placed your order. When your drink came, you relinquished the space, turned to face your friends, and drank with them. This was the American style of bar, “peculiar to this country,” as the Brooklyn Eagle noted in 1865, “the peculiarity of which is that there are no sitting accommodations” and “the patrons drink standing at the counter.” That Western saloon in the movies, where some cowboy gets tight and starts bashing the Riley next to him with his stool?

Never happened ...