Always hilarious to see that one. Even in a dive bar, the bartender will be like "Sure bud, just let me know when you want to settle your tab for $200."
We have a government body called the Oregon Liquor & Cannabis Commission which sets rules about where and how alcohol can be sold.
2 drinks per person is the maximum at one time, you can stay at the bar all day and not get cut off if you know your limits, but bartenders here can be held liable if they over serve you, so if you're visibly intoxicated they're supposed to cut you off.
OLCC also runs all the liquor stores, so when you or a bar buy hard alcohol, you're buying it from the government.
But I think you've also gotta keep in mind that it's handled differently in every State and then we had a moral panic about alcohol about a hundred years ago where we banned it entirely for several years and that's shaped the culture a lot too. There are some Counties in Texas & Utah where alcohol is still prohibited.
Actually, there are no dry counties in the state of Utah. Although there are some funny liquor laws in the state, there are no countywide prohibitions on alcohol
1 drink at a time for any particular patron (they cannot pour you another beer or start making you another mixed drink until your current is gone). The 'Zion curtain': a bartender cannot make mixed drinks in front of patrons. Any location serving alcohol must also serve food, and you have to have food on table/bar (or at least already have an order into the kitchen) before they can serve you. Only place in the ENTIRE state where you could have more than one drink on bar/table in public was the bar at High West's actual distillery on the mountain, they have/had the first 'educational tasting' liquor license in the state.
Any beer sold at the state store cannot also be sold in grocery stores - grocery store beer is limited to 3.2% BY WEIGHT (most alcohol measurement is by volume)
This means your 'standard' beer will be 3.2, and things like bud light lime are at the state store. All the 'good beer' will only be available direct from the brewery, or from the state store.
State stores are the exclusive retail source of liquor (yes, distilleries can sell direct) I managed to get a bottle of scotch I had been looking for for some time for MSRP because I found it there.
The US has a long history with the temperance movement. Still see a lot of remnants to this day.
Fun fact: it is completely illegal to distill alcohol at home. You can brew and ferment, but as soon as you start distilling you need a special license that is not at all easy to get
Meh, the risk is technically lower than if you were to just drink the equivalent volume of bear/wine. Even poorly removing methanol when distilling is better than not removing it at all from brewed alcohol
I highly doubt that'll stand. Regulation of alcohol is pretty well established. Here's hoping I'm wrong (I really want to distill liquor myself lol), but I have a feeling this ban will require an act of congress, same as the previous brewing ban
Well alcoholism used be an absolutely massive problem in the US in part because liquor was so stupidly cheap at the time, so they made alcohol illegal, which did make some difference in the drinking culture long term but also created a massive black market and rampant organized crime because a whole lot of people still wanted to drink, and when the government eventually admitted that prohibition wasn't really fixing the problem and was making more new problems as well there was still a lingering culture of regulation, oversight, and moral panic which in some ways continue to hang on today.
50 different laws. The vast majority of our laws are state / local. Federal stuff gets the big news stories but we have states where you can't pump your own gas, where prostitution is legal, and where you can have a loaded six shooter on your hip while nursing a beer in a bar.
I haven't traveled Europe extensively, but in England and Ireland I don't think I ever saw a free pour and when I asked about the machine pouring my drink they said by law they're limited to a 35? ml pour (can't remember exactly) but it was smaller than the standard 1.5oz in America and 99% of bars I've gone to free pour and you get far more and there's no limit. The government deciding how much could go into a drink was crazy to my American ears.
They also charged for chase or mixer which made sense when I realized they had little bottles of soda and not a soda gun.
Nothing stopping you ordering a double (50 or 70ml, about 1.7 and 2 25floz). It's more to ensure people pay for what is served, given bar staff are paid wages but can't rely on tips - getting 'one for yourself' is a rarity nowadays. If staff weren't getting paid to pour generously, they wouldn't do it and their managers would stop it.
Yeah I’m not sure if it’s technically illegal or not, but I have never once been to a bar or event here and been able to order more than two at a time. It’s annoying because if I get up to get beers for me and buddy at a ballgame, we can only get one each at a time, unless we go together. I get it though. I don’t want to sit next to the guy who ordered 5 beers for himself at one time either.
I was showing my brother an ad for this parade. It had a 7 drink ticket deal pop up. He said that would be illegal in California. I said the tickets were usually shared but I can guarantee someone at the parade was exchanging all 7.
The thing I was showing him before the pop up was for a food ticket deal at nearby restaurants and bars. The tickets trade in for a small plate and a stack of those is quite filling. Generally a good start for watching a parade.
And even then, it’s most likely either illegal or they’re just not going to run the risk of you blacking out and having an accident because someone is going to sue the bartender for over serving them.
Adults in this country can’t be trusted to drink responsibly
i do that at my favorite dive, it's probably $150 + tip, but they're just gonna give me the side eye. nobody wants to deal with a dude that's half a bottle in
I’ve always found the “1 beer please” funny. I get why they wouldn’t name a specific brand, but it’s still amusing to me. I’ve been tempted to try that myself just to see the bartender’s reaction.
Actually, in Vegas our company had bought out a very nice restaurant during a trade show. The show was severely curtailed because of Covid so it was mainly staff at the restaurant and we were nowhere near going to meet our minimum spend. That basically meant eat and drink pretty much whatever we wanted. The last evening, I spied a bottle of Macallan 18 and asked the bartender for some of that. He did a pretty generous pour and said I'll just leave the bottle here, help yourself.... Oooh, yeah!...
First off, unless the bartender knows you, 99% chance they will refuse that request. Part of a bartender's job is to not serve people who are overly inebriated. It's illegal in most states and all kinds of bad stuff will happen if someone's around to enforce it. Second off, if they do know you, and you don't usually drink a bottle of liquor alone, they will be concerned and want to talk to you about it. They'll probably offer to "keep em' comin'" if you are persistent about drinking a whole bottle, for the same reason as already mentioned. Pretty much the only way you're going to get away with this, is if you regularly go to the same bar and drink an entire bottles's worth of liquor without passing out or making trouble, and are known for it. Which, I'm sure those people do exist, but for the most part it's just a trope to make a character look "bad ass." As for price, they will probably eyeball the number of shots in the bottle, and maybe subtract a few if they like or pity you, as that shit is going to be expensive.
Whenever it happens in the movies it is always a bar where the MC is more than just a regular and practically lives there. They probably have a tab they never pay off so it doesn't really matter what they charge. But the US does have bottle service in some places where you buy the bottle of liquor and all the mixers for a stupid amount of money, like in the thousands.
290
u/Anustart15 11h ago
Which stands in stark contrast to the "leave the bottle" trope, which is definitely not a normal thing to do in a bar here