Newcomers to Dallas are often confounded by our silly patchwork of dry and wet areas. Me personally, it drives me nuts that I can’t buy wine at the grocery store closest to my house. So it is with a happy heart and a well-conditioned liver that I point you to news that a PAC calling itself Progress Dallas will likely undertake the task of gathering the 68,000 or so signatures required to force a referendum on the November ballot. (No, not Dallas Progress. Though Michael Davis might very well support Progress Dallas.) Please, people. If you see the petition, sign that sucker.
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This is the kind of common-sense referendum that will make for very strange bedfellows. The teetotalers will be in league with the liquor store lobby, different reasons pushing for the same goal. The teetotalers want to prevent the spread of the drinky-drinky, and the liquor retailers don’t want to open up the marketplace to more competition.
Didn’t I sign a similar petition outside of my neighborhood Tom Thumb a couple of years ago? I thought it went nowhere due to the inability to locate a map from 1812 (or something like that).
I signed that same petition a few years back too. I just assumed they didn’t get enough signatures. I love shopping at the whole paycheck, erm whole foods at Preston Forest but hate the fact I can’t buy a bottle of wine.
Apparently, the previous petition was struck down by a court because it wasn’t collected within the original boundaries of a particular JP Court precinct (yes, probably a map from 1812 like in dallas mentions above). The new petition will avoid this problem by collecting signatures city wide.
I’ll sign this thing the first day they start collecting signatures.
From a land use perspective, this puritanism competes with conventional Texas libertarianism to create for clusters of liquor stores and related businesses at the boundaries to support the demand from those in dry areas, which can be (or at least perceived as) sketchy areas when they naturally want to be more more diffuse like neighborhood convenience stores where one serves x rooftops, but is more properly embedded in the community. And ironically can affect the boundaries of a dry area more harshly than if the stores were more naturally located within the dry areas. I’m thinking of the wine and bottle shop in State-Thomas next to State-Allen lounge as one good example.
Ugh, I hate whoever writes this blog. It’s always right-wing or libertarian garbage. KEEP OC DRY!
I know, right? Isn’t Tim just the worst?