Years ago, Dad encountered problems at a grocery when he tried to buy a bottle of wine for communion on a Sunday morning. Years later, when we lived in Melbourne Beach, different local ordinances had us racing to and fro if we ran short on the ingredients for a mimosa for a Sunday brunch or if I just wanted to finish the week’s shopping. Although the Melbourne area has since changed its ordinances, Gainesville seems to lag behind the times.
Granted, football games are held on Saturdays, and alcohol seems to flow fairly freely at the pregame warm-ups known as tailgate parties. On the day of the game against the University of South Florida, the pickup trucks were parking before 8 a.m. Some had generators and a flat screen TVs mounted in the back, and all had coolers of beer or Jell-O shots. Fans were already taking swigs and calling on their cell phones for reinforcements--more ice and beer.
Students, who normally would not get up during weekdays for an 8 a.m. class, could be seen in front of their fraternities or in the rental houses near the stadium, standing with beer or chips in hand, or grilling hot dogs and setting up a tailgate party with an energy and enthusiasm unknown to their professors. In a city with Sunday alcohol restrictions, this early-morning imbibing seemed . . . something of a paradox.
My thoughts are that if game day were to change to Sunday, the city would eliminate these restrictions on the sale of alcohol. Until then, the brunch host and hostess as well as the employee who wants to finish the week’s shopping on Sunday before 1 p.m. and the member of the alter guild will just have to demonstrate better planning.
Salut! Cheers! Bottoms up!
ReplyDeleteOr, enterprising students who are standing around in line might consider carrying a few extra bottles of mimosa-fixings that they could scalp on a Sunday morning :)
ReplyDelete--HE