Wine Store Recession Index

On New Year's eve I visited my wine store and the wine buyer was glum. Yes, people were buying bottles of wine and champagne but no one was buying cases anymore. The party era was over. He had called his peers throughout the District and they all reported a major slump, one that was the worst they could recall in their professional lives.

As a big wine purchaser (lush) the wine buyer used to walk me up the register and dictate major discounts for me. That is gone now too and I pay retail.

Wine stores are the canary in the coal mine about the economy, and the canary died.

San Francisco is Liberal, But It Still Offers a Lot of Fun for the Libertarian Traveler

I just got back from another lost and wonderful weekend in San Francisco. The city has a lot of annoying qualities, like the signs in restaurants that warn that crystal glasses are harmful to pregnant women, but it is still a great party town if you like food and wine like I do.

In SF, liquor stores are open till 2AM. Wow. And just about every little crummy corner bodega has a great stock of local wine, beer and booze. You can even buy those little airplane bottles of liquor (a great way to cheat an expensive bar by bringing your own) one at a time and there are no laws banning the single sale of beers. To boot, liquor can be sold seven days a week. In contrast, DC liquor stores close at 9PM, are not open on Sundays and you have to buy at least six of the little airplane bottles and single sales of beer are outlawed increasingly in DC.

There is also a Dyonisian attitude that the Bay Area has that is without parallel, as everyone who moved there moved there because of the food and wine. On Saturday morning friends picked me up at my hotel in a battered Cadillac limo driven by an elderly gay gentleman. We drove to Sonoma to "Farm Day" at Preston Vineyards. It was barely noon but a pipe with locally grown pot was going around with a bottle of champagne. Then we spent the afternoon at the vineyard drinking wine and eating food they grew on the grounds.

The high/low light for me personally was that after all of the California wonderfulness and Preston Vineyards Farm Day I had to have a fucking cigarette, which in California is a very controversial thing. So when the battered limo pulled into a service station on the way back to SF I bought a pack and lit up in the back seat. An outraged employee of the service station actually took the ciggie from my lips, calling me an asshole as I was near a gas pump. Oh well. DC also banned smoking but people in DC are not nearly so anti-smoking as are Californians, a big negative there, though I don't endorse smoking at gas pumps unless you are as tipsy as I was and just couldn't wait.