Liquor stores

There was once a time when a man would find a bourbon he liked and stick with it. Today, that is no longer sufficient. To enjoy bourbon, one must dive into the depths of bourbon hunting, scouring liquor stores for hard-to-come-by bottles, making friends with the staff so they’ll pull out one of the bottles from the secret stash and joining various social media groups in which fellow members share their tips and finds. My passion for actual bottle-hunting was short-lived, however. It takes too much time and effort and when opportunity costs are factored in, I’d rather pay a little over store price to those who are willing to go stand in line at 7:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning waiting on the store’s latest shipment.

Pennsylvania’s liquor laws are... vintage. But not in a single-malt Scotch kind of way that means they improve with age. The state legislature did move the needle to the right side of draconian in 2016, but the Philadelphia Inquirer’s 1983 assessment of “Pennsylvania’s backwardness” being “a hangover from the administration of Republican governor Gifford Pinchot, who was elected on a ‘dry’ platform in 1930,” remains accurate. The Inquirer reported that after Prohibition was abolished in 1933, Pinchot led a special session to establish the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board and “state stores” to make the purchase of alcoholic beverages “as inconvenient and expensive as possible.