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Today is the first Sunday that alcohol can legally be sold in metro Atlanta areas. The new laws will take until March to completely roll out, but it's the beginning of the end of the Civil War blue laws. Here's to hoping that common sense prevails in other areas of legislation!
I'm just waiting for it to happen IN the city of Atlanta. I'm still waiting here.
I'm so glad the Branch passed this. I was afraid it would fail in Hall Co but I was pleasantly surprised.
I couldn't find any info on Hall Co since we're kinda pseudo-MetroATL. Is it already in effect today?
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You can't buy alcohol on Sunday's here either. I hve no problem with it.
Woot! Found an article: http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/section/6/article/59276/
Bob, my problem with the law was that you can get legally drunk at a bar and drive home but you couldn't buy alcohol, take it home, and get tipsy safely. Blue Laws were created to punish the South for seceding over 100 years ago.
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Cyndi we have been able to buy alcohol for less than a year here in my town, before that I had to drive a 80 mile round trip to get a bottle of wine! Here it's not Blue Law, here it is something completely different, something I can't mention because of forum rules.
Just some info on Blue Laws:
Wikipedia
Article by David J. Hanson, Ph.D.
Current Blue Law States
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OK, it is Blue Law, but notanything to do with Civil War or Alabama leaving the Union.
I had no idea there were places ( other than dry counties in the bible belt ) that there were this type of achy restrictions! Well I'm glad to hear that your situation was resolved!
Lyst - you still can't buy achy on a sunday?
What time do the bars close over there in ATL?
Huh, here in erie county, NY bars open as early as they want, close down around 4am. And the grocery stores/gas stations sell beer till 3am.
Well, I'll amend my statement due to clarity issues. After the war, the South's congress was completely dissolved and "Radical Republican Reconstructionists" we're able to wrest power away from the more moderate Restorationists. Part of the new government believed strongly in hobbling the local economy, which included implementing Blue Laws in areas where distilleries were a huge revenue stream for local farmers who had been banned from farming for 4 years. Many of those laws, even in non-religious areas still exist.
http://www.philwrites.com/H_reconstruction.htm
Make more sense? This is a topic that has been drilled into me since Kindergarten. 
Also, this is how NASCAR came into being. Rum runners in souped up hoopties would race their cars meant for smuggling on dirt tracks. It became so much fun that the sport evolved from it. 
here in ashe county nc you can't buy alcohol untill 12:00 pm on sunday, i guess thats so you don't go to church tipsy?
Yeah, in Hall Co, it's rare to find anything other than grocery stores and gas stations open before noon. Not too long ago, most places weren't even open on Sunday.
Great news Cyndi!!
Being from NY I became all too familiar with the Blue Laws last Super Bowl Sunday when I was on business and flew into ATL early so I could get settled into my hotel with some food and beer and be ready to go.... Only to find out at the local package store that I could not buy any beer!!
Since I was staying near the airport I figured at least I could get some food so I stopped into my favorite seafood restaurant/bar (walking distance from hotel and I am sure the ATL locals know the place... 
)
I found out what the deal was from the bartender and since she was recently from Chicago she understood how I felt!! I mean it was Super Bowl Sunday!! It would be unAmerican not to have a beer in my hand during the game!! Over the course of my meal I mentioned how nice it would be to get 3-4 bottles of beer in one of those to-go dinner containers... I told her that no one would be any wiser that it wasn't SOLID nourishment......
When I cashed out she brought me my to-go bag and I was all set!!!
Good to know that it will be easier next time!! LOL
Make more sense? This is a topic that has been drilled into me since Kindergarten.
And they say the War is over!!!! 
LOL, we don't need another war. The recent influx of Yankees is proving we won without ever fighting. I swear all of Dayton, OH now lives in ATL. 
The blue laws in Indiana are more strict than Georgia, has nothing to do with the civil war though. Alcohol was illegal not that long ago.
Alabama has some insane laws left over from the ABC. Some crazy Baptist that once had a lot of power in Alabama created and became the head dragon with the Alabama Board of Control. Bars, State stores, even pool halls had to paint over their windows with dark green. Many of those laws are still on the books but not enforced. Some are still enforced, depending on where you are.
All the dry counties created massive amounts of corruption that made rich men of many sheriffs and other county officials. Like Shelby county, the wettest dry county in the State. 
all forms of prohibition do not work, have never worked, and will never work in the future.
Inanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results ( our government explained ) 
Hats off to Cyndi and her history, from this unreconstructed country boy.
Colorado Just allowed the sale of booze on Sunday a year or so back but made it voluntary for the store Owners. But we still cant buy a car on Sunday
Nobody buys alcohol in Virginia, it's out back in the holler. 
About 10 years ago, Shaun forced me to go to OH and IL and they have hard liquor in gas stations and Drive through liquor stores. this country girl was shocked!
They have drive through liquor stores in some parts of metro Atlanta. The metro area makes it difficult by having so many counties involved. City of Atlanta won't sell on Sundays until January 1st while local counties like Gwinnett and Dekalb won't even vote on it until March. Also, bars in the city of Atlanta have to close on Sundays at midnight but in Dekalb and Decatur you can stay open until 4. Not to mention that you can by at midnight on Sunday in the city of Atlanta but not until the following morning in those local areas. It's quite confusing here.
That was an odd thing I noticed in Atlanta, the laws could change when you cross a street. Literally, when you crossed the street into another county, in the middle of the city.
Surely to god there's not still places in USA which are proclaimed "dry areas"????
If memory serves me correct, the Jack Danial's distillery is in a dry county. That's right, no booze to drink.
Down here in Southern Georgia, I read the comments in the newspaper about how we are to keep Sundays for Jesus and to keep alcohol sales on Sunday "forbidden". What kills me is that if you head into the seedier parts of Albany you'll see the ne'er do wellers selling booze out of their cars. We need all the revenue boost we can get down here.
Interesting GA history: the reason we have so many counties is because GA has a law that says you must be able to reach the county courthouse and get home the same day by horse from the county line. Also, because counties are so autonomous, the laws in one county can completely contradict the laws of the neighboring county. The town I grew up in straddled Hall and Gwinnett and the only things in it were a bar, a trailer park, and a church. In the bar, it was illegal to fight on the Gwinnett Co side, so all disputes had to go to the other side of the bar in Hall Co.
Wow, I didn't realize Atlanta still had such laws. I knew they persisted in smaller communities but not a metropolitan area.
A lot of counties are dry in Georgia. My hometown of Douglasville is right on the border of Carroll and Douglas counties and all the liquor stores were right on the exit in from Carroll.
So, is a county like a suburb (or few of them) clustered together and separated by borders, or is it more like a village/s or group of small towns within a specific area?
Like us you have your individual states, then major cities within those states (we only have one per state) but I'm struggling to understand what physically makes a "county" - I'm guessing though it's what we'd call a "region" i.e. "The Barrossa Valley Winery Region" = takes in a whole lot of small towns that all produce wine, or "The Adelaide Hills Region", takes in whole lot of small towns/villages.
These regions don't have separate/different laws or regulations, just a bunch of people who all feel a sort of bond in good times and bad - just a large community without being defined I guess. I'm also thinking it would be similar to our "Council areas" where different councils would charge land tax, rates for sewerage, rubbish colleciton etc before they all amalgamated into one big massive council that would take in many regions in a vast area?
It's sort of a regional collection of smaller cities and towns based around a central "county seat" which is the biggest city in the area. Because so much of our land is not incorporated into a city, we are governed by counties instead. For instance, the postal area I live in is actually NOT part of the city limits. We are "unincorporated Hall Co" but the closest post office services our area. Where I live, the entire area was farmland 10-15 years ago. Here in GA there are vast open spaces of nothingness. Counties govern and provide police, fire, and water services to those areas.
More than you ever wanted to know! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County
and more than you ever wanted to know about GA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(U.S._state)
Ah thanks Cyndi - that's interesting. Here it's the 7 State Governments who provide all those services, including roads, free medical care etc from our taxes on salaries, $22+ per 50gm pack of baccy and $30+ a bottle of grog. I may be wrong, but I think our way provides for a much more uniform and clear set of statewide laws that govern the people, and those who are in charge of managing the people (read corruption accountability etc).
It's our counties who simply provide rubbish collection, sidewalk maintenance and such like - for the privilege of that, we pay the "City Council" about $2k pa over and above the aforementioned taxes, as they're entirely separate, and last I heard, the county Mayor's salary was equal to or just shy of our State Premier's or Prime Minister's, which is an absolute outrage. Mind you, our PM should pay the people for allowing her to breathe!
The set up here can be quite difficult for a lot of people. The city I live in is in two counties and has its own laws that are separate from the county, in some instances. You can smoke in bars in Atlanta as long as they are in Fulton county but not the ones in Dekalb county. My bar is about a quarter mile from Dekalb so I bring my pipe to work.
Like lyst said, it is rather different but I like it. For instance, property taxes in Hall Co are 1/3 less than Gwinnett and Barrow (which are only a mile or two away from where I live.) We also don't have to have emission testing done on our cars and our Farm Bureau is rather prominent. We can choose our way of life based on the county that fits us the best without having to move a long distance.
Wow, I just returned from Smyrna today. Should have bought some beer Sunday!
Oh wow, the penny has just dropped, read up on Cyndi's links and realised, Georgia = Gone With The Wind (my favorite movie of all time).
I collected a some Civil War Memorabilia a few years ago and remember being shocked at how "primitive" they all were, considering how relatively recently the civil war was. Such an amazing thing it was too, virtually kinfolk against kinfolk, which goes beyond anything we here could ever begin to comprehend.
It's always confused me because we here always think of it as about slavery, but whenever I've spoken to an American, they insist it was not. I also found out that many Americans hate it when we refer to them as "Yankees" (which to us is the same as calling us Aussies which is fine and dandy) and we only use it in everyday conversation to shorten the term "American" whilst having little to no understanding of why they find it offensive, suffice to say I try not to use it these days lest it offends.
Americans have a long legacy of being rebellious, and rightly so. We're the descendants of people who lost the war for their homeland and were transported to the "new world" and promised land for loyalty to the crown. That's why you'll find large pockets of Scottish and Irish families in certain places. The conquered folks were dropped off in the wilderness with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and mostly were sold into indentured servitude. We are a literal melting pot of cultures, and for a fairly young country, we tend to do alright. I find it hilarious that the US rebelled against the UK because of income and tobacco taxes totaling about 2% of a person's income. Now we pay about 33% in income taxes and more on tobacco and liquor.
The Civil War was more about economic freedom - not slavery. Only 2% of white people owned slaves. The rest were poor farmers and tradesmen. The US North was based on industry and manufacturing while the South was based on agriculture. It's a very complex issue that got turned into "white people wanted slaves and enlightened people said not gonna happen." However, the emancipation proclamation didn't apply to the Union until much later. It's still a very sore point here in the South because the Union army literally burned a path through the South and leveled entire cities. Redneck ingenuity what it is, we are now one of the major economic centers for technology and tend to be more stable economically than the North is.
As for the word Yankee, some people will get really riled up about it. LOL I call Shaun a Yankee all the time because he's from Ohio and I also tell people I'm from a mixed marriage - my Mom is a Yank from Pennsylvania and Dad is a good ole boy from South Carolina. Also, Mom was US Navy and Dad was US Air Force and mixing ranks like that is almost unheard of. (They met in school for a joint project between the military divisions to train meteorologists and got married 6 weeks later so they wouldn't be shipped out to different states.)
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