[QUOTE=Dado;5722789]
Quote:
What I really dislike about our alcohol laws is the effect they have of effectively killing off a "café culture".
We end up with pubs and restaurants that have these god-forsaken fenced-in patios around them. It looks ridiculous. It wouldn't actually stop anyone determined to "escape" with a drink since it has to be fire-exit safe. It's asinine.
The laws as they pertain to drinking alcohol "in public" are just kind of dumb, but if you're willing to risk it (and seriously, who is going to go after you in the wilderness anyway?) you can try it. But businesses are far more constrained and it's there that the effects are really seen.
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Ah yes, the dreaded fence. I like to call them little drinking prisons. As a bar owner/manager/worker in Ontario I became intimately familiar with AGCO's silly regulations regarding patios. You can't just throw a few chairs out in front of your establishment, you have to have a barrier in place (think of the children!!). There MUST be a fence surrounding people enjoying a drink in public, no exceptions!
At one bar, we had a huge corner patio (with the requisite barricade) but the problems arose with our two entrances. We had an atrium which fronted the patio and our two entrances were located at the ends on either side. Since the drinks had to be carried from inside to out, we had to build a barricaded walkway all along the one side (at great expense). On the other side, the entrance was located 5 m from the barricaded patio and in order to transport drinks through that door, we were required to build yet another barricaded walkway which would have eliminated 3 of our 6 parking spaces. We balked at that and consequently had to tell customers who bought drinks and were headed to the patio that they couldn't use that door- even though it was by far the closest route to the patio! We had to tell them to walk through the bar, through the inner entrance (which required a separate licence) down the long barricaded walkway onto the patio. When we were busy, people naturally went through the unbarricaded door in order to make the 5 second trip to the patio as opposed to the 10 minute battle through the packed bar, down the walkway etc. AGCO, on one of their regular 'crackdowns', parked across the street one night, waited until someone emerged with a beverage headed for the patio, and gave us a 1 week suspension + 1000$ fine for 'allowing beverage alcohol in unlicensed areas' or some such drivel. We could have appealed but that would have only attracted 'special attention' and further fines for minor infractions so we just bent over and took it. And we had to hire a guy who's only job was to stand there Thurs, Fri, Sat nights telling people to "Go the other way".
Licence holders in Ontario are terrified of running afoul of AGCO because unless you follow whatever idiotic rules they throw at you, they can- and will shut you down. You dare not question or complain because if you do, you'll be labelled as a 'troublemaker' and their wrath will descend upon you.
And there is nothing you can do.
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