Adam: Hold My Bier

June 2014, my first trip to Europe. I had traveled across the Atlantic with some friends. While we were backpacking from hostel to hostel we met up with an old friend, a foreign exchange student from Germany. Lüthje took us out on the town in Mannheim. We were drinking at a hipster bar. I was connecting with my Deutschland roots and feeling very good. The group wanted to get some fourth meal but I hadn’t finished my bier. That’s when Lüthje turned to me and said those four magical words that have stuck with me ever since: “Take it with you.”

South of Downtown in the city of Columbus there’s a place, “German Village” and West of that village is an area known as the “Brewery District.” In 1836 a Deutschland immigrant by the name of Louis Hoster opened the first brewery in that district. In its heyday the district was home to five breweries: Schlegel Bavarian Brewery, Schlee Brewery, Born's Capitol Brewery, Gambrinus Brewing Company. But after 83 magnificent years brewing beer in the city everything came to a halt.

The temperance movement had been gaining momentum since the 1820s. Culminating 99 years later with the Eighteenth Amendment ratified on January 16, 1919. United States Constitution prohibited intoxicating beverages. It regulated the manufacture, sale, or transport of intoxicating liquor (but not consumption). It ensured an ample supply of alcohol and promoted its use in scientific research and in the development of fuel, dye, and other lawful industries and practices, such as religious rituals. It did not define "intoxicating liquors" or provide penalties. The Volstead Act wasn’t far behind and it cleared up those gray areas. The act defined intoxicating liquor as any beverage containing more than 0.5% alcohol by volume. Prohibition had hit America.

But before 1919 what were the laws and regulations for intoxicating beverages? There were only two: regulations of its sale and bans on public drunkenness. That’s it. The term “open-container” would have been completely foreign to any American for the first 143 years of this great country and the additional 284 years from when that genocidal Italian, my city’s namesake, first arrived in the hemisphere until declaring independence. The Volstead Act quickly killed the heart of the Brewery District shutting down all of the breweries and forcing the newly unemployed German Village residents to relocate in search of work.

After nearly fifteen years of prohibition the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment. Americans across the country had been given a freedom back. But the damage was done many communities across the country, like the brewery district, would never return to their former glory. After prohibition things went back to the way they were for the most part. Most states had settled for laws simply prohibiting "common drunkards" or "vagrants.” Until 1964 the Supreme Court ruled in Robinson v. California that it was unconstitutional to categorize vagrancy as a crime. The court also struck down a California statute classifying drug addiction as a crime including alcoholism. This made it more difficult for police to enforce laws like “public drunkenness.”

According to Joe Satran at the Huffington Post: “Between 1975 and 1990, in the wake of the decriminalization of public drunkenness and vagrancy, cities and states gradually imposed bans on drinking in public. New York City Council voted to ban public drinking just six weeks after public drunkenness was decriminalized throughout New York state on Jan. 1, 1976. Mayor Abraham Beame vetoed the bill, citing its "disturbing civil-liberties implications." Three years later, the council passed another ban, despite vociferous opposition from minority groups -- and Mayor Ed Koch signed it into law… By 1995, the bulk of the cities in the U.S. had passed bans on public drinking.”

But there I was on the streets of Mannheim Deutschland in 2014 carrying an open container of beer. This was days after popping a bottle of wine while eating cheese in a public park in front of the Eiffel tower. Land of the free. America loves to brand ourselves as the place of liberty and whatnot but here I was in Europe experiencing a freedom I didn’t even think was possible on the planet. Returning to America has been difficult for me. These past five years have been a struggle. I find myself time and again, wishing I had a beer on a walk through my neighborhood. Wondering how my evenings would be if only I could carry the remainder of my canned beer as I saunter to my next venue or even on a pleasant autumn evening back home.

What is the reasoning behind allowing adults of drinking age to gather in public places and consume alcohol? But if those same responsible adults of drinking age decide to do the same act on a sidewalk or in a park that is somehow illegal? In the event a person becomes unruly in a drinking establishment what is the step management takes? They have that person placed outside on the sidewalk. The exact place we are forbidden to drink. If the reason we are not allowed an open container outside is to prevent public intoxication then why is it the first response of a bar is to place said drunken person on those very same sidewalks? Americans are allowed to drink in public bars. Americans are allowed to drink on patios of bars. Americans are not allowed to drink on the sidewalk? I don't understand the logical leap taking place here. 

Prohibition started exactly 100 years ago. It took us fifteen years to realize it was unAmerican to regulate the freedoms of fellow Americans. But here we stand today one hundred years later and what have we learned? We need to organize and we need to start asking ourselves why not? Why not be allowed to drink a beer on the street? Why not be allowed that bottle of wine in the park? Why not that white claw while you push your child’s stroller in the cool of the day?

As I mentioned above I read an amazing article by Joe Satran for this rant. In fact, I almost didn’t bother ranting at all because he did such a better job than me...but obviously I decided to complain nonetheless. Here is an excerpt from his article that I think shines a light on why exactly our freedom claiming country doesn’t allow open-container from sea to shining sea. And it should be no surprise to anyone in America with a pulse:

“...Yet patterns of police enforcement of public drinking laws do suggest their origin as a replacement for unacceptably vague and discriminatory status offenses. Though national data on public drinking infractions are hard to come by (or nonexistent), the few studies of police enforcement indicate that poor, black people are arrested at rates many times higher than affluent white people.
Judge Noach Dear of Brooklyn had his staff look into tickets for the offense in his borough in 2012, and found that "More than 85 percent of the 'open container' summonses were given to Blacks and Latinos. Only 4 percent were issued to whites." Nearly 40 percent of Brooklyn residents are white.
In 2001, the City of New Orleans commissioned a study of a then-30-year-old city law that banned open glass and metal (but not plastic) drinking containers on the streets. Researchers found that nearly 80 percent of those charged with violating the open container law were black, prompting the city council to repeal the ban.
That's all to say that anyone can be ticketed for drinking in public under the terms of the new Prohibition. Just as anyone could be ticketed or jailed for public drunkenness in 1960. But the available research suggests that young black kids drinking 40s on the corner are more likely to be ticketed than a prosperous, middle-aged white couple drinking a bottle of wine in the park.”

So this holiday season as you raise your Eggnog or Christmas ale, consider for a moment what this country could be. Consider that stroll through your neighborhood enjoying the lights of the street while warming your insides with a hot apple cider cocktail. Consider caroling door to door with sips of pleasant hot chocolate with a dash of Baileys. There is no federal open container law but a web of local municipalities. Write to your mayor, call your city counsel member and ask them why.