Habitual Drunkards

In America's Kegerator, defining the term "habitual drunkards" is something of a Herculean feat. Yet that's just what the Madison Mayor's office and other city officials hope to do to utilize an ancient state law that prohibits selling booze to problem alcoholics in the city.

Most cities and officials are completely unaware the provision even exists. But Katherine Plominski, Madison's Alcohol Policy Coordinator, says the framework to allow the city to deny boozehounds their booze, something Madison has long sought to do, has been contained in a state law all along.

The statute itself appears to be gleaned from Part I, Title XV, Chapter 66, Section 1558 of the Revised Statutes of the State of Wisconsin, passed by the state legislature in 1883. It notes a number of conditions that liquor license holders must meet, lest they be summoned before city officials to show cause why their liquor license should not be revoked.

Plominski didn't say precisely how her office came across the statute, but the image from the Simpsons episode where the town re-enacts prohibition springs to mind. I imagine the city of Madison has a little old man with a visor and a great, dusty volume spread open in front of him, reading, "And he who shall violate this law shall be punished by catapult."

Plominski told me Friday she doesn't watch the Simpsons, so I don't think she quite levelled with me on the humor in the situation. She does, however, have a serious problem with regular drunks on her hands, which is why the idea is so appealing to her.

"We were having a lot of meetings where we were talking about this list of chronic alcoholics," she told me. "The police know them by name, they have contact with them reguarly... And these people are raking up all sorts of citations."

She even mentioned one individual who has been sent to the detox center more than 50 times in less than a year. If it were illegal to serve this person, she contends, he could be forced to dry up, he could choose to go elsewhere or he would at least have a harder time of getting his hands on his poison of choice.

The city of Green Bay, Plominski noted, has been using the same provision in state law for nearly a decade. There, the police decide whose name winds up on the "problem drunk" list, and they distribute it to all the liquor license holders in town.

But Madison's administration would like the process to be more formalized than that, Plominski explained. There would be a series of standards, including a set number of detox trips or police citations, to determine what constitutes a "habitual drunkard." There would also be an appeals process put in place to make sure no one is unfairly denied their right to booze.

In order to establish these criteria, Plominski would like to see an ordinance put before the city council. Her hope is to get the criteria passed, a list developed and names and photos distributed to all liquor venders by springtime: "before we start to see these issues in our parks," she said.

"A lot of these (retailers) don't want to sell to these people," Plominski said, "but they don't have an excuse not to. They're looking for a reason to tell them no."

While a proposal has yet to be introduced before the common council, Plominski says the city's legal staff has already given it the go-ahead nod, saying the city has statutory ground to stand on in pursuing such an ordinance.

This issue has not yet gotten any media play in Madison. We'll be officially "breaking" the story on AM 1670 WTDY Monday morning (I don't get to break a lot of stories as a radio reporter, so it feels good to get one every once in a while), and I assume the papers and TV stations will take it and run with it in a day or two.

I personally haven't had a lot of time to mull it over yet. I do think it's an interesting, kind of sideways approach to a tricky problem, but I would certainly like to see the criteria of what defines a "habitual drunkard" on paper before I weigh in either for or against the proposal.

I just can't escape the feeling we'll need to call in Rex Banner to enforce the ordinance, if it goes through.

With the Angels Now

The news hit me right in the gut when I got word this morning, like a liter of Doppelbock after a night sucking down Miller Light. It made it so much harder to take, knowing it was Tuesday. It had only been a week, and until I found out, I had planned to go again tonight...like I did every Tuesday.

What's really striking is how suddenly it happened. Last week, I think, we had more fun than we had in a long time on a Tuesday. It was almost like I forgot about the rumors, I could ignore the problems, and everything was just great the way it was. I guess I saw the signs all along, I just couldn't bring myself to accept it ahead of time. And I always thought I would have some kind of real warning.

I guess it makes sense the beer selection this past couple of weeks was so slim.

Yes, if you didn't see Monday's State Journal business page (and I didn't, obviously, until today), my regular Tuesday night haunt the Angelic suddenly boarded up the windows, chained up the doors and (presumably) booby-trapped the beer garden this weekend. I had heard rumors over a year ago the establishment was in a bit of financial trouble, and granted, there was a period over the winter when the live band stopped playing and the crowds dwindled a little bit.

But as far as I could tell, things had really started to turn back around for the A-Club. Spring was busy, and then, amazingly, summer picked up business even more. Most of the downtown bars go into hibernation while the students are out of town, but the Angelic pulled in twice its springtime crowds the last few weeks before it closed up. They also trotted out not one, but two new live bands to cement their Tuesday night lineup, both of which I enjoyed immensely.

It was a long time coming. As much as I liked listening to Bob Westfall once a week (and I did!), a little musical fresh air did the place a lot of good.

But let's face it: what really kept me coming back -- what put me in that bar maybe four of every five Tuesdays out of the past year -- what I'm really going to miss...is the beer. The plentiful, myriad, high-caliber, ambrosial and moderately-priced selection of foreign delicacies and American micro-brews. The magic of Angelic Tuesday lay in walking through the front door and gazing upon the hanging signs, and with careful deliberation or arbitrary audacity, slapping down TWO DOLLARS and saying, "Give me a ______."

I'm not ashamed to admit there were evenings my two bucks were on the bar before I even knew how to pronounce what I was ordering. The hardest decision for me was always, "To be bold, or to fall back on my steady, all-time favorite, the Ale Asylum Gold Digger Blonde?"

So here I sit, coming up on ten o'clock on a Tuesday night, in front of my computer with no micro-brew in sight. I'm worried about what could happen to the Tuesday night crew. Sure, we could start a regular rendezvous at the Great Dane, but the beer would be too expensive, the crowd would be unfamiliar, the atmosphere would be too pretentious and there wouldn't be a cheesy waffle fry in sight.

Sad though it may seem, that bar was a part of me: a small, frivolous alcohol-soaked part, but it was a part of me. I have no claim to ownership, but I still thought of it as "my bar," or at least the favorite among "my bars." As a ficticious woman with huge hair once said, "I’ve dug myself into a happy little rut here and I’m not about to hoist myself out of it."

Except it doesn't seem we have much of a choice. So I propose the Tuesday regulars and any other fans of the Angelic rendezvous a week from tonight, 10:30 pm Tuesday July 15, at the Angelic's outdoor beer garden. If everybody brings a sixer, and we clear it with Fred Mohs (don't count him out!), we can throw a few back one last time at our favorite bar and look for closure at the bottom of a bottle. And in the midst of our soul-searching, maybe we'll find an answer to the question scorching my mind: where does a piece of heaven go when it dies?

After that, I guess it's time to start looking for a new Tuesday night hangout...or a new night to hang out. I'm always open to suggestions.