There's a vote coming up to change the Minneapolis city charter to allow establishments with restaurant beer and wine licenses to sell unlimited amounts of alcohol. From the way I've described it, you may guess I'm against it, and you're right. This change is being framed as giving customers what they want. It seems what they want is to spend large amounts of money on alcohol, not food. An establishment that does that is called a "bar." Those are heavily regulated, rightly so.
The restaurants to be freed from restrictions are in residential neighborhoods. That's the nature of the specific liquor license — to give people outside of certain areas the opportunity to have a glass of wine or a beer with a nice meal. Many of these restaurants already have been freed from parking regulations, and their customers dominate the surrounding streets. With unfettered ability to sell beer and wine, this will continue further into the evening. The patrons, however they arrived, will leave as bar patrons may: later and intoxicated.
I'm sure restaurant owners are excited by the prospect of making more money. Changing what their liquor licenses mean is an easy approach, but it is a wrong approach.
Glen J. Larson, Minneapolis
STADIUM VS. BIRDS
A chance for goodwill is being punted away
There is little doubt that the Minnesota Vikings ownership hierarchy has heard the public outcry to minimize the number of birds killed by flying into the new stadium's huge glass walls. They must also know that their image among the majority of the Minnesota population (less the overcharged ticket holders) is as low as Adrian Peterson's. They also know that the same Minnesota glass manufacturer hired to furnish the design glass also produces bird-safe fritted glass. If they would for once set aside their combative attitude, they could improve the team's image as well as the building's.
Tedd Johnson, Minneapolis
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One thing I've learned from the ongoing stadium controversy is how dumb the Wilfs and their PR team are. After a long and contentious process to approve the stadium, they are presented with a golden opportunity to dispel at least some of the lingering bitterness. So what do they do? They kick away a public-relations gift. Do they not understand that a photo of the first bird that falls victim to this stadium will be all over the Internet? Do they want to be derided by late-night comics? Show a little common sense and decency, install the bird glass and put an end to this fiasco.
Bill Jorgenson, Minneapolis
THAT DAY IN OCTOBER
Christopher Columbus is properly demoted
In response to laments over the decline of Columbus Day ("In defense of Christopher Columbus," Oct. 18), the reality is that neither political correctness nor anti-Catholic or anti-European biases have led to the downfall of this holiday. It was the painfully gradual recognition over the past few years that Christopher Columbus was not simply a brave, courageous explorer. Instead, he took the peaceful Arawaks of the Bahamas as prisoners and made many of the people of the Bahamas, Haiti and the Dominican Republic search for gold or face death ("A People's History of the United States," Howard Zinn).
Columbus wrote in his log: "[T]hey would make fine servants … with fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." These were not idle musings, for as he later wrote, "[a]s soon as I arrived in the Indies … I took some natives by force." Upon his return to Spain, he misrepresented to the court that he had found Asia and was provided with even more ships and men to return to the islands. When he returned after a later voyage, he brought 300 men, women and children to be sold as slaves (200 more had died during the journey). In Haiti alone, during the approximately five years that followed Columbus' arrival, the population was cut in half. And by 1550, there were only 500 Arawaks of the original population of 250,000 alive in Haiti.
