Seattle Bans Certain Cheap Booze

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports:

On Wednesday, the first day of Seattle's expanded ban on 29 brands of cheap booze favored by the homeless, Bill, 55, nursed a 24-ounce bottle of Icehouse at Victor Steinbrueck Park by Pike Place Market.

Once the homeless man polished it off, he headed into the market, pulling a suitcase with two heavy wool blankets on top.


A man named Totem remained at the park. He had said a day earlier that he would spend the first day under the expanded alcohol ban checking into rehab.

Today, he was drinking -- sharing a 40-ounce bottle of Brown Bear beer inside a brown paper bag and a fifth of whiskey with two friends. One sipped happily from an iced tea bottle. "This is good iced tea," she said. The other lay on the grass giggling.

After restricting the sale of cheap alcohol in Pioneer Square in 2003, Mayor Greg Nickels and City Council members petitioned the Washington State Liquor Control Board to expand the area where certain types of alcohol are banned.

The liquor board approved the expansion, and beginning Wednesday, brands such as Thunderbird, Richard's Wild Irish Rose and Night Train Express, were banned in downtown, Belltown, lower Queen Anne, Capitol Hill, the Central Area, the University District and the International District, as well as in Pioneer Square. Those were the brands that turned up most often when the city analyzed litter found in the neighborhoods where they received the most complaints.

The Nanny City of Seattle.