In-your-face liquor store robberies no longer hold the appeal they once did for the discriminating stick-up artist.
While I assume the experience of ordering a person to do your bidding and having them immediately and meticulously comply is quite the power trip, but with the cap, dark glasses, false beard, and fake gun it just seems to lower the accepted standards for robbery to shoplifting or breaking into vending machines.
Either way, they’ve been magnets for thieves on the top end of the inept chart since Prohibition ended, but nowadays liquor stores don’t have nearly as much cash as they used to thanks to our digital world of credit and debit cards.
So if you’re reading this and thinking, “How am I ever going to rob my favorite local liquor store yet still retain my dignity and self-worth while not risking a few years in the state penitentiary,” well, there’s a much-easier way — vote incorrectly on Propositions 124, 125 and 126 on your soon-to-be-delivered ballot.
Voting yes on any is like poisoning your neighbor’s dog because you wish to see it suffer.
Prop 124 is about licensing, the rigorous process of applying (to make sure one is not a convicted felon, has the actual assets to open, etc.) and being approved to deal with ridiculous amounts of regulation (pricing, hours, location, etc.) all for the legal restriction of being protected from tightly controlled competition by a local Liquor Control Board.
If passed, it would allow chain stores like Safeway, City Market and Walmart to crush our local stores even more as they buy inventory by the truckload, and even lose money if they have to, all to put our friends and neighbors out of business. No longer restricted to three locations, they could open as many liquor store locations as they wish.
In 2018 our state regrettably voted to allow the three aforementioned stores to sell full-strength beer, thus putting a large dent in the already restriction-filled sales of local liquor stores.
Proposition 125 would allow them to also sell wine, expanding that dent into a large hole, making it even harder for your favorite store to stay solvent.
Proposition 126 would allow third-party services, such as Grubhub, Uber Eats and Door Dash to deliver alcohol for a percentage of the sale like they now do for food, taking yet another large bite out of local liquor stores already dwindling profits.
Video stores in Happy Valley were all the rage in the mid-to-late 80s (sadly, so were neon one-piece ski suits and rear-entry ski boots, but that’s not the point). National grocery chains (aka Safeway and City Market) tried to squeeze themselves onto the dance floor at the expense of their local video store neighbors — much like they are doing now with full-strength beer — and used the product as a loss-leader to get folks through their front door.
It didn’t work, but when the Biggest Kid on the National Block (aka Blockbuster) moved in — much like the big chain liquor stores want to do with Prop 124 — it put a quick end to most mom-and-pop video stores. Luckily Blockbuster itself went “poof” a few years later.
Increased competition is not always the correct answer in a capitalist society, especially when it’s at the direct expense of friends and neighbors in a small town.
It wasn’t right then and it’s not right now.
But if you still insist on robbing a local liquor store, do it like a real man (or woman if so inclined) with the Bronco hat, dark glasses, false beard, and fake gun, and afterward use common sense and vote NO on all three propositions: 124, 125 and 126.
Even your neighbor’s dog will thank you.
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