Finding Common Ground
It's not every year that I come across an editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that I find myself applauding so it was refreshing this morning to pick up the paper and read this:
Editorial: Bar hours / Last call should move to 2 a.m.
Minnesota's current 1am bar closing is a dusty relic from another era that should have been done away with long ago. It's detrimental to the convention business and tourism and is downright embarrassing (even Iowa has a later closer time-Iowa!). Rather than limiting drinking it just condenses the drinking window and at 1am when the bars do close it looses a torrent of drunks onto the streets and highways. If you've ever been in the Warehouse District of Minneapolis at 1am on a weekend evening you know what I'm talking about. The streets are filled with groups of rowdy drunks just looking for a reason to get into a fight. It's a nightmare for the cops and is not an attractive face for the city to put on for out of town visitors. Ideally I'd like to see the closing time stretched to 2:30am or even 3am but I guess we'll take what we can get. 2am closing sounds reasonable and that's something that you can sell in Minnesota.
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