#StayHome Movement Has Let To People Drinking More And At Home
If you try and take away someone’s liquor, then he or she will still find a way to drink.
If nothing else, Prohibition taught us that fact.
And so, as officials throughout the USA and the world shut down the bars and even the restaurants that have bars in the face of the COVID-19 crisis, people are still drinking liquor. In fact, in some places drinking has increased by an eye-popping rate. San Francisco, for instance, has experienced a 45% increase in alcohol sales since the city ordered its shutdown the first of March.
So the #stayhome movement has been a boon for the liquor industry, be it from people getting bottles of beer, booze or wine from liquor or grocery stores, or actually going to their favorite bars and restaurants to get a speciality drink to go (which you can do in many areas, as long you also order food).
“I just needed this bar’s drink,” and “I’m supporting our local bars and restaurants” are the most common comments people are putting on social media.
And this drinking-at-home thing goes far beyond take-out cocktails. People are posting on their Facebook pages memes about drinking (ones on wine are quite popular) as well as photos of themselves sitting at home drinking.
The reason for this is as simple as making a rum and Coke. With not being able to go to work or out to play, drinking gives people something to do while they sit at home 24 hours a day.
It’s the next most popular activity behind posting sensationalized (and often false or misleading) headlines on their Facebook pages and making horrified reactions to other people’s posts after reading only the headline and not the actual story.
Drinking is, after all, a part of the human culture. And history.
Monks invented beer.
Winston Churchill never met a whiskey and soda he didn’t like. He even said he never trusted anyone who didn’t drink.
Benjamin Franklin, the noted American statesman, said “beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
Ernest Hemingway is almost as famous for saying “I drink to make other people more interesting” as he is for his novels. Maybe more so, in fact.
WC Fields was as full of alcohol-related quotes as he was alcohol, among them: “I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to food.” And “a woman drove me to drink, and I didn’t even have the decency to thank her.”
Henny Youngman, the slapstick one-line comedian most popular in the 50s and 60s, had a good one about drinking: “When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.”
Johnny Carson, the greatest talk show host of all time, was full of jokes and said this one: “I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.”
And course, that tradition carries over into today’s culture with this famous quote from cartoon character Homer Simpson: “to alcohol! The cause of – and solution to – all of life’s problems.”
So cheers to those who are getting cocktails to support their local businesses and for keeping the beer, spirits and wine industries full of, well, spirit.
Leave a Reply