Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Where and how we will be allowed to drink beer in 2021
Lawsuits and overlapping jurisdictions carry pandemic confusion into the new year
Second Chance Beer is one of the parties that filed suit against Gavin Newsom.
The business of making and selling beer went all kinds of sideways in 2020. So, with vaccinations beginning across the country, when can we start to look forward to some semblance of normalcy?
The first significant change for the beer industry could come sooner than later. Statewide trade group the California Craft Brewers Association last week filed a federal lawsuit against governor Gavin Newsom and California State Public Health officer Sandra Shewry over the mandate that the state’s thousand-plus breweries offer meals with any on premise beer service. It suggests the restriction is “decimating California’s breweries.”
Several California breweries, including San Diego’s Second Chance Beer, are named as co-plaintiffs in the suit, which alleges, “constitutional violations, including denying beer manufacturers their equal protection rights,” because “the same onerous requirement is not imposed on wine manufacturers.” Indeed, California’s four-thousand wineries (including cideries and meaderies) have been allowed to serve wine during the pandemic without the food requirement.
Tom McCormick, the soon to retire executive director of the craft brewers group, says the public health department has offered only a “vague and in our opinion unjustified explanation” for the discrepancy.
As detailed in the suit, health officials contend that, “breweries are often social hubs and meeting locations for different households in a community. In contrast, wineries are generally located in certain regions of the state… settings people travel to visit, often have limited seating, and often operate with more limited hours and; consequently, and generally not social hubs or meeting locations for different households.”
The lawsuit cites the equal protection clause granted by the 14th amendment, contending “Beer manufacturers and wine manufacturers are substantially similar businesses, with essentially identical public health risk profiles.”
Of course, while that legal wrangling plays out, even if San Diego remains in California’s purple tier, which prohibits dine-in service altogether, a return to indoor dining seems weeks if not months away. Or doesn’t, depending on the results of a controversial San Diego Superior Court ruling in mid-December allowing a pair of local strip clubs to remain open. The ruling left enough wiggle room for restaurants and breweries (including Second Chance Beer) to resume on premise service while the matter makes its way through appeals.
Regardless what happens in the courts, there’s a ticking clock hanging over our ability to drink at expanded outdoor venues. City permits allowing restaurants and breweries to expand outdoor seating into sidewalks, courtyards, and parking spaces are set to expire August 3, 2021, unless the city council votes to extend them.
More relevant for breweries may be outdoor service decisions made by the California ABC. Throughout 2020, the ABC has issued a series of regulatory relief measures, introducing such allowances as take-out cocktails, drive through booze sales, and (prior to a statewide curfew) expanded hours for some businesses.
Most important to beer businesses was a relief provision expanding the footprint of their licenses — in other words, allowing them to serve beer in those city-granted outdoor spaces. The ABC says it’s approved more than 9,600 such Temporary Catering Authorizations since March, tying them to a brewery’s ability to serve food.
Which adds up to a recipe for more legal confusion in 2021. The ABC currently has no end date in mind for its various regulatory relief measures, but when it happens, breweries will get 10 days notice to return their license footprint back to normal.
If that happens to correspond with the August expiration of the city’s outdoor permits, we can expect to return to unencumbered indoor drinking… just in time for the hottest days of summer.
With luck, by that point we can stop buying beer to support our local breweries through these tough times, and simply get back to drinking beer because we like it.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Where and how we will be allowed to drink beer in 2021
Lawsuits and overlapping jurisdictions carry pandemic confusion into the new year
Where and how we will be allowed to drink beer in 2021
Lawsuits and overlapping jurisdictions carry pandemic confusion into the new year
Second Chance Beer is one of the parties that filed suit against Gavin Newsom.
The business of making and selling beer went all kinds of sideways in 2020. So, with vaccinations beginning across the country, when can we start to look forward to some semblance of normalcy?
The first significant change for the beer industry could come sooner than later. Statewide trade group the California Craft Brewers Association last week filed a federal lawsuit against governor Gavin Newsom and California State Public Health officer Sandra Shewry over the mandate that the state’s thousand-plus breweries offer meals with any on premise beer service. It suggests the restriction is “decimating California’s breweries.”
Several California breweries, including San Diego’s Second Chance Beer, are named as co-plaintiffs in the suit, which alleges, “constitutional violations, including denying beer manufacturers their equal protection rights,” because “the same onerous requirement is not imposed on wine manufacturers.” Indeed, California’s four-thousand wineries (including cideries and meaderies) have been allowed to serve wine during the pandemic without the food requirement.
Tom McCormick, the soon to retire executive director of the craft brewers group, says the public health department has offered only a “vague and in our opinion unjustified explanation” for the discrepancy.
As detailed in the suit, health officials contend that, “breweries are often social hubs and meeting locations for different households in a community. In contrast, wineries are generally located in certain regions of the state… settings people travel to visit, often have limited seating, and often operate with more limited hours and; consequently, and generally not social hubs or meeting locations for different households.”
The lawsuit cites the equal protection clause granted by the 14th amendment, contending “Beer manufacturers and wine manufacturers are substantially similar businesses, with essentially identical public health risk profiles.”
Of course, while that legal wrangling plays out, even if San Diego remains in California’s purple tier, which prohibits dine-in service altogether, a return to indoor dining seems weeks if not months away. Or doesn’t, depending on the results of a controversial San Diego Superior Court ruling in mid-December allowing a pair of local strip clubs to remain open. The ruling left enough wiggle room for restaurants and breweries (including Second Chance Beer) to resume on premise service while the matter makes its way through appeals.
Regardless what happens in the courts, there’s a ticking clock hanging over our ability to drink at expanded outdoor venues. City permits allowing restaurants and breweries to expand outdoor seating into sidewalks, courtyards, and parking spaces are set to expire August 3, 2021, unless the city council votes to extend them.
More relevant for breweries may be outdoor service decisions made by the California ABC. Throughout 2020, the ABC has issued a series of regulatory relief measures, introducing such allowances as take-out cocktails, drive through booze sales, and (prior to a statewide curfew) expanded hours for some businesses.
Most important to beer businesses was a relief provision expanding the footprint of their licenses — in other words, allowing them to serve beer in those city-granted outdoor spaces. The ABC says it’s approved more than 9,600 such Temporary Catering Authorizations since March, tying them to a brewery’s ability to serve food.
Which adds up to a recipe for more legal confusion in 2021. The ABC currently has no end date in mind for its various regulatory relief measures, but when it happens, breweries will get 10 days notice to return their license footprint back to normal.
If that happens to correspond with the August expiration of the city’s outdoor permits, we can expect to return to unencumbered indoor drinking… just in time for the hottest days of summer.
With luck, by that point we can stop buying beer to support our local breweries through these tough times, and simply get back to drinking beer because we like it.
Comments