A California man has been arrested for a fairly unique crime; breaking into a closed bar, re-opening it, and serving drinks for days. Travis Kevie, 29, is a transient in Auburn, California who spotted the shuttered Valancia Club and decided to go into the bar business. The thing that proved his undoing was the media.
Kevie started small. He bought a six pack of beer and sold it at the bar. He then used those profits to buy more booze and was soon serving 30 customers. That led to a newspaper story about the re-opening of the historic Valencia Club under its new owner, Kevie. One of the readers was a detective who not only knew the club’s alcohol license was suspended by knew Kevie.
He is still working the bars but at the Placer County Jail where he is facing charges of burglary and selling alcohol without a license. Presumed drink of choice: Alabama Slammer, of course.
Source: CBS and Auburn Journal.
Hilarious.
No jail time but restitution. Say, in the kitchen washing dishes.
Gyges:
“I guess I’m wondering how you reconcile “Competition is good” the fact that Colorado Liquor laws demonstrably increase competition and successful businesses and “regulations like liquor licenses and business licenses are an impediment to business growth.”
I guess I don’t understand what you were talking about above. Can a microbrewery have more than one location? Or just retailers? Explain it so an engineer can understand it, you know keep it simple and with a minimum of polysyllabic words 🙂
Is there a particular reason why so many breweries have ‘settled” there? Water, location to labor, availability of raw ingredients, transportation, location of markets?
Byron,
Now if you’d only realize that some types of regulation serve other purposes besides merely being burdensome, we’d be getting somewhere. 😉
Buddha:
“and in fact discourages small business owners in favor of those who can pay the “entrance fee” to the market.”
I could have said that. 🙂
Byron,
I guess I’m wondering how you reconcile “Competition is good” the fact that Colorado Liquor laws demonstrably increase competition and successful businesses and “regulations like liquor licenses and business licenses are an impediment to business growth.”
There seems to be a little bit of a disconnect there.
Byron,
I think we still have a fundamental difference on what constitutes bread and what constitutes butter, but I’m not anti-business. I’m anti-fascism. I’m also not pro-regulation. I’m pro-sensible regulation, i.e. it must serve some other valid social end than simply perpetuating bureaucracy. To me, business licenses fall under the less-than-sensible rubric. It’s truly an obstruction with no other social purpose than to be a form of taxation without representation and in fact discourages small business owners in favor of those who can pay the “entrance fee” to the market.
Gyges:
you are certainly right about trespassing, good catch. If there was any reason for him not to do what he did that would be it, violation of someones property rights.
I should have caught that as well.
A tip of the hat for that observation.
Buddha:
“But I’m going to surprise you, B.”
Nah, I know deep down inside you know where the bread gets buttered. 🙂
And you do have a good point about location, but I still don’t think the local health department will do any better than one sick person at shutting down a restaurant.
Gyges:
“Now there are trade offs to this, but the net effect of the rule is an increase in competition and a state that is quickly becoming a one of the top brewing regions of the world.”
Competition is good and that statement above is my point I have been trying to make for over a year.
Seriously, why is a guy with so much initiative a “transient?” He must either have serious psychiatric or economic problems. I hope he gets a suspended sentence and a chance at a job.
He should lose the sideburns though.
Byron,
That’s not to say the CO’s liquor laws all make sense. Until a few years ago we had a Blue law in effect, and any store that sells “groceries” along with alcohol, is required to get a pharmacy license as well. The first year or so the store I work for was open there was a small pharmacy.
We all seem to be forgetting that the guy was trespassing.
Byron,
Come to CO, see how many microbreweries we have. That is in large part due to our liquor laws. You see, companies can only have one location with a liquor license. So, there is a single Wal-mart, Target, King Soopers, etc. in the state that have liquor licenses, and each liquor store is has a single location. This means that the majority of liquor bought in the state comes stores that get to make their own decisions about what they carry separate from what their chain’s national distribution center. Microbrews tend to do much better in states that don’t allow sales in grocery stores than in states that do.
Now there are trade offs to this, but the net effect of the rule is an increase in competition and a state that is quickly becoming a one of the top brewing regions of the world.
Byron,
Liquor licenses serve another valid public function – like keeping bars from opening in inappropriate places like across the street from schools where they’d be exposing children to a greater risk of injury by drunks.
Health Department inspections? Sorry, just because someone didn’t get sick in this one incident doesn’t negate their net positive function.
But I’m going to surprise you, B.
I agree on business licenses. They are nothing but revenue generation. The law already provides remedies based upon people holding themselves out to the public as sellers in due course. Requiring a business license is the equivalent of a penalty for trying to open a business (a net add to the local economy). It’s a mild tyranny but a tyranny none the less. Much like these little shithole towns around here whose main income stream comes from writing traffic tickets.
And thus again, we have an illustration that it’s not excessive regulation that’s so much the problem, but rather bad regulation that’s the problem.
This is exactly why regulations like liquor licenses and business licenses are an impediment to business growth. If he had kept going he would have been able to hire people.
If you extrapolate this one example to the larger economy you can see why we don’t create very many jobs any more, as Elaine said above this is ingenious but our tax laws and business regulations stifle creativity.
And for all you health department types, I might point out no one got sick or died.
That detective was a real dick Tracey.
Yeah. I don’t think I’d have arrested this guy so much as given him extra points for initiative.
Kevie is my kind of law-breaker. Talk about ingenuity!
I suppose his spirits have been watered down. So Bryon, free enterprise shut down in a conservative state, hmmm.
The entrepreneur spirit is once again shut down by bureaucracy.
Urban bar-steading?
Once again a true Capitalist strangled by bureaucratic red tape. Will it never end?