It’s true. I work in one of them. Dry towns, they’re called, for the uninitiated. These are places that never got around to repealing prohibition and now contain just enough votes against change to hold back the rest of the public from ordering a nice glass of wine with dinner. Why? It will destroy the community, of course!

Well, there is another side of the community that suffers from this mindset: the local business owners. And all the people who want to order a glass of wine and didn’t realize they had to bring their own. Oh yeah, and anyone who is in favor of forward progress.

Okay, Maybe I’m a bit biased.

I was commissioned, through EduComp, for the cause – to design a website to showcase the language of those working toward legislation that would allow beer and wine consumption at restaurants in one such town: Tisbury, otherwise known as Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts.

I should note that personally, I drink very little, perhaps one or two beers or a glass of wine in a month, although, like many, I went through a typical teenage binge phase. I blame the heat and madenning peer pressure of Savannah, Georgia. That’s beside the point, however: the legislation would be good for the town. As it stands, people can bring their own beer or wine to dinner, so the drunks are just as able to get drunk. If anything, this would be more regulatory, and it provides those who want to have a drink at a restaurant that option. I have had a lot of trouble understanding the logic behind the fight against it, aside from stubborn traditionalism.

Consider this a call to anyone who lives in Tisbury: please vote on this on April 14th. It’s a town meeting vote to get it on the ballot in 2010. It needs your help to pass. For more information, and some words from those involved in attempting to pass the legislation, visit the site itself: PreservingTisburysFuture.com

I will have a more comprehensive post in the web section about the process of the design of the site soon, and about upcoming websites, when they go live.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Event, Friends, Link, Local, News, Rant, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.