I Need A Yard Stick

It is no secret here on the blog that we are some fans of the wine.  If you want to get all English major, I believe this makes us oenophiles.  This is pretty much our personal mission statement:

So when it came to thinking about PJP and the retail space we are planning, carrying wine for sale was a given.  Not only do we want to carry wine (and perhaps bourbon) for sale by the bottle, we've also put some thought into planning fun date night and girl's night out parties where you could learn to bake AND enjoy some cocktails, pie and wine pairing, and the like.

This is just the long way to say we need a liquor license.  And you guessed it, just like everything else in this show, a liquor license application is ridiculously difficult.  I'll never pass by a dubious looking drinking establishment without reigning in some of my judgment because applying for the liquor license application is HARDCORE.

Obviously, the application asks pretty much every personal question about you that you can imagine...you even have to include a picture.  And because it doesn't clarify what sort of picture, I'm stymied as to whether I should go get a passport photo or just print out a Facebook profile pic and glue it right on the paper.  I've listed out my birth city, every address I've had for the past 10 years, and consented to reviews of my driving record.  I recall the passport application process to be less onerous than what one needs to sell bottles of wine in Missouri.

The kicker of the application is this question:

"What is the distance in feet, measured in a straight line from the nearest point of the above pictured licensed premises to the nearest point of the nearest school, church, or other building regularly used as a place of religious worship."

Yeah.  That could rank as the dumbest question anyone has asked me in this whole journey (and I've filled out a lot of applications and forms in the past few months).  How would I even know the answer to that question?

I would guess PJP V 2.0 is perhaps closest to The Crossing Church.  Or maybe the First Christian Church on Providence.  It is hard to say for sure without measuring it and how would we do that?  I immediately have a mental image of us with yard sticks and/or tape measures, plotting our way in either direction of the churches.  And what if we are wrong in our answer?  If we say we are 4,314 feet away from a church and we are actually 5,280...will our application be denied?  I think the easiest thing to do would be to call El Maguey across the street and ask them how far they put on their application, shave a few feet off and call it good.

But that is the least of it...the application also asks all sorts of complex questions with overkill language that makes me feel like whatever my answer is, I'm being tricked.  I sorta want to answer no to some, but get the feeling I'm supposed to answer yes.  The Missouri Department of Public Safety should seriously consider a fast-track application for those without convictions of city ordinances or state laws relating to intoxicating liquor, non-intoxicating beer, gambling, immorality, fighting, peace disturbance, or narcotics.  I would bet a substantial number of state workers spend their days trying to figure out if someone really meant to mark "yes" on some of those questions or they simply didn't understand the question.

I haven't sent in the application yet, primarily because I have photographic decisions to make, feet to measure, AND the entire thing has to be witnessed and notarized.  I'll never actually sell any retail wine because the process to do so will lead me to drink all the wine available.

If you see us on Nifong tomorrow with yard sticks, be sure to honk and wave.