So, earlier today, we touched on the city enacting a voluntary ordinance for Wrigleyville bars to stop selling alcohol after the seventh-inning stretch of a Cubs clincher. An understandable request, but also one that was well, sort of a pain for business owners and CUBS FANS WHO WANT TO GET DRUNK AND CHEER ON THEIR CUBBIES WHOOOO!

So, the business owners expressed a little angst. And Mayor Daley has shot right back with some incredibly awesome quotes:

“This is about the Cubs. This is about where they worked so hard all year to get to. This is not about a lot of fans and a lot of drinking. We don’t want to see any incident outside, because if there is, that whole area will be voted dry tomorrow. Those citizens will get together and say, ‘I’m gonna vote every precinct dry. I’ll even vote Cubs Field dry,” Daley said.

[ ... ]

“Then I’ll have someone buy their place tomorrow. It’s not gonna cost ’em any business. They made enough money all year. I’m sorry. We’re just talking about common sense. That’s all this is. Because I’ll tell you one thing — if that community sees something they don’t like, they will not have a bar. They will not have a liquor license. They will vote it completely dry,” the mayor said.

OK, first off: I’m not sure just because these bars aren’t following a voluntary ordinance, the community is going to go off and vote every bar in Wrigleyville dry. That would be pretty nearsighted considering, you know, it might result in quite the economic downturn for the neighborhood. (And plus, I wouldn’t be able to stumble a few blocks home from Central. This is what is of utmost importance here.)

Don’t forget to stay tuned for this saga’s next act, in which Eddie Vedder pens a protest song against the mayor. Should be fun!

Image via the Reader.

OK, so in premise, the idea behind this seems somewhat sound. Wrigleyville bar owners have been asked via a voluntary ordinance to stop serving alcohol after the seventh-inning stretch of a clinch game — oh boy, wouldn’t it be awful if the Cubs blew a lead and they didn’t clinch, whoopsies! — during the playoffs to curb the mass drunkenness and anarchy that will ensue. Stop the drinking for an hour, resume after the game, cool the kiddies off a bit.

But as the owner of Barleycorns tells the Chicago Sun-Times, (aside: I’m hoping never to venture upstairs at that establishment again in my life, it’s like a rave but for guy’s in striped Hollister oxfords) it sort of kills business:

“It’ll be one hour, maybe more, without offering service,” said Sanchez, owners of John Barleycorn, 3524 N. Clark. “Customers will be unhappy. We’ll lose business. There’s no reason for them to come back. We’re sending a bad message to the world that Chicago cannot host a large event at a time when we’re hoping to bring the Olympics to Chicago.”

This is entirely true. Why in the hell would a bar voluntarily agree to this, while the bar next door doesn’t agree and serves during those innings? That’s just a bad business tactic. And it gets worse for the masses out there, because if they leave a bar that does follow this ordinance, there’s a decent chance all the other bars are going to be so packed, they’ll have to wait in line and risk missing the game. And then they’ll probably riot and burn the entire Clark strip down, completely ruining the intended purpose of this ordinance in the first place.

So yeah: good luck with this one, Cubs fans.