here's our take
apparently it's illegal for galleries to serve free liquor to the public (who knew?). there's usually more important duties for the police, but if they notice a gallery serving spirits to the public they could be fined or arrested. but now (with a new law in place) galleries can get temporary licenses to serve alcoholic beverages for 4 hours a day for 15 days out of the year. if a gallery is caught serving without one of these temp licenses, they will be fined. there is no specific information stating how often police will be monitoring galleries around denver...
summary:
1. galleries are now getting taxed for liquor they give away for free
2. if they serve liquor without the permit they can get fined
3. or they don't serve liquor and lose their traffic to a gallery that does.
here's published info from www.westword.com
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Drink Up!
Lawmakers introduce a liquor loophole.
Published: May 29, 2008
On June 6, Denver will see its last Thirst Friday — because this summer, one of Colorado's biggest cultural assets will also become a liquid asset. As of July 1, the state can start issuing art-gallery permits that allow galleries to serve (not sell) alcohol for four hours a day, fifteen days a year — as long as each gallery pays a $50 fee to the state, a $25 fee to its municipality, and generally behaves itself (limiting crowds to no more than 250 people, for example).
Raise a glass to assorted lawmakers for getting House Bill 08-1105 through the Colorado Legislature and creating this aesthetically pleasing loophole in state liquor laws, and to Governor Bill Ritter for signing it into law this week. With any luck, the new rules will prevent the sort of inane art attack that other parts of the country are seeing as the prudey police clamp down on the brie-and-Chablis crowd.
In the tony East Hamptons, cops raided several art shows last weekend, ticketing gallery owners and handcuffing one. "The police out here have nothing to do, so they come bother our galleries," gallery owner Ruth Kalb told the New York Post. "They came in here with all their muscles. They needed someone to fight." And so they picked out a 67-year-old whose gallery was serving wine at a photography show opening.
Seattle, too, reports crackdowns on those getting mild in the streets.
But this past session, Colorado legislators wisely recognized that there are much bigger public nuisances than art galleries that attract art lovers — or simply people who like to get out and about on the first Friday of every month. Now all the galleries need to do is apply for the permits, then observe the letter of the law and their own districts' dictates. The Art District on Santa Fe, for example, plans to keep its First Friday events dry — and channel the thousands of people who show up on the first Friday of the month into the neighborhood's bars and restaurants, including the Santa Fe Tequila Company, El Noa Noa and the excellent Continental Club, when they start thirsting for more than artistic fulfillment. Galleries in that district will instead be encouraged to use those permits to serve alcohol at non-First Friday events.
Either way, the local art scene is worth celebrating — and now we can toast it properly.
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Thirst Fridays: Another Round
Thu Jul 05, 2007 at 10:39:47 AM
Is that glass half-empty or half-full? Just in time for the next First Friday -- the gaggle of gallery openings around town tomorrow, July 6 -- Colorado Lawyers for the Arts has posted a summary of liquor laws compiled by the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses and the Office of Cultural Affairs. Although the document was done by Denver (and vetted by the City Attorneys' Office), liquor laws are dictated by the state, so the information applies across Colorado. And it's not good news.
Short of applying for an actual liquor permit, there's no way a gallery can serve alcohol -- not even free alcohol -- at an opening that's truly open to the public. Not legally, at least.
And if a gallery does it illegally? The otherwise very helpful document does not address the odds that a gallery will be busted by the city (which would only be doing the state's dirty work), but does note:
Serving alcohol without a permit or license can result in possible civil or criminal liability.
Examples of criminal liability include: violations of the Colorado Liquor Code are a class 2 petty
offense, which carries a penalty of 3-12 months in prison, a fine of $250, or both; serving alcohol
to an intoxicated person, or under-aged person, or sells liquor without the proper license is a
class 1 petty offense, which carries a penalty of 6-18 months in prison, a $250 fine, or both. Civil
liabilities may arise if you knowingly serve someone who is under 21 or who is a "habitual
drunkard."
Sometime this summer, Colorado Lawyers for the Arts and the city's Office of Cultural Affairs plan to offer a workshop for arts groups, to expand on the information contained in the document and also discuss plans for the future -- say, finding a state lawmaker willing to propose legislation that would allow galleries to serve booze at First Fridays.
In a city so proud of its creative class, there has to be a creative way to solve this dilemma, and show off Denver's liquid assets as well as its art. -- Patricia Calhoun