Gate City, Virginia, Does Not Need to License the Sale of Mixed Drinks

First, the note to long-distance online readers: This is a local-interest article. If you want to read it anyway, background information is available at www.virginiastar.net .

Next, the apology: Although it has ten numbered paragraphs, this is not a real Top Ten List article. It's split between six reasons not to license a restaurant to sell mixed drinks, and four suggestions for other attractions that might attract the right sort of clientele to the restaurant. If this disturbs anybody's sense of the proper way to write an AC article, I'm sorry.

1. If Gate City restaurants are to compete successfully with established restaurants in Kingsport, Bristol, or Big Stone Gap, they will need to offer something different and special. All beer and liquor places are alike in ways many people find unattractive. The blight of alcohol has adversely affected even night spots, like the Silver Spur, that haven't even sold alcohol, but have attracted people who brought alcohol with them.

"Something different" might be the authentic, though updated, 1950s ambience we have at the Hob Nob. Or the "home-cooked" style meals Appco is trying to market. Or a health-food restaurant. Or a "hands-on museum" restaurant where people could watch local produce being cooked in traditional ways...or even help with the cooking. Or somebody could just try to re-create the good ol' Mill House and bribe WGAT's current staff to promote it in the way Jimmy Smith used to promote the Mill House. Or there might even be some sort of ethnic or nouvelle-cuisine restaurant that does not currently exist anywhere near Gate City.