Oak Park has always had a curious relationship with alcohol. Go back 100-plus years and you have leading citizen Henry Austin — think Austin Garden, Austin Boulevard, the old Oak Park Trust & Savings Bank (Marion and Lake) — buying the last saloon in this burg and allegedly cracking open the barrels of whiskey in the gutter.
Makes us thirsty just contemplating such desecration. Took 70 or more years before Oak Park timidly ended its prohibition with a series of half-steps toward being able to order a beer with a burger, being able to buy a bottle of wine in a shop that wasn’t permitted to sell hard spirits, being able to buy a six-pack in a grocery store but only one such store in any given business district. Enough rules to drive a person to drink.
Now the village board has asked its liquor review board to contemplate just how close to hell in a handbasket we’d end up if liquor laws were both simplified and loosened some. Right now it is like translating code to figure out how many seats a restaurant needs to have before it can have a bar, whether popcorn is enough food to justify a beer, or if we should just hand out maps to bars in Forest Park.
We worry that even this latest effort will amount to more pussyfooting around the issue. Isn’t it past time that Oak Park had a true, unapologetic bar? Shouldn’t we kill to have Binny’s plunk a beverage depot at Oak Park and Madison? And wouldn’t a micro-brewery add some life to late nights in Downtown Oak Park?
Be bold, Oak Park. But always drink responsibly.