I’m not an Oregon native. I came to the University the fall after I graduated high school looking for a solid education, a new home farther up the West Coast, “the college experience” and maybe a few good live shows for a kid to enjoy.
And sitting here in the present, I can’t complain too much. The education I’m now wrapping up may not have made me a super-genius, but I don’t think any education could. I never really took to Eugene as my home, but we’ve reconciled our differences, and in a way I suppose that feeling out of place is part of going to college, par for the course.
In fact, I’ve got very little to complain about here at the end of the road, and that makes my job as a columnist a mite harder. It’s lucky, then, that there’s one particularly regional problem I’ve encountered, one distinctly Oregonian element of my college life that’s reacted poorly with my California blood. The Oregon Liquor Control Commission, better known as the OLCC, constitutes the second largest culture shock in my college career.
The OLCC is the embodiment of the state’s attitude toward alcohol – and that attitude puzzles me. It’s more than the fact that any soul in search of spirits needs to find a bar or state liquor store to satiate their appetites. I’ve come to understand that my fake ID-wielding friends’ ability to pick up liquor at the 24 -hour Safeway in my hometown is not the norm, and running gleefully from the cops is something a kid can only do around these parts when you haven’t had a single drink. Otherwise you run scared, hoping to avoid the probable ticket.
And while paying the price for parties up here has seemed a little steep, I’ve managed to adjust, but when puritanical arms of government like the OLCC affect the way I experience something so near to my heart as a live musical performance, I have to object.
I didn’t notice it at first. I came to college having attended only a few shows with bars in the venue, mostly at larger name venues like San Francisco’s Slim’s and Bottom of the Hill. They’d ink my hands with markers and stamps to let the barkeeps know I wasn’t allowed to imbibe, and we’d leave it at that. It didn’t strike me as odd, either, that some shows should be 21-and-over and some all-ages. I was used to that. But when I first saw an Oregon dance floor divided over drinking, I was flabbergasted. Why couldn’t I dance with the legal people?
It happened most recently at the Hawthorne Theatre in Portland. As I listened to Lazaro Casanova spin a devastating set of house and electro to a relatively empty floor, I took a look around for the patrons I was sure would show up for a big name like MSTRKRFT. I found them standing still behind the barrier, inside the bar. My heart sank.
I understand it’s a legal issue, but a dance show is ruined without dancers.
A couple weeks before I saw a Pinback show similarly separated at the Wonder Ballroom, the drinkers crammed into a corner as two security guards kept them away from us minors. It just makes me wonder at what point alcohol stops acting as a social lubricant and becomes a social divider.
As of Monday, the OLCC can no longer get me for being underage, but I can’t say I’ll miss these split concert halls when I return to California for my next steps. I only hope that the OLCC will recognize that encouraging such separation is no way to present live music nor to socialize the state’s youth.
[email protected]