Mayor Daley: More Booze For Airport Patrons

By Karl Klockars in Food on Jun 30, 2010 7:00PM

In a city that's currently stalled on arguing about whether or not we can eat food from a truck, Mayor Daley is pushing legislation to allow airport patrons to drink from a cart. At today's City Council meeting, Daley introduced a measure to create two new licenses for vendors at O'Hare and Midway to sell spirits alongside beer and wine.

You can already get an Old Style with your overpriced pretzel, but with the expansion you could get a mixed drink as well to pair with your pre-packaged deli sandwich, although nothing "by the bottle" or package goods would be available - for those you still have to stumble to the duty-free shops. Why you would choose to take your rum & coke on the run over spending your wait time relaxing at Chili's Too is beyond us.

Fran Spielman at the Sun-Times has the details here. She quotes Aviation Department spokesperson Eve Rodriguez as saying, "we're trying to increase revenue and provide the highest level of customer service." We could be cynics, but all we hear is, "Please leave us a few extra bucks before you fly out of town and we don't have to deal with you."

If the effort behind this movement is really in the spirit of increased revenue to the city it'll be a drop in the proverbial bucket of cash that Chicago needs as cuts and furloughs seem forever on the horizon. Maybe the mayor is looking to make up that misspent million dollars in TIF funds. But if he's serious about building city coffers on the back of booze, we have a few only slightly tongue-in-cheek suggestions: Ease restrictions on liquor licenses and start rebuilding the culture of true neighborhood taverns. Lift the ban on happy-hours or better yet, create a new happy-hour license. Or, if worse comes to worse, if you need to have booze on pushcarts, we'd love a mojito with our pushcart elotes.