…breast-groping, public urination, drunken strip-bar revelries, and shady business practices–suddenly, I’m seeing kitsch painter Thomas Kincade in a whole new, well, you know…

…the rich condo dudes to gain the city’s attention about the inhospitable hospitality circuit that is First Avenue late Saturday nights, so be it.

I’m at the lovely Montlake Ale House (formerly Jilly’s East), where the lower-case-m meetup known as Drinking Liberally has its weekly local gathering. Tonight’s topic A, of course: The State o’ The Union speech.

Several Drinking Liberally attendees with their own blogs are writing now, or have written in the past hour, about the speech via their own individual laptop ‘puters.

My own thoughts on it:

Bush’s content, natch, was the same-old same-old. Bush never admits mistakes, claims to have always been right and to be even right-er now. Stay the course. Keep doing what we’ve been doing, even more aggressively. More tax cuts. More domestic spying. More troops in Iraq. More unfunded interference in the local schools. More attempts to smash Social Security in the name of saving it. More paeans to the oil companies, the drug companies, the HMOs, and the employers of migrant laborers (though not necessarily to those laborers themselves).

It’s the tone that was different. That and the body language. For the first time since before the ’04 debates, Bush seemed like almost a real person. Nonverbally he was neither a noise-machine robot nor a deer in the proverbial headlights. Bush has again become a worthy opponent, someone I won’t feel guilty about as I do my part to send him into early retirement.

The Democratic response, given by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (who’ll never be mistaken for Charles Foster Kane) was, as many liberal bloggers predicted, a grave disappointment. Kaine came across as a less-polished Alan Colmes, an apologetic wuss who couldn’t even talk about the really big issues–the assaults on our freedoms by our own government at home and the disastrous Iraqi occupation.

I’m beginning to listen more strongly to those lefty bloggers who’ve accused the national Democrats of being co-conspirators in the Republican machine rule, deliberate paid-off dive takers.

…in the state officially go smokeless.

Some bar owners have predicted a fiscal disaster, as smoking customers would find fewer reasons to linger in their favorite watering holes.

Alcohol service is one of Seattle’s biggest employers and most prominent industries. It’s an industry that’s continued to thrive while the rest of the regional economy’s sputtered and faltered.

One reason it’s continued to thrive has been its steady, piecemeal deregulation. A few oldtimers remember when hard liquor by the drink (a.k.a. cocktails) could only be served in Washington state at private clubs, such as the Elks. Later, from the 1950s on, the strong stuff could only be served in full-service restaurants. These restaurants had to offer full meals, devote more seating area to dining than to drinking, and earn a certain percentage of their revenues from food as opposed to liquor. In these places, as well as in beer-and-wine-only taverns, the taps officially shut down at 1 a.m. Monday through Friday, and at midnight on Saturday. Sundays were dry all day.

Even the number of drinking places in a neighborhood was restricted, by regulations designed to limit “destination” nightlife areas. The idea was to limit drunk driving by making people drink closer to their homes, but it never really worked in that regard; particularly in the suburbs, where everybody drove anyway.

Over the years, the Washington State Liquor Control Board relaxed these restrictions a little at a time. Perhaps the two most important steps came in the mid-1990s.

The neighborhood bar limits were eased, leading to robust nightlife zones in Pike-Pine, Belltown, South Lake Union, and most recently in Fremont.

Cocktail lounges still had to offer something vaguely resembling food, but no longer had to be adjuncts to restaurants–the “bar menu” could be as simple as microwaved frozen entrees. This move, which coincided with the outbreak of the “cocktail nation” fad, gave previously beer-and-wine-only outlets access to higher profit-margin items, making the whole business less of a gamble.

But while public drinking became more convenient, public smoking was the new target of restriction. With the passage of a state initiative last month, Washington’s now got the nation’s toughest anti-smoking laws.

As a result, a local hospitality industry that had seen nothing but growth for a decade now sees a threat to its livelihood.

Cigar bars, and that new downtown fad of hookah bars, will have to sue the state in court to continue existing.

Bars will no longer get big promotional incentives and advertising support from tobacco companies. (Bars will still be allowed to sell smokes for off-premises consumption.)

And fewer regular customers, some bar owners predict, will show up. When they do show up, they’ll linger for shorter amounts of time, hence buying fewer drinks, because their nicotine urges will force them outside.

I have my doubts about the latter concern. There are more and more nonsmokers out there these days, though you wouldn’t know it if you hung out at some bars. I know several people who no longer go to bars or nightclubs, even when their favorite musical act’s playing, out of an aversion to second-hand smoke. The absence of such smoke from drinking establishments can increase, not deacrease, their potential customer base.

IN OTHER BOOZE NOOZE, Seattle City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen has introduced a bill that would offficially designate all of central Seattle, including Capitol Hill, as an “alcohol impact area.”

The anti-smoking law impacts on-premises drinking spots; Rasmussen’s bill would impact retail stores. These businesses would no longer be allowed to sell fortified wines or malt liquors. They couldn’t sell single cans or bottles of beer or single-serving bottles of wine. They couldn’t sell any alcohol prior to 9 a.m. daily (up from the current 6 a.m.).

Such restrictions have already been “voluntarily” imposed on retailers in the Central Area and Pioneer Square; but that’s just sent these products’ customers elsewhere. Now Rasmussen wants to impose it upon a wide swath of the city.

This bill is unabashedly class-biased. It would make it harder for poor people to get cheap booze. It wouldn’t help poor alcoholics get treatment. It wouldn’t stop people with money from making drunken fools of themselves in public. It would only affect the surface image of Seattle as a “clean city” inhabited only by “nice people.”

The new Doctor Who ends its first season on CBC tonight. And wouldn’t you know it, but the show’s star Christopher Eccleston has aleady quit, which means the title role (recast six times in the original 1963-89 series) will be recast again. The new Doc will be the Scots actor David Tennant, whose credits include a recent BBC Casanova miniseries. Hmmm: A Scot with a time machine. Perhaps he could go back in time 16 years and warn the distilleries in his homeland about the current revival in, and shortage of, 16-year-old single malt Scotches.

Trader Vic’s, that legendary tiki-lounge restaurant chain, is coming back to the metro area this fall, after 14 years away; specifically in the new Westin Hotel being built near Bellevue Square.

Minimalist retro-modern bars are called copies of an LA/NY look. (“…These places scream: This. Is. Not. Seattle.”) Not so. They’re really nostalgia for a past fantasy of the present–specifically, the 21st century as predicted at the Seattle World’s Fair. (And what’s with the article writer, and the quoted drinkers, repeatedly denouncing “grunge” as if it still existed?)

HEADLINE OF THE DAY #2: “Rules limiting beach bonfires to grow tougher.” Rule one: You can’t call them “bonfires” anymore. You have to call them “macyfires.”

This story takes place on a Sunday afternoon at a certain decidedly non-touristy Irish pub somewhere in the greater downtown zone. (I won’t name it, because I don’t want ’em to get into any potential trouble for continuing to serve visibly intoxicated patrons.)

On a large-screen TV, the injury-plagued Sonics were somehow clobbering the San Antonio Spurs, to even up their current playoff series at two games apiece (only to fall behind again in Game Five two nights later.)

The spectacle inside the bar, in front of the screen, was even more captivating.

The first thing you’d notice, had you been there, would have been the two very young, very thin, very drunk women, whooping and hollering and flirting with everyone in sight. One wore a Mariners cap; the other wore a Red Sox cap. They’d apparently been on a girls’-day-out at Safeco Field. I say “apparently” because, while they both talked at quantity and with volume, what they said didn’t always make sense.

Among their favorite flirting targets was a tall, lanky young man seated at the bar, clad in a sweatshirt and a backwards Seattle University cap. He spoke with well-practiced Eminem-esque body language and a fake-gangsta “wigger” accent. But the musical-legend references he uttered were not in praise of hiphop royalty but the Beatles and Stones.

Over the course of our very public chat, he mentioned to me and to the drunk women that he’d been faithful to his current girlfriend fora year and a half, a commitment he hadn’t previously thought himself capable of. He also listed a series of drug possession and dealing arrests he’d undergone between the ages of 11 and 18; now, at 24, he was proud to be out of trouble and planned to stay that way.

I observed all this, mostly silently, interjecting these three with questions only at strategic intervals. I was behaving as I often do, emerging into the public sphere only to hide inside my own mind (with the aid of a book and a Sunday crossword page).

Someone seated next to me was even more withdrawn. She was making no eye contact with anyone, except when she needed another drink. She concentrated on the careful penmanship she was applying to a hardbound journal, into which she’d spent the past hour writing (as she later mentioned) about an on-the-rocks relationship.

She broke the ice with me, asking how my puzzle-solving was coming along, and sympathizing with me about that one stubborn corner. But the gangsta wannabe was more adept about opening her up. I returned from a restroom break to find him and her deep in conversation. His voice had changed, the bombastic bravado replaced by a sensitive near-whisper. He insisted to the journal writer that she could make a living as a poet, which she countered with the time-worn adage that it just couldn’t be done. He told her she shouldn’t let her soul be held hostage by any loser boyfriend.

As their conversation became more intimate, I redirected my attention toward the basketball game. About 45 minutes later, the poetess stumbled her way off of her bar stool and around me and the other patrons. She’d previously done as great a job of hiding her state of inebriation as she’d done of guarding her feelings. The white-gangsta dude did his best to keep her from falling down. I asked him to make sure she got home OK; he assured me he would.

After those two left, the thin drunk women (who’d left the bar in the company of an older man and had since come back) reasserted their command on the other bar patrons’ collective attention. They made big, loud, repetitive comments about the joys of chicken wings with Miller Lite. Somehow, I ceased caring.

…they’re worried that the Northwest drought might lead to a beer and wine shortage.

…when I’m glad I’m not in the food and beverage service industry. This would be one of them. One of the four or five great amateur drinking days of the year, kicked off by a TV sports doubleheader involving both of our state’s two chances for college-basketball supremacy. The mind reels at the possibilities…

Mike’s Hard Lemonade is moving its (small) head office to Seattle; specifically to Pioneer Square’s Washington Shoe Building, that onetime party central for the Seattle indie art world. The company’s Canadian-born founder-CEO (whose real first name, natch, is Anthony) will hire 30 people here to handle development and marketing for the Mike’s brands, which are manufactured and distributed by subcontractors.

Imagine the implications: Boeing, Muzak, and UPS may have moved their corporate HQs to other states, but by golly we can still become the capital of flavored clear-malt coolers!

“Ask about our Mary Kay Letourneau drink special, made with 12-year-old Scotch.”

…who wished the well wishes on my recent birthday. It was indeed pleasurable and memorable.

One of the things I did that day was to visit Chateau Ste. Michelle, the modern factory (hidden behind a pseudo-French facade on an old dairy farm) that, as much as any other outfit, spurred the Washington wine biz to its current lofty heights.

The winery tour was brief and efficiently laid-out. The guide told a little bit about the many different wines made here and at a satellite facility in Eastern Washington, and about some of the awards the company’s received over the years.

He didn’t mention Ste. Michelle’s origin as Pomerelle, a little plant on the Sea-Tac strip that had made cheap screw-top wines since the end of Prohibition. In the late ’60s, it started making “real” wines under the Ste. Michelle name. Under master marketer Charles Finkel (who went on to start the beer importer/distributor Merchant du Vin and the Pike Pub and Brewery), Ste. Michelle became prominent enough to get bought out by U.S. Tobacco, the “smokeless tobacco” guys. With this corporate backing, the company built the “Chateau,” added subsidiary brands and branch plants, and became the grape-crushin’ colossus we know n’ love today.

Back in Bothell, one drive-up espresso stand embraces an epithet that’s apparently become beyond-passe in the big city.

LAST FRIDAY, the mercilessly-hyped new arena rock band Velvet Revolver came to the Moore. The group, and its audience, were welcomed by no fewer than three radio-station promo tents.

All three tents boasted mega sound systems, each blasting a different yet identical mix of generic dirtboy metal. Two of the tents proclaimed the word “alternative” as part of their respective stations’ slogans.

Once upon a time, generic dirtboy metal was the definition of what “alternative” music was an alternative to.

…“sick foods,” but I make up for it with well drinks.

…about the Feds’ current war against sex: “Mrs. Ashcroft should tie her husband up in front of a sinfully large television and make him watch Footloose. While drinking an Irish coffee.”