Bill Stewart[SMTP:bill.stewart@pobox.com] wrote:

At 10:24 AM 06/21/2003 -0700, Major Variola (ret) wrote:

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Is Hatch a Mormon?

Surely you jest. Anyone in any office in Utah is a Mormon. And most of the profs at the universities there. Good luck trying to buy a beer, BTW.

I was pleasantly surprised when I went to Salt Lake City ten years ago that not only was it no trouble to get a drink, it was also no trouble to get espresso, which is my usual vice - the Nordstrom's in the mall had their little stand out front. It's apparently more trouble to get liquor up in ski country.

I've also found it was less trouble to get a beer and _dinner_ late at night than in much of California, though perhaps they have rules requiring bars to also be restaurants. (~midnight, about 6 blocks from the temple.) The catch was that they were also less fascist about smoking in bars, so I had to sit off at the less-crowded end of the bar rather than near the TV with most of the other gentiles.

SLC, while the state capital, and home of the LDS church, has a comparatively low concentration of Mormons. Provo, which is the home of BYU, is far more concentrated. The Mormons have actually eased off on the caffeine issue in the last decade or so. Coke is now OK. I'm not sure about coffee (part of the prohibition is against *hot* drinks, regardless of content). Peter