Safeway under fire

There is a Safeway about a 5 minute walk from my house. While it has its uses there is one area where is it severely lacking: beer. You can't buy it there. Safeway is prohibited from selling any alcohol. Safeway, however, is trying to get this restriction lifted. According to my local neighborhood newsletter:

Safeway would like to sell beer and wine until midnight; this is being disputed. There is a general sentiment among commissioners that Safeway should not be able to sell alcohol at all because of their proximity to Jelleff Boys and Girls Club and to Hardy School. The ANC (Advisory Neighborhood Commission) also wants to support smaller stores.

And lest you think the reporter was mistaken, the article was actually written by the ANC Executive Director, one Bonnie Hardy.

My neighborhood, like virtually all in DC, is fairly liberal so this kind of thing is unsurprising. Nevertheless, you can find such sentiment across America, that somehow big stores are bad while smaller ones are virtuous. I would have thought that this sort of thing should be left up to the market but apparently consumers are not to be trusted with such decisions. Shoppers, of course, aren't idiots, they shop at bigger stores for the cheaper prices that they can achieve through economies of scale. One would think that liberals, who profess to be very much concerned with the plight of the poor, would be very much in favor of such stores since they help the poor afford more things.

Oh, and the school excuse is laughable. The notion that Safeway would be selling alcohol to middle schoolers -- who can usually find liquor right in their kitchen at home -- is ridiculous. And in any case if these kids had any ambition there is a liquor store literally a block away from both locations mentioned in the article.