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PERSPECTIVE: Walking down Main

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By: Staff Writer

5/06/2009 6:08 PM | Comments: 1

(KEN GIGLIOTTI WINNIPEG FREE PRESS )

Editorial writer Tom Oleson recently strolled the 1.8 kilometre stretch of Main Street from Selkirk Avenue to Portage Avenue — the infamous Main Street Strip — and found it a better place than you might think and for reasons that you won’t guess.

The Manitoba Liquor Control Commission’s outlet at Main Street and Pritchard Avenue, hardly a frog’s jump north of Selkirk Avenue, is the only liquor store in the city that is open six days a week at nine o’clock in the morning.

Since Winnipeggers, whether they are in the Main Street area or have simply sunk to the depths of sipping sherry 24/7 in their Wolseley and River Heights homes, all work different shifts, live different lives and keep different hours, it is peculiar that liquor stores, or at least some of them, aren’t open 24/7.

But they are not. The closest the city comes to that is the liquor store at 1005 Main Street, and that is for a very particular reason. Some years ago, John Rodgers, who was then head of the Main Street Project, and members of some other organizations devoted to improving the lives of the drunk and the indigent on Main — the Non-Potable-Abuse Committee, as they were collectively called — approached the MLCC and asked it if it could open the Main Street store a little earlier than the puritanical 10 a.m. which is the opening hour most days of the week for every other liquor store.

For the full story, see today's newspaper or our fpNews electronic edition.

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