''We don’t sell beer!' she cried, in outraged tones. And yet Wal-Mart sell guns…'

Helen Angove reflects on America's attitude towards alcohol.

It’s hard to be a student in the UK without developing a good working knowledge of student bars. And no matter which university you find yourself in, from an Oxford College to Preston Poly-that-was, they are much of a muchness.

There’s that distinctive aroma of stale beer-soaked carpet, the familiar sight of predatory third years FAFFY-ing (the polite expansion of the acronym is ' Find A Friendly First-Year'), and most of all, the extraordinary crush of bodies, such that the available space seems already filled to saturation point by the door, but mysteriously gets even more densely packed as you jostle your way towards the bar.

But a couple of weeks ago my husband and I and our two year-old daughter went for a drink with some friends. We went to a bar at the university where my husband works. We sat outside in the twilight (there are advantages to living in California in January), under the gentle glow of a cloud of fairy lights, surrounded by beautiful architecture, sipping appreciatively at our pints. The children ran gleefully around the near-deserted patio, and played peek-a-boo with the bar staff.   

I doubt if that is a description true to all, or even most American university bars. But there is a reason why a college bar in the States might be emptier, and perhaps more sedate, than its English counterpart: most undergraduates are under 21 and thus too young to drink. At the particular bar we were patronising, in order to be served alcohol you had to show photographic government-issued ID, which they swiped to check for validity. If you’re under 21, you don’t really stand a chance, and some US universities have banned alcohol on campus altogether, even for those who are over the legal age. It’s hard to imagine that happening at a British university.

Socially acceptable

You definitely get the impression in the US that drinking is slightly less socially acceptable than in the UK. Drinking to excess certainly exists, but you wouldn’t admit to it in polite society (unless you were telling someone about your participation in the AA '12-step program' which, oddly enough, is acceptable conversational material. Especially in California where it’s almost a social faux-pas not to be in some kind of self-help group) .

There’s the way they refer to drink as 'liquor' for example, a word which, to me, always has a slightly more disapproving ring to it than 'booze'. Then there’s the distinction made between 'hard' and 'soft' liquor, and the people who tell you (with a superior smile) that they never touch 'hard' liquor. In a work context, making the suggestion of going out for a pint at lunchtime is to put oneself on the fast-track to pariah-hood. And an American bar has a very different atmosphere to an English pub. Unless they are also a restaurant, most of the bars I’ve been to tend to feel a little seedy, and not the kind of place you‘d take your mother.

Licensing laws vary from state to state. In Oregon you can buy beer and wine in a supermarket, but must go to a liquor store for the hard stuff. In Colorado you have to go to a liquor store for any kind of alcohol, but if you fancy a bottle of wine with your Sunday lunch you’re out of luck because they won’t be open. And in California you can buy pretty much any kind of alcohol in a supermarket at any time of day - including the famous 'two-buck-chuck' a wine which retails for $2 a bottle. Surprisingly, it’s relatively drinkable.

Some friends of ours, upon first arriving in the States, were grocery shopping in Wal-Mart and decided to get some beer - so they asked a sales clerk where they might find it. 'We don’t sell beer!' she cried, in outraged tones. And yet Wal-Mart sell guns… Though, if you think about it, I guess there is a certain amount of sense in not selling alcohol in the same store as firearms.

Attitudes

So is this attitude towards booze a throwback to prohibition, or   - going back even further - to America’s Puritan roots? Or is it simply a case of America simply being a bit more sensible about drinking habits than the UK?

The prevalence of the 12-step program in American culture does give the impression that they are more ready to recognise and deal with a problem if it exists. Moreover, news stories about the alarming rise in alcohol consumption among young people in the UK seem to suggest that a bit of restraint in some cases may not be a bad thing. However, its not an issue I find myself getting too worked up about - my days as a gin-embalmed theology student are (sadly?) well behind me.

Helen Angove is a former Anglican priest from the UK who moved to California in July 2003.

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