A real brew-haha has beer lovers in the City of Brotherly love frothing over with anger.

To one side, the suds uproar is borne out of typographical errors, hard-to-spell beer names and archaic, Prohibition-era liquor laws. To the other, it’s a simple matter of making sure bars and beer manufacturers aren’t scamming the system.

It all came to a head after an anonymous complaint that a Philadelphia bar was selling beer that had not been properly licensed with the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, an agency created after Prohibition in 1933 to regulate the sale of alcohol.

That tip led to raids last week at three upscale bars, where police confiscated three quarter-kegs and 317 bottles of beer that were not believed to have been properly registered with the state. Raids at Memphis Taproom in Philadelphia’s Kensington section, Local 44 in west Philadelphia and Resurrection Ale House downtown caught the couple who run them by surprise.

“I feel like there are a lot of typographical errors that caused this,” said Leigh Maida, who received calls from staff around midday March 4. “The laws were really developed before there were so many kinds of beers.”

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100312/D9ED1S3G0.html

When did St Patricks Day turn into ” Drunk Week” in Northeast Philly? Every St Paddys Day..the weekend before actually..all hell breaks loose on Frankford Avenue and the surrounding area. Why? Because the weekend before St Patricks Day people are allowed to roam the streets with open cups and bottles of beer, harassing passersby, climbing lamp posts, cursing, making lewed gestures and generally making a drunken nuisance of themselves.

Yes, I know the bars love it, they get to sell a lot of booze. They even run buses..The Shamrock Express up and down Frankford between bars so that people getting absolutely blotto on booze have transportation between bars. You may think this is fun, but to those of us who have to shop on Frankford or who just want to go for a walk in our own neighborhood its bloody hell. When did St Paddys Day become Drunk Week and who sanctioned the open beer cups ? There were four police cars sitting at Cottman and Frankford all yesterday. Wouldn’t these police officers be better employed chasing criminals instead of having to baby sit a bunch of drunken louts? It just makes me sick.