Ludington's Octoberfest 2021: Drifting Drunk Downtown

Plenty of tourism websites advertise the upcoming Ludington Octoberfest beginning next Friday, laying out their case for drinking lustily before dusk:

Visit downtown Ludington and enjoy music and family activities in an outdoor setting, to celebrate one of the last hurrahs of the season! This year’s Octoberfest will be held on Saturday, September 25th from 1-6pm at Legacy Plaza...

The event kick off happens on Friday, September 24th with a pub crawl from 5-8pm with 5 stops along the route within the recently established Social District.

Social district legislation was passed by the state legislature and signed into law last year to allow Michigan businesses to sell alcoholic beverages to be imbibed outside of their establishments, provided the local government unit approved the district and the business got appropriate permits and glasses/stickers. It was a response to the restrictions on businesses imposed by often-draconian measures to slow the spread of Covid-19.  The City of Ludington passed an odd-shaped social district in the downtown areas primarily along James Street and portions of Ludington Avenue back in February.  

Several Michigan communities have passed resolutions for social districts in their municipality, many also have Oktoberfest celebrations.  Frankenmuth, the only Oktoberfest outside of Munich, Germany to be sanctioned as authentic, has a host of events pervasive in their community in their four day celebration, but they keep their drinking events outside of the public square, and they have no social district.  Other small cities that only have an Oktoberfest (Pentwater, Curtis, Bloomingdale) do not have any social districts, so they do not feature drinking outside their beer tents, halls, or fenced-in areas.

Those communities that feature both an Oktoberfest and a social district, feature larger cities (Detroit, GR, Lansing) and celebrations that generally don't intersect with their districts, and to the extent that they do, they do not market their Oktoberfest by saying that it is taking place within a social district, where public alcohol consumption outdoors is fully sanctioned and encouraged by the state and local government through their permits. 

There is one outlier, Ludington.  They market their Octoberfest by saying a pub crawl (not a pub brawl as they advertised in 2016) through the social district of Ludington would be taking place during the late afternoon for three hours.  Ludington alone glorifies the fact that they will showcase drinking on the public sidewalk, alleys, and byways during their Oktoberfest celebration, fully sanctioned by the local city hall, with one powerful city haller benefitting financially from selling drink decals to the local drinking establishments. 

As usual, children under 15 are encouraged to attend the festivities, being able to get into Legacy Park free and participate in a variety of games.  Let's have them learn that it's appropriate to drink to excess in the public square and public streets of beautiful downtown Ludington

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This type of affair just screams, "there's nothing else to do in Ludington". Must be that the Ludingtonians who run the town are either closet alcoholics or they just want to hide their alcoholic tendencies behind these "let's get drunk parties".

Earlier today, TV 9&10 did a piece on Traverse City's 'drinking culture' in which the DDA did a probative hearing about how they might change the pervasive drinking atmosphere in the downtown, with minimal damage to the many businesses that make their living on that culture.  According to the TCPD, almost all of their incidents involve alcohol. 

Chances are that nothing will come from it, and chances are nothing would come from it if this discussion on 'drinking culture' happened in Ludington.  Too many businesses deal with alcohol in one way or another and the Ludington DDA centers many of its events towards the drinking tourists, and because many on the DDA also benefit from the local 'drinking culture', I think there is more involved with the growing DDA drinking docket, than just some of the top guys being closet cocktail connoisseurs.  

Closet cocktail connisseurs? A fancy way of saying closet alcoholics? maybe they drink too much at times, maybe have a good time often, but the real definition of an alcoholic, imo, is one who drinks to excess and cannot function to hold a job or neglects his/her family by excessive drinking. I don't think that those on the DDA are neglectful alcoholics are they? yet i agree that the DDA culture focuses heavily on drinking to benefit their businesses, but the whole world of tourist towns seem to be caught in the culture of eat, drink and be merry.

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