SLC Punk

Howdy from fabulous Salt Lake City. Courtyard Marriott is a pretty nice hotel and it has free high speed internet in my room. Not a bad deal. My buddy, Peter, and I are here for a few days to attend dealer training for Control4. The training should be good, but the big deal is that they are shipping out my product so I can pimp out my house. Automated living, baby.

We flew in and got to the hotel about 9:20pm and headed to the restaurant next door (Iggy's) for a quick bit to eat and a drink. In case you never plan on visiting Utah, let me explain how the laws work here when it comes to alcohol. Needless to say, Eventine wouldn't do well here.

A bar is a club. You have to have a membership to one of these private clubs in order to just go to a place for drinks. Anywhere else you drink is considered a restaurant and you MUST order food in order to drink. All draft beer is only 3.2 alcohol by volume, but you can get bottled beer that is normal beer. If you order a drink with hard liquor in it, you can only have one drink on the bar at a time. The waitress actually stood at the bar holding our second drinks, looking at us expectantly, while we held our drinks and looked confused. If you drink beer, you can have one hard liquor drink at the same time, but only one additional drink.

The best part was when the waitress was taking the time to explain to us all of these rules. We asked why Budwieser would want to produce special beer just for Utah. She told us that it wasn't really specially brewed beer because everywhere else gets kegs from the same place. The difference is that most states have their kegs measured by weight but, in Utah, their kegs are measured by volume.

We both started at her trying to figure out how that makes a difference in the alcohol content... She then mumbles something about alcohol content by volume and wandered away.

It was confusing to say the least...and our first big adventure in Utah.