Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas, Bud Kennedy column: KENNEDY: Set Six Flags free -- to sell beer

Mar 18, 2009 (Fort Worth Star-Telegram - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- SIX | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Six Flags still can't sell beer.

And I don't understand why.

The baseball stadium across the street sells truckloads of beer.

The hotels and restaurants nearby sell plenty of beer.

The new football stadium down the street will sell even more beer.

If Tom Hicks and Jerry Jones and everybody else around are free to make money selling beer -- then why can't the stockholders of Six Flags carefully sell beer?

I know. Nobody wants another drunken driver in Arlington.

But the drunks weaving on Collins Street don't come from some outdoor park where they've been paying $6-$8 a cup. They come from nuisance bars with reckless servers and irresponsible owners.

The old Six Flags Astroworld park in Houston started selling beer in 1972. Nothing happened.

More than 30 years later, Arlington is still waiting.

Six Flags should have been selling beer in park restaurants beginning this week. The state liquor board and a state judge approved the license on Feb. 25, and it would have been issued this week, but a Fort Worth activist filed a protest delaying the license as late as April 14.

Carl Fors, 63, doesn't live anywhere near Six Flags.

He lives on the far west edge of Fort Worth, sells police radar equipment and consulting services and also works as a fashion photographer.

Fors is a versatile guy. He has also written a gender humor book called Hens: Why Women Are Different. And he has modeling Web sites, including www.girlsofradar.com.

For the moment, Fors' primary concern is his new cause, Texas Sober.

"If we know that the more alcohol [sales] outlets we have, the more deaths and injuries we have, then that's a 1-to-1 ratio," he said by phone Tuesday, describing himself as the founder and president of Texas Sober, which will lobby to require a safety study for new liquor locations.

OK, fine. Except that premise isn't really true.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the rate of alcohol-related highway deaths in Texas actually went down from 2006 to 2007, the last years on record. Texas' rate of 0.53 deaths per million miles traveled is worse than the national average but far better than in neighbor Louisiana (0.81) or national-worst Montana (0.94).

Fors said he's not against drinking.

He's only for making it tougher for any place new to sell beer.

"I think if they" -- the liquor industry -- "had their way, they'd put them in vending machines on every corner and you'd swipe your card and get served," he said.

He said Texas Sober has 20 members who oppose any new alcohol permit for an attraction or event dominated by children.

In other words, no more freedom to sip a beer at Mayfest. No more freedom to sip a glass of party wine at the Fort Worth Zoo.

I've got a better idea.

Set Six Flags free.

Bud Kennedy's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 817-390-7538

To see more of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, or to subscribe to the newspaper,
go to http://www.dfw.com. Copyright (c) 2009, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email
tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax
to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave.,
Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

More News:   Market Updates | Stock Alerts | All Trading News | Stock Index