Bue Paper Clip ----> Home Brewed Beer

[plumtreeblossom]

I've made my first trade! I am accepting the offer of warlord_mit to swap the paperclip for one bottle of home brewed beer, and I understand he's a damn fine brewer. I won't be drinking it myself, however, I'll be swapping it up in the next trade toward my goal! I'll post once we do the trade and I can take a picture of the beer, and swap #2 will commence.

warlord_mit, I don't have your e-mail, so can you hit me at the address on my userpage, and the soon-to-be-famous blue paperclip will be yours. :-)

I think I'll start a new LJ for this project. I'm just having too much fun.

_{On my way to a laptop!}

Comments

[beowabbit]

I want the beer! I can give you a cheezy Pentium-90-era laptop (works, but probably won’t run Windows 95, much less Win2k). Dunno if getting to computer hardware so quickly works with your plans, though; if not I'm sure I can find something else to trade (maybe a piece of furniture, or a halogen standing lamp).

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I'll totally take the halogen lamp if it works!

[komos.livejournal.com]

Just one point of concern... MA law views trade of alcoholic beverages as a "sale," which is something that is prohibited without a license.

Small potatoes, to be sure, but it's probably a good idea to not document the trade in anything resembling a public space.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Damn this blue-state-with-Blue-Laws. I'll find a way around it in the way I word things. "Brewed bottled beverage" applies to commercial iced teas, too... ;-)

[komos.livejournal.com]

It came up when bostonbarter started up because there are a few of us there who homebrew, and perhaps more who were willing to trade just about anything for single malt scotch. In any case, I did some research through my bureaucratic connections, got to an attorney at the agency that enforces such things, and was told in no uncertain terms that trade = sale. That being the case, trading an alcoholic beverage without a license is subject to fines and possible jail time. It led to a community rule in spite of some folks who believed civil disobedience was called for.

This is less an after-effect of blue laws than lingering effects of Prohibition. Simply put, the state is very protective of its sources of revenue.

Incidentally, because the trade isn't legal in your jurisdiction, arranging it on lj technically violates lj's TOC. Long and short, be careful with this.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Well hell, I'll never give Massachusetts the blanket description of "progressive" again. I understand their desire to protect revenue streams, since they're not getting their tax nibble. But there are thousands of homebrewers and winemakers in the state. Do they have to do their swaps cloak & daggar style?

New York's laws must be different. In Rochester there was a large international beer store that had a homebrew swap station in the back. You could bring up to 6 12-ounce bottles of your brew at a time and take an equal number of other homebrews of your choice, no cash exchanged. The liquor store owners just provided the free service out of passion for homebrewing. Apparently that wouldn't fly in this state.

[komos.livejournal.com]

Massachusetts tends to be socially progressive, but very conservative fiscally. There's a reason why we've had republican governors for what, two decades?