Supervisors Move to Get Skid Row’s Wine of Choice Off Shelves

Duke’s Liquor is one of the few places on Skid Row where street people can’t get a cheap drink.

That’s because several years ago owner Carl Johnson Jr. stopped selling pint bottles of cheap, fortified wines “to keep the winos away so we can get a better clientele.”

Taking the idea a step further, the county Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to ask wineries to voluntarily suspend sales of the cheap wines to liquor stores and markets on Skid Row, but for a different reason: to reduce alcohol-related social problems in downtown Los Angeles.

“The truth of the matter is, if we remove this product from the Skid Row area, there will be less public drunkenness,” Ken Schonlau, executive director of the California Assn. of Alcoholic Recovery Homes, told the supervisors Tuesday.

San Francisco Trial

Board Chairman Ed Edelman proposed the move after reading about San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin District, where E & J Gallo Winery and Canandaigua Wines of New York in June voluntarily suspended sales of cheap wines on a six-month trial basis in response to community pressure. Community activists had appealed to the wineries after local merchants refused to curb sales.

A Gallo spokesman declined comment on Los Angeles County’s request. But the spokesman reiterated Gallo’s long-standing position that alcoholics deprived of one way to get inebriated will find another. The huge winery agreed to suspend sales in the Tenderloin District “to find out if our beliefs are correct.”

Al Wright, director of Los Angeles County’s office of alcohol programs, said the trial program under way in the Tenderloin District has had mixed results. He said the San Francisco neighborhood is considerably smaller than Los Angeles’ Skid Row, making it easier for alcoholics to leave the area to buy cheap wine.

“We don’t believe people would travel a great distance to buy fortified wines,” he said.

70-Square-Block Area

Los Angeles County defines Skid Row as a 70-square-block stretch bounded by 3rd, Spring and 9th streets and Central Avenue.

Cheap, syrupy wines--which have twice the alcohol of chablis or burgundy and sell for a fraction of the cost--are the beverage of choice of curb-side alcoholics, according to a study by the county Department of Health Services. A typical 13-ounce bottle of fortified wine contains about 18% alcohol, the equivalent of four cocktails, and sells for about $1.30, health officials said.

“You probably will never see Night Train Express on the wine list of your favorite restaurant,” said Bob Pratt, president of Volunteers of America, which runs an alcoholic treatment program on Skid Row. “The reason is that this product is targeted as the most effective and efficient way for an individual to become inebriated.”

Supervisors, with a dozen bottles of the cheap wines lined up on their desks, acted after health officials reported surveying more than 300 alcoholics in treatment programs on Skid Row, touring liquor stores and markets and observing “drinking practices among people on the streets.”

New Strategy

Edelman said that attacking the supply represents a departure from the county’s previous efforts to fight alcoholism by targeting the drinker.

The supervisors also voted to form a task force of city and county officials, downtown business people and social service providers to study other ways to reduce alcoholism on Skid Row and in other problem areas, including South-Central Los Angeles.

Among issues to be studied are requiring health warnings on bottles of fortified wines and placing restrictions on liquor stores and markets on the sale of alcoholic beverages.

Wright pointed out that in Pacoima, “some local merchants have voluntarily decided to stop selling single cans of beer in brown paper bags. They will sell you a single beer, but in a plastic bag. This has a chilling effect on street drinking.”

A spokesman for the Wine Institute in San Francisco said that cutting the supply is a “narrow solution to a much broader societal problem.” He said the trade organization favors stricter enforcement of existing laws, including a ban on drinking in public.

No More ‘Shortdogs’

Johnson, owner of Duke’s Liquor on San Pedro Street, said he discontinued the sale of “shortdogs,” the pint-sized bottles of cheap wine, about three years ago.

“We actually have gained clientele by cutting that wine,” he said, pointing out that customers “don’t see the winos sitting out in front of the store.”

But Johnson said he is skeptical of government efforts to restrict the sale of cheap wine. Referring to alcoholics, he said, “If they want it, they’re going to get it.”