For decades, St. Louis’ Mardi Gras celebration has operated under rules designed to keep patrons safe and the neighborhood happy: Gas stations are not permitted to sell bottles of booze on the day of the event, and any bars serving outdoors must pour drinks into plastic cups to keep cans and bottles off the street.
Those rules have changed, and neighbors aren’t happy. Amanda Ramcharan, president of the Soulard Restoration Group, says the city’s excise commissioner informed them at a meeting last week that it was no longer enforcing the ban on gas station sales—and that bars would be allowed to serve drinks in bottles and cans, even outdoors.
The city now says part of that was a misunderstanding: Bottles are still banned. But, under the city’s current catering licenses, drinks may now be served in cans. The city is also no longer barring gas stations from making sales, although it says all of the gas stations within the festival’s footprint have voluntarily agreed to forgo them. (A city spokesman was not able to explain when the rules about cans changed, or why.)…