by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Just to show that I'm more suicidal than our fearless Toronto-bound federal cabinet, I decided to write this column from a laptop in the SARS quarantine in a Virusville hospital. But I missed the bus so I write today about important public matters from my green-coloured office.

This is where I manage my affairs. One of my grown-up responsibilities is being part-owner of the Société des alcools du Québec. You're probably part owner too, as is anybody who pays taxes to la belle province.

I take my responsibilities as stakeholder of this state-run enterprise seriously. I make spot inspections and sometimes leave with an occasional bottle of overpriced firewater.

For the record: booze is good. I'm not being gratuitously contrarian or trying to attack the alt-orthodoxy governed by the Holy Trinity of DJs, Graffiti and Marijuana. But booze doesn't make you drool on yourself like pot, it doesn't get you grinding your teeth in crazy anticipation of your chance to make your next brilliant remark as does cocaine. Booze is known, proven and effective. Work hard, drink hard. Just like the Germans.

Yes, booze makes some do dumb things, but a sober Michael Jackson dangled that baby off that balcony, proving drunkards have no monopoly on irresponsibility.

But Quebec has a monopoly on bottled spirits. Which makes us all both customers and owners of our nearby local liquor outlets. Thus we should be honoured guests when we enter these establishments. Yet there is no greater local repository of unbridled hostility, arrogance and belligerence than a local booze store, with the possible exception of metro ticket-takers.

Unless you want to drink smuggled booze - and it used to be said that half of Quebec's booze purchases were of this variety - you're stuck buying your overpriced Glenlivet from the SAQ. My first effort at buying booze foreshadowed my sufferings. I had saved up all my available extra cash and bought a big bottle of Tanqueray. When I got home, I found that the cashier had mistakenly given me somebody else's $4 bottle of wine. No refund was available.

But not only does the SAQ not hire people with brains, they don't hire minorities of any sort. The branch at Victoria and Sherbrooke seems to be particularly unreceptive to local cultural tendencies. Having long worked in both languages, I enjoy giving others the chance to do the same. Last year my Fear Factor request for English service led a cashier to storm out, leaving the befuddled manager to explain that they're not required to be bilingual, as they are technically provincial government bureaucrats.

Then last week I rollerbladed to the NDG monopoly booze shop where the stalagmeister ordered me to halt. It's in the Charter of Rights that you can shop on rollerblades, or it should be. Anyway, I do it all the time. I've even ridden my bike through Place Ville-Marie at night. It rocks. Anyway, I ignored the clerk and was soon enduring a foul bukkake of his public invective. The surreal ritual humiliation endured as he denounced me while completing my $31 purchase.

And in the great tradition of state-run commerce, the wealthy and secretive government branch that rules the booze shops, known as la Régie des alcools, des courses et des jeux has a plan to further worsen service. In the future, they will stock only the most popular brands of booze, which means that connoisseurs and special-needs boozers won't be able to find their liquid faves anywhere in this province.

The Liberals were all set to privatize the liquor stores under Bourassa in '85 but somebody must have had compromising photos, as there was a hasty about-face leading to lawsuits from those hoping to open branches. In other places where little entrepreneurs aren't forbidden to sell spirits, customers are offered choice (of both locations and brands), they enjoy lower prices and the government earns just as much in taxes. Raise a toast to that, kids.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca