Lubbock Went From Dry To The Home Of The Chilton In Just 14 Years

We've come a long way Lubbock.

I just read an article about Lubbock having a "Chilton Trail". For some reason, people think we're going to end up famous for a modified Vodka-Soda, so they promote it as a great local innovation. You are of course allowed to differ on this opinion, but is it really that different from your friend mixing cherry and Coca-Cola Slurpees to make a cherry coke? This is to say, I don't know why it is considered an "innovation".

Regardless of your stand on our locally famous drink, it brings to mind that it wasn't that long ago that the city was actually fighting against alcohol in town. 2009 really wasn't that long ago. Yes, it's been a mere 14 years since Lubbock became wet.

You can kind of thank/blame Walmart for Lubbock finally turning a corner. According to reports at the time Walmart was thinking of putting Sam's Club outside of town because they couldn't sell booze inside city limits and that was the impetus for a lot of people to start grinding away at the opposition. Yes, there was HUGE opposition, mostly from churches who didn't want this sin in town (or possibly people drinking the night before and not showing up to church).

A funny thing after sales became legal in town and that's for two years alcohol-related accidents went down, presumably because people didn't have to drive across town to get booze. Since then Lubbock's population has boomed so it's kind of hard to track where we'd be now if we had stayed dry.

I, for one, am not going to ever let Lubbock forget this ridiculousness. We were stubborn and hard-headed about change that actually helped our tax base and didn't hurt us in the least. Proof of that is that it's only been 14 years and we're not promoting the fact that we're the innovators of an alcoholic drink.

P.S.  The RockShow purchased the very first legal beer ever sold in Lubbock, Texas and we're dang proud of it.