Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Downtown was crowded, but visitors had a good, safe time
It’s a little quieter in town since a couple thousand motorcyclists went home. But the weekend was an interesting experience — and it was fun to have downtown La Crosse so packed with people and their amazing machines.
On Friday afternoon, downtown La Crosse had a feeling that was similar to the afternoon of the opening day of Oktoberfest — with one exception. While on the first afternoon of Oktoberfest there is evidence that some people already are drunk (you can see them staggering out of the bars or looking a little unsteady walking back from the festgrounds), there was none of that reported during the last weekend.
There were a couple of motorcycle crashes over the weekend, but we don’t know if those motorcyclists had attended the La Crosse event.
About the only things that might have inconvenienced us locals were the lack of parking downtown because of all the bikes and the occasional noise from the motorcycles as they traveled our city streets. Neither of those turned out to be a major problem.
But we keep coming back to the fact that there were thousands of people in town — having fun, visiting with their friends and enjoying drinks in the bars — and there was no visible drunkenness and no sign of any problems.
When one of our reporters called La Crosse Police on Saturday night, he was told it was one of the quieter Saturday nights.
It proves a point that we often make in this column when talking about this city’s problems with alcohol abuse and binge drinking: That it is possible to have fun, enjoy some drinks and not end up so impaired that you put yourself at risk of accident or injury.
If you read the comments on our Web site about drinking, you may often see critics charging that we’re just trying to reintroduce Prohibition. But that’s not it at all. We’re not opposed to drinking; we’re just opposed to having so much to drink that you become severely impaired and vulnerable to accidents or worse.
Last weekend showed that it’s possible to have downtown filled with people who came here to have a good time — including time spent in the bars — without the problems that come with alcohol abuse.
It’s worth thinking about.
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