Funny thing about alcohol in New Hampshire. You can buy beer and wine in grocery stores here along with your cat food and toilet paper, but any harder stuff requires you to deal with a monopoly: the state. In 1933 when it became clear that Prohibition was about to end, New Hampshire mandated that all liquor in the state could only be sold in state-owned stores. I suspect this was in part inspired by the fact that New Hampshire shares a border with Canada, which meant that a lot of illegal smuggling of Canadian liquor led to a dramatic increase in crime, so the state wanted to make sure these criminal gangs couldn't leverage their already-existing supply chains and distribution networks to stay in business. Just a guess.
In any event, these laws still stand so that today, if after a long day at the office you're a-hankerin' for something to obliterate your memories of it all, you must indeed stop at a state-owned liquor store. While not a connoisseur of liquor, my understanding is that prices are actually quite reasonable and even competitive. An odd thing about these liquor stores, however, is that they're almost all located at rest stops along major highways. Now, for all the Live Free or Die! bluster, it is illegal to drink and drive in New Hampshire (.08% blood alcohol level will land you in court here), and we also have the usual open container laws. Now, you can of course purchase your liquor quite legally and drive home without opening it -- which is exactly what the state expects you to do -- but still, it seems an odd message to send that state liquor stores are not conveniently located in major urban shopping centers, but instead you have to drive miles out of your way to highway rest stops for the stuff. In the video I posted in early July by the Super Secret Project, "Granite State of Mind", they acknowledge this oddity:
"Dont drink and drive here, listen to what I say
even though we put our liquor stores right on the highway..."
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