Sit down and drink your beer

"At ten cents a glass from 1925 to the late 1950s, the beer in a Vancouver parlour was reasonably priced. A variety of regulations, however, shaped the behaviour and attitudes of those who sat and drank. Parlours regulated their clients' class, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, age, and even citizenship. Predictably, and with mixed success, patrons attempted to avoid or alter the regulations.

Yet the power of regulation went beyond rules and resistance, for its web enmeshed not only the regulated but also the regulators, a group that included more than state officials. Much of the daily burden of regulation actually fell on the shoulders of parlour operators and workers, who had their own priorities. That regulated drinking environment tells us much about public drinking but also about the society in which the parlours existed."--BOOK JACKET.