Bill would let bike-bound barhoppers sip between stops

Last summer some friends of mine came up with a brilliant idea for my bachelor party. On a drizzly August afternoon, we boarded a bizarre, rectangular bicycle-built-for-16 called the Pedal Pub and set out for a long day of barhopping around northeast Minneapolis. The details after that are less clear in my memory, but I do recall one of the rules of the Pedal Pub was, by law, no booze on the bike.

Rep. Steve Simon, DFL-St. Louis Park, is apparently as outraged by the rule as we were that afternoon. He’s introduced a bill that would amend Minnesota’s open-bottle law to allow alcohol consumption on “commercial multi-passenger bicycles.”

Continued: Click “Read more”Credit goes to MPR’s Fantasy Legislature blog for catching this bill, known as HF3849. The environmental blog TreeHugger has since picked up on the odd news item, too.

The Pedal Pub, by the way, provides a designated driver who controls the contraption’s steering and brakes. You and your sweaty, buzzed friends simply provide the force for motion, pedaling furiously on one of five stations on either side of the pub. The vehicle has a top speed of about 5 mph.

MPR reports that the Pedal Pub bill cleared the Commerce and Labor Committee with no problems and has since been rolled into something called an alcohol omnibus bill.