Utah's bars no longer just for members only

Bartenders in Utah threw open their doors Wednesday as the state ditched a 40-year-old requirement that customers fill out an application, pay a fee and become a member of a private club before setting foot in a bar.

"It's 40 years of oppression come to an end," said Dave Morris, owner of the bar Piper Down in Salt Lake City. "There's this national perception that we don't have bars here, so hopefully this gets out there that we're open for business."

The new rules are an effort to boost the state's $7 billion-a-year tourism industry and make the state appear a little less quirky to outsiders.

In the posh ski resort town of Park City, Steve Liebroder, owner of Lindzee O'Michaels, said bar owners in town celebrated the switch at midnight.

"Tourists will actually know that you can get a drink here now. Maybe all of our business will quit going to Colorado," he said.

Meanwhile, many locals in the tourist town took the change in stride. The area has long been known for bending state rules to accomodate tourists and many locals never bought a club membership.

"I don't think it'll change too much. It's kind of open here," said Bruce Morrison, while downing a beer at No Name Saloon on Park City's historic Main Street. Morrison said he didn't remember the last time he paid for a membership in Park City.

In Salt Lake City, home to the LDS Church, it's always been different.

To celebrate, Morris organized a 16-bar pub crawl to celebrate the novelty of being allowed into a bar without having to pay first. One crawl is set for Wednesday, another with a different lineup of bars was scheduled for Friday.

About 35 miles north, in Ogden, bartender Rich Miros at Brewskis happily scraped off lettering on the door that said the bar was a private club. The bar gets plenty of tourists from a nearby downtown hotel and skiers coming back from a day at the slopes at nearby Snowbasin.

"It's a great opportunity," he said of the change to becoming a public bar. "It needed to be changed a long time ago."

Utah has long had a host of liquor laws that befuddled newcomers, but none was as maddening as the state's private club system, created primarily to shield Mormons from alcohol while allowing drinkers to imbibe heavily taxed booze.