Denton is great place to live. Multiple universities, an obnoxiously insistent local personality, and an actual breeding ground for several talented artists. As time has passed, I have come to love this town. It is a place for ideas and for growth.

I cannot be the first, however, who has noticed a stagnation. Denton has come face-first with a glass ceiling. We need to be galvanized. No longer do we strive to tear down monuments or build placards about parks with questionable history. No longer do we insist that bands like Matthew and the Arrogant Sea should be national acts despite the low likelihood they will be discovered by anyone with more than a thousand dollars in their savings account. Denton residents have become content to sit at one of a million local bars, chew time, and never question how the hell Dix Coney Island is still in business. Well, I won’t stand for it. I love this town and I can’t see this happen. Which Is why I have come to the table and am willing to throw the match on the gas soaked wood chips that is Denton’s cultural starvation. 

Denton needs to reinstate prohibition. There I said it, I have theorized my thesis. Now I know what you, a proud Dentonite, might be thinking – “What the hell is this idiot talking about? Craft beer is an essential part of our city’s personality. Most of our local commerce is based on the sale and trade of alcohol. I hope Colton Jones gets Lyme disease.” 

I hear you, hypothetical person I just made up, and I have a few retorts. First off, Denton is not a city – it is at best a township! Secondly and more importantly, Denton would be improved both immediately and in the long term by a return to prohibition.

Let me take you to a hypothetical Eden. A booze-free Denton square. As we stroll this newly dry square the first thing you may notice is the staunch absence of a Confederate monument. “Why would the monument go away?” Simple enough answer. A sober Denton is now a sea of angry young leftists who have had their complacency taken away.

I’ve been through alcohol withdrawals. It involves a week or more of staying up until at least 3 in the morning with an itchy back and nothing to do but manically focus on every little thing that has ever upset you. I have also been to two separate pre-organized protests of Denton’s favorite historical skid mark. You know who wasn’t there – everyone who was at Eastside drinking that one IPA they actually like and posting on Facebook about how morally repugnant such monuments are.

No longer will this anger be digital. I’m not saying that everyone who drinks is also necessarily on the right side of history when it comes to the celebration of the Confederacy, but I do believe that those $2.50 Zeigenbocks have placated enough DSA members that some real change has been avoided.

“Okay, fine. We get rid of tequila in our little bubble and we are down one statue, but one social change is not enough to truly champion the return of prohibition.”

Well, I’m not done yet. So sit down, wax your mustache and get ready to be awokened. Now, let’s talk about that mustache. It looks terrible. All mustaches look terrible. That is fact. Let me paraphrase the bible. “Seriously, Joseph, shave your lip. You look like an opium dealer.” (taken from John 3:16).  I walk around town and all I see are these poor innocents who wear the mustache. It’s a disgrace. Did you know that there is actual legislation in three American states ruling that men should only be able to wear a mustache after their second child? For good reason, at that point no one new is obligated to fall in love with your dumb ugly facial hair. 

It is no secret then that Denton’s obsession with the mustache has come from our collective inebriation. Only in the decrepit, hangover-addled hive mind of a town under the heel of big whiskey does the ‘stache movement make sense. Remove the booze and soon these clueless twenty somethings will be given their first chance to consider a mirror sober and say proudly “Oh, jeez, what a tool.”

Aesthetics are not the only journey that our new sobriety may take us on. Everyone in this town has a friend that works at a bar. I have a good friend who works at what some would say is a restaurant and what others would say is a social parasite of Denton’s image -  LSA Burgers. Now, as a devout Catholic, let me first say that all of LSA’s food is overpriced. There is, however, no denying their popularity.

They are a tourist haven, giving many a Denton visitor or proud UNT parent a twangy first impression of our home.  It would seem that LSA’s iron grip on prime downtown real estate is unshakable. They do, however, have a chink in the armor. LSA is often second or third in alcohol sales for Denton businesses.

Despite their restroom narrator’s strangely insistent claims that their success comes from their “Lone Star Attitude,” a large amount of LSA’s profit comes from their incredibly diverse tap wall of four domestic beers. This is truly the reason why the ban of alcohol from our city limits is a moral imperative. If we prohibit booze then we may finally bring down LSA. No more will we have to hear Garth Brooks covers every time we try to smoke a cigarette outside of Jupiter House, no more will we have to take a wide berth on the sidewalk every time we go record shopping to make sure that an invasive 13 year old hostess doesn’t ask us if we want to sit upstairs or downstairs, and most importantly no longer will we be charged an additional 3 dollars for a basket of fries that is customary with literally every other entrée we have ever ordered at any other restaurant. 

“But what about all these poor waiters and bar backs who will be put out of work by the loss of literally every business in Downtown Denton?”

This is where the problems of prohibition solve themselves! On the heels of progress hundreds of new workers will be released on to the Denton Job market. Due to the incredibly low cost of labor and fresh vacancy of most rentable spaces in our town countless young, newly sober post-grads will be able to turn their small “side-hustle” into a store front in Denton’s luxurious downtown. Imagine backing into a parking space directly in front of your friend Robbie’s artisan dog collar vendor right where Hickory St. Lounge used to sit. Picture yourself bobbing your head back and forth to the sweet tunes of TOMKAT as they play outside of your former sorority sister’s new bubble tea garden where we used to have Harvest House. The future is coming. A sober Denton is coming.

There should be no doubt in the direction that we must go. We must recognize the events of 1933 for what they were. A constitutionally sound mistake. 

#ProhibitionDenton today, not 84 years ago, not tomorrow, today.

Satire from Colton Jones

Header image photographed by James Sutton on Unsplash
Header image layout designed by Mateo Granados