Crikey! I remember having to drive 12 miles from Richardson, TX to buy beer when I learned about those laws on one of my first business trips to Dallas. It made me bonkers to think that you couldn’t buy beer when you wanted to buy beer. And I grew up in California where they stopped selling booze at 2:00am, or something like that.
I moved to Japan to get away from ever having to experience that silliness again.
Here we can buy booze 24/7 and drink on the street - even in front of the cop boxes, in public parks, and anywhere socially acceptable as long as we don’t cause enough trouble to make someone want to call the cops.
No one usually carries an open container in a shop though, because that would be a little rude, but, yeah, we’ve got it good here.
what i like about California is that you can buy liquor in grocery stores instead of having to make an extra trip to a special store.