When officers heard that the Clare City Bakery was closing its doors, they protected the business from certain demise.

Now, they’re serving up doughnuts.

“Cops & Doughnuts” opened at 6 a.m. Wednesday with little fanfare but plenty of customers.

“We’ve been swamped,” John Pedjac, administrative assistant for Clare Police Chief Dwayne Miedzianowski, said. “Business has been great.”

The humor of a group of police officers - Miedzianowski, sergeants Dave Saad and Rich Ward, Pedjac, and officers Greg Rynearson, Al White, Jeremy McGraw, Brian Gregory and Greg Kohloff - owning the local doughnut shop is not lost on the group, the departments nine full-time employees.

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Aside from the obvious perk of all the free donuts they can cram into their porcine maws, this is the perfect method for laundering all that cash they confiscate from dope dealers, prostitutes, and innocent citizens who get stopped while “just passing through”.  In the kitchen they can beat the dough with their batons and cook the pastries with their tasers (500 volts for about 6 seconds ought to do the trick). When they periodically deliver donuts to the wrong address (cue image of diabetic refusing to acknowledge their knock) they can smash in the front door and shoot the family dog.

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board is spending more than $173,000 to try to make workers friendlier and more well-mannered at the nearly 650 stores it operates. The board says it wants to make sure clerks are saying “hello,” “thank you” and “come again” to customers shopping for wine and spirits.

It has hired Pittsburgh-based consulting firm Solutions 21 to help coach store managers so they can instruct their 4,000 clerks on issues such as how to greet customers and where to stand. Training begins this month.

Harrisburg good-government activist Eric Epstein calls the idea “a demented interpretation of happy hour.” Full Story

This is a wise use of state funds.  Nothing can ruin your buzz faster than a clerk who doesn’t share the jolly good humor you feel as you buy beer at 1:59 AM.

In many places, drinking before noon is something to hide. Not in Philadelphia. The second annual Philly Beer Week has eight scheduled beer-drinking events before noon on Saturday.

For example, an event called “Lew Bryson’s Wheat Beer Breakfast of Champions” begins at 9 a.m. Saturday at a tavern in Philadelphia’s Tacony neighborhood. Later in the morning, there’s an event called “Kegs and Eggs” at an Irish pub in the Old City historic district.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter used a ceremonial mallet dubbed the “Hammer of Glory” to kick off the event Friday night. He used it to open a keg Philadelphia-brewed Yards ESA. Earlier Friday, the mallet was carried Olympic-torch-style through various Philadelphia neighborhoods.

Hundreds of other events are planned through March 15.

My kind of town.