#Tower liquor store shooting license#

You had wholesalers doing kind of what they wanted, you had retailers doing what they wanted,” he said. He moved to the store’s current location at 23rd and Broadway about two years later.Īccording to Blake Cody, the early days of legal alcohol in Oklahoma were chaotic. Gambulos accepted and soon started selling liquor at a small store near the state capitol building.

#Tower liquor store shooting license#

Gambulos set up a number of model liquor stores across Oklahoma City and residents could apply for licenses to operate them.Īt one location, an applicant was forbidden from getting a license because he was a bootlegger, or had been involved in the illegal business of smuggling alcohol in the state, so Gambulos was offered the job. “He had some state senators congressmen approach him about setting up some mock retail stores to see what it would look like for retailers with liquor,” Cody said. In April 1959, Oklahomans voted to repeal prohibition, or “go wet,” and Byron Gambulos was involved in helping leaders prepare for the legal sale of alcohol. The state entered the union dry in 1907 and stayed dry for more than two decades after Prohibition in the United States, which ran from 1920 to 1933.

Eventually, he moved to Oklahoma City with his wife and worked at several different businesses, including a dress shop.Īt the time, alcohol was illegal in Oklahoma. Gambulos went to military school and then served in the Philippines during World War II. An entrepreneur from the start, he reportedly opened his first hamburger stand when he was 10 years old. Gambulos grew up in Dallas, the son of Greek and German immigrants, where he worked in restaurants from a young age. “Byron is a charmer,” said Blake Cody, Gambulos’ grandson and the store’s current general manager. Hicks asked How Curious: Is this true? And if so, why did the business need a gun?īyron’s Liquor Warehouse, named after its owner, Byron Gambulos, is one of the largest liquor stores in Oklahoma. Listener Adam Hicks heard the store had a machine gun turret on its roof in its early days. Byron’s Liquor Warehouse in Oklahoma City has been around since the state legalized alcohol in 1959.