Tomorrow will mark the 75th anniversary of New York’s vote to ratify the 21st amendment, which brought an end to Prohibition. It was the first amendment to repeal a prior change to the Constitution, and, not coincidentally, the amendment it repealed was the first in American history to expressly limit personal liberties. By most accounts, Prohibition was a disaster and its repeal an event worth celebrating, even 75 years later.

New York’s flouting of Prohibition is legendary. One would have to go back to Boston in the era of the Fugitive Slave Act to find a national law more brazenly defied by a single city. Many of those who instigated Prohibition did so out of contempt for the cultural traditions of the immigrants on which New York has always thrived.

Recalling New York’s experience with Prohibition brings forth an odd combination of nostalgia and revulsion. A recently published history of the period, “Dry Manhattan” by Michael Lerner, is full of stories about the camaraderie that ensued as strangers defied a law aimed against their way of life. At times, it was like the whole city was in on a secret. Congressman La Guardia called a press conference to show how legal “near beer” could be made into real beer by mixing it with malt tonics. For that crime he would be elected mayor.

One the one hand, there may be a certain element of fun attached to a beer that isn’t legal, as today’s teenagers can attest. On the other hand, the nostalgia for speakeasies dissolves as one recalls that they funded a violent criminal enterprise and pitted citizens and law enforcement. Some batches of liquor, improperly manufactured in household bathtubs, were fatal even in small amounts.

Nearly 75 years after President Franklin Roosevelt, a former New York governor, signed the amendment that brought an end to Prohibition and all that came in its wake, the city has a more healthy relationship with alcohol — and the law. Long Island and the Finger Lakes are home to successful wineries, while the Brooklyn Brewery and Sixpoint Craft Ales brew beer in Brooklyn, and Saranac is made in Utica. Efforts sporadically bud to turn Hamptons potatoes into vodka.

Meanwhile, the city’s more than 10,000 restaurants, bars, and nightclubs serving wine, beer, and spirits are a part of what draws immigrants and tourists to the city. They support everything from the city’s singles scene to its jazz music to out-of-work actors and high-end wine auctioneers. A recent nightlife trend involves establishments that recreate the atmosphere of Prohibition-era speakeasies. New Yorkers can visit these quiet and often unmarked bars without risk of arrest, drink booze from coffee mugs without risk of poisoning, and spend money that goes to small business owners and young bar tenders rather than underworld thugs.

Such a venue might be a good place to toast the end of Prohibition. And to ponder the words that, The New York Sun reported at the time, were spoken 75 years ago by the honorary president of New York’s repeal convention, Elihu Root, a Republican. With the repeal, he said, “the American people will have learned two vital lessons. One is the power of local self-government in local affairs. The other is that human progress in every step has been made not by compulsion but by higher standards of conduct that comes not from without but from within.”