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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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How Dry We Aren’t
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| Contributor | Jason |
| Last Edited | Jason Jan 14, 2012 02:21pm |
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| Category | Editorial |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Times |
| News Date | Friday, January 13, 2012 08:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | MAYOR Michael R. Bloomberg has made it clear that he wants New Yorkers to smoke less, eat healthier food, and now, according to The New York Post, also cut back on excessive drinking.
The mayor looks poised to follow in the footsteps of some of his high-profile predecessors who tried to purify New Yorkers’ lifestyles. Fiorello H. La Guardia padlocked Times Square burlesque houses and sledge-hammered slot machines. Rudolph W. Giuliani aimed to shutter porn shops and strip joints.
Mr. Bloomberg has reportedly retreated from a more aggressive campaign, but his desire for a liquor crackdown recalls the high-minded misadventures of a future president. When Theodore Roosevelt was police commissioner, from 1895 to 1897, he tried to stop the sales of beer, wine and liquor on Sundays in saloons.
Men and women, who worked six days a week in that era, were not amused. New York State Sabbath laws already forbade attending sporting events or theater performances, or selling groceries, after 10 a.m. on Sundays; the excise laws also made it illegal to sell alcohol in bars, saloons and taverns all 24 hours of the Lord’s Day.
New Yorkers in droves defied that particular edict. (Sunday actually marked the barkeep’s biggest sales day.) Saloon owners handed a bribe to precinct cops who forwarded some loot to Tammany politicians, and the city’s thirsty could discreetly slip in the side doors of saloons. For almost 40 years, it was a popular pragmatic compromise. |
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