WTF Boston: Glasses May Get Banned At Bars Due To Outbreaks Of Glass Being Used As Weapon

[Initech]

Your days of sipping adult beverages from a Solo cup could be making a comeback, specifically at some of Boston’s high-end bars.

Following a string of local bar assaults involving glassware, the city’s Liquor Licensing Board is moving to crack down on establishments where patrons have suffered injuries related to glasses holding drinks. Watering holes with repeat offenses could have to use plastic barware in lieu of the real deal — no matter how upscale the joint.

“If we see a pattern of glass as a weapon it will no longer be allowed,” Christine Puglini, the board’s chairwoman, said at a hearing yesterday, addressing representatives of Minibar, a Copley Square Hotel bar. “You may be high-end, but you’re not acting high-end.”

Two posh hotel bars, Minibar and Bond Lounge at the Langham, were brought before the board yesterday for recent assaults involving glasses. According to police reports, a Bond Lounge patron smashed a beer bottle over the head of another customer on New Year’s Day. Several days earlier at Minibar, police said, a patron punched and threw a glass at another man who groped his fiancee.

Attorney Karen Simao, representing Minibar, told the board the glass was thrown in the commotion of the fight and was not a premeditated assault. But Puglini, unmoved by that argument, said the board was mulling harsh measures, including outright barring establishments with repeat offenses from serving drinks in glasses.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_politics/2017/02/glasses_may_get_banned_at_boston_bars_after_assaults

[rzemanfl]

1. How will people with bad eyesight be able to see? n/t

[tazkcmo]

3. Beer goggles. n/t

[snooper2]

5. Damn you beat me to it!

[Yavin4]

25. Hey, it's Boston. You really don't want to see who else is in the bar.

Trust me. Impaired vision is your friend.

[rzemanfl]

29. So you just imagine people getting more attractive at closing time? n/t

[tazkcmo]

2. I was a bartender

We eliminated glassware for that reason also. People do not get smarter as they get drunker.

[Initech]

7. No, it generally leads to bad decisions.

[Old Vet]

23. I also bartended for awhile at a rock club in upstate NY......

We NEVER used glasses or bottles for anything other then mixing. Ever see someone hit in the face with a glass mug...DAMN that was bad.

[hunter]

24. A heavy glass beer mug is a pretty good weapon; it doesn't have to break.

My brother owned a place where that was an issue so he replaced the glass mugs with plastic. He brought home the glass mugs which are still kicking around in our family, a reminder of some interesting times.

Another brother of mine decided he didn't want to work at my brother's place anymore so he took a job as the night manager of a well-known fast food place that was beginning an "open 24 hours" experiment. To his surprise the late night and early morning customers there were far worse -- often more belligerent, violent, or drunken than he'd had to deal with at my brother's place. People broke mirrors, sinks and toilets in the restrooms, got into fights, left used condoms in the parking lot, and a guy he'd refused service to shot out the front window.

His restaurant was one of the first to have a drive-through-only-past-ten-o'clock policy, and security cameras installed everywhere, which were still quite expensive then.

[MineralMan]

4. From now on, barflies get the hose, instead.

It breaks the bottle, so it gets the hose.

[Aristus]

6. I don't see this issue gaining a lot of traction.

People who like to sip sidecars out of tumblers before ordering a $300 meal aren't going to want to drink out of a plastic cup like they were at a kegger in a trailer park.

We may have a trashy President, but we don't all have to live and behave like the people who voted for him.

[RobinA]

14. Seriously.

The kegger in the trailer park days were fun, but I've moved on. Drinkwise, that is. They still had the best music.

[haele]

16. I've some nice lucite tumblers that look like our Libby glass set.

A bit more expensive, but with a 5 year old grand-daughter who wants to drink iced tea or juice with her grandy in the same type glass he drinks from, it saves on a lot of potential breakage.

Haele

[mythology]

19. Apparently the people going to these bars are trashy

[marybourg]

28. I was surprised the first time I went

to a Starbucks to see people paying premium prices to sip coffee from a foam cup. I was used to real NY coffee shops where excellent coffee was served in (thick) china mugs or cups. I never went back to Starbucks.

People pay for cable TV which is full of commercials. Water from bottles when, especially in NY, the tap water is free and delicious.

Hard to know what people will actually pay for.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

31. Advertising truism: Sell the sizzle, not the steak. tRump is all sizzle, no steak. . . . nt

[global1]

8. Are Contact Lenses Acceptable?.....nt

[Jim__]

9. I'm sure it's the glasses causing all the trouble - not the alcohol.

[RobinA]

15. My Thought

exactly.

[BeckyDem]

10. Sippy cups in a variety of colors.

[panader0]

11. I've seen it twice.

Once a glass and once a bottle. Nasty wounds.
But anything can be a weapon--a pool cue, a bar stool, even a beer can.

[Initech]

12. "Hey how come you guys get a pool cue?"

[Leghorn21]

13. Felix Sater started a trend?

"...Ross noted that in 1991, Sater got into an argument with a commodities broker at the bar of a New York restaurant, smashed a margarita glass and with the broken-off stem, slashed the man in the cheek and neck, breaking his cheek and jaw, severing nerves and lacerating his face and jaw. The victim required 110 stitches. Sater was convicted of first-degree assault and sent to prison in 1993."


http://billmoyers.com/story/donald-trump-story-youre-not-hearing/

[melman]

17. Minibar posh?

lol. I don't think so.

[Orsino]

18. From my cool, wet fingers. n/t

[Act_of_Reparation]

20. This is why we can't have nice things.

[pinboy3niner]

21. Sounds like the board expects bar security to stop fights before the breakage stage. nt

[OnDoutside]

22. It makes sense to do, there can be a lot of copycat glassings.

[Yavin4]

26. The new logo of Boston, Mass.

[muntrv]

27. You can have my glasses when you've pried them from my cold dead hands.