Archives for the 'boston' tag
First they came for the cigarette smokers
Today the Boston City Council approved its measure banning the few remaining smoke-friendly businesses in the city. How bad is the new ban? Here’s City Councilor Michael Ross and restaurant owner Lydia Shire writing in the Boston Herald against it:
In these difficult times every small business is important. There are but six cigar bars in Boston, all of which undergo an annual local licensing process, exhibiting that 60 percent of their sales are from the sale of tobacco-related products and that the appropriate signage reflecting the risks of tobacco use is visible.
All six small businesses will be shut down if the regulations are passed as written. Even if these regulations are altered to temporarily grandfather in these six establishments, it is not reasonable to ask small business owners to maintain their significant investment in their communities, only to be shut down despite their commitment to be good businesses and neighbors.
They also note that the ban will extend to outdoor seating areas, unfairly punishing business owners who invested in patios to comply with the original smoking ban four years ago. Ross and Shire deserve full credit for opposing this rampant paternalism. Yet they’re a little late to the party. Note that they both support the earlier ban on smoking in bars and restaurants; they’re only stepping up now because they’re among those “who care to enjoy the pairing of a cigar and a glass of wine following dinner at one of Boston’s excellent restaurants.” Well la dee dah. If they’re not willing to be equally vigorous in their support of the property rights of sports bar owners or smokers who want to have a cigarette while they take in a music show, they have no right to be surprised when the city steps in to take away their precious postprandial maduros. The difference in the new ban and the original is one of degree, not of principle, and this is exactly the sort of thing we libertarians warned governments were heading towards when the original, less restrictive bans came into force. Now they expect city councils to draw a line protecting elitist cigar smokers like themselves? Give me a break. (And I say this as a fellow elitist cigar smoker.)
There is one interesting wrinkle though. The cigar and hookah bar ban was amended to not go into effect for ten years, with the possibility of one ten year extension after that. Twenty years is a long time, perhaps long enough for cooler heads to prevail; for now it lets the council look tough without actually hurting the businesses. Even so, how sickening is this excerpt from the AP report?
Roger Swartz, who heads the commission’s community initiatives bureau, said the panel lengthened the grace period for the bars because of hard economic times.
“We wanted to give them a bit more time to get used to the idea that they’ll have to close,” Swartz said.
Oh, how very nice of you Roger. You say that as though the bars’ closing was an inevitable event delayed only by the grace of Boston’s benevolent politicians, when you in fact are the ones driving them out of business. How does a person become so self-righteous that they can take credit for protecting small businesses on the same day they forbid their existence?
Today the Boston Public Health Commission justifies the slippery slope arguments made by property rights defenders many years ago. We were told that we shouldn’t worry, that the smoking bans in bars and restaurants were reasonable, and that sufficient accommodations for smokers would be made. Now we see that no ban is strict enough for the public health nannies, that even six cigar bars in a city of more than 600,000 people is too many. The regulators will, perhaps, finally overreach and create a backlash, but by then much of the damage to business owners will be done.
[Hat tip: The Stogie Guys.]
Boston Bans Big Booze Bottles
Boston is trying to become what South Carolina was until recently–home of small bottles of booze. Boston’s not looking to shrink things down to mini-bottle size, but the city’s licensing board chair is on the hunt against full bottles of booze and, it seems, booze in general.
“This is totally prohibited and it won’t be tolerated,” [Boston Licensing Board Chairman Daniel F.] Pokaski said. “It’s not going to happen in Boston. It’s just wrong. It forces alcohol consumption.”
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Pokaski said [selling alcohol in large bottles] violates so-called “happy hour” laws that ban serving more than two drinks at a time to a patron.
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“We’re not New York and we’re not South Beach,” he said. “The city of Boston has a lot more to offer than just getting people inebriated. If all they can offer their clientele is just swilling down alcohol, then perhaps they shouldn’t be in the business.”
Hear that New York and Miami? Boston isn’t like you: towns full of low-class, drunkards. No, Boston is civilized, classy, and intellectual, and… hey, wait just a minute!
I’m not sure what bizarro Boston Chairman Pokanski lives in. The Boston I grew up just outside is hardly bereft of places that offer their clientele little more than the opportunity to drink alcohol. Bars, Daniel. They’re called bars. And Bostonians like them as much as the next person–maybe more.
More here. Bostonians, New Yorkers, and South Beachians, let Pokanski know what you think of him and his neo-Prohibitionist, d-bag ways here.
Boston Set to Ban Trans Fats
Boston, a city known for (among other things) having a fat, know-it-all mayor who tells other people how to eat, is set to ban trans fats today.
Anne McHugh, project director for Boston Steps, a chronic disease prevention program at the Boston Public Health Commission, said banning trans fats will save lives.
“There’s very strong research showing that trans fat consumption is significantly related to increased heart disease risk,” McHugh said.
If approved today, businesses will have six months to eliminate oils and spreads that contain trans fats. Within a year, hospitals, schools and eateries will have to eliminate trans fats from baked goods and other products, McHugh said.
Anne McHugh knows what’s best for you. No, seriously. Here’s McHugh quoted earlier this year at Boston.com:
“There is no need to have artificial trans fat,” said Anne McHugh, project director of the health department’s Boston Steps program, which combats obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. “It’s just bad.”
And here’s McHugh quoted in CSNews.com:
“We’re working on many fronts to try and influence children’s eating behaviors,” Anne McHugh, director of the Boston Public Health Commission’s Boston Steps program, told the paper. “Sugary drinks are just empty calories without any nutritional value, and it’s an area where we think we can have influence.”
McHugh also analogized adults to “toddlers” in a Jamaica Plain Gazette piece last year.
Finally, here’s an early internal document (PDF) that shows how the well-funded Boston Steps is suffering from a bad case of mission creep.
Cooking with Ye Oldest of Ye Olde
The Union Oyster House in Boston, which bills itself as America’s oldest restaurant, has issued its first cookbook. And it only took 200 years. The Boston Herald has the scoop:
The newly published “Union Oyster House Cookbook” (Seapoint Books, $12.95) is everything you’d want from America’s oldest restaurant. Lots of recipes, appetizing food photographs and fascinating facts about the legendary eatery, which was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2003.
The earliest standing-brick edifice in Boston (constructed circa 1716), the Union Oyster House building was an important site long before it served food – housing an early Revolutionary-era newspaper, serving as headquarters for Continental Army paymaster Ebenezer Hancock and as temporary home to Louis Philippe, the future king of France.
It wasn’t until 1826 that the building became a restaurant, famous for its semicircular oyster bar in the front window. Union Oyster House was a haunt of local politicians from Daniel Webster to John Michael Curley and John F. Kennedy. A slew of celebrities, including Meryl Streep, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tiger Woods, have dined there as well.
Mistakenly left off that eminent list? Me! More here. Pick up the book here.
