just got home from san francisco and seattle.
do you know what seems strange(and forgive me if this sounds like alcoholic-speak)?
ok, here’s what seems strange: that in america outside of nyc they stop serving alcohol at 2 a.m(or even 1 a.m in places).
doesn’t that seem, well, uncivilized?
most places in the rest of the world they stop serving alcohol when they decide to stop serving alcohol.
to say ‘you will not drink another beer after 2 a.m!’ seems almost victorian, as if the state is
a stern dickensian governess.
here in nyc they stop serving alcohol at 4 a.m and deli’s sell beer 24 hours a day. and nyc is the most
prosperous city in the united states(yes, i’m drawing a connection between drinking until 4 a.m and prosperity.
perhaps it’s spurious logic. but, well, i like beer).
nyc has other problems, like the fact that you can’t dance in certain venues.
that’s also weirdly dickensian and victorian.
but the ‘thou shalt not drink beer after 2 a.m’ law seems patently absurd.
as if a bunch of prim sunday school teachers collectively said, ‘we think you’ve had enough
fun. and remember life isn’t about fun, it’s about penance and sackcloth and hairshirts.’
i have a theory about people.
here’s my theory:
there are two types of people, swimmers and lifeguards.
swimmers want to jump in the pool and play on the diving board and run around and have fun.
lifeguards want to enforce relatively arbitrary rules and maintain order and the status quo.
swimmers want to go disco dancing and drink cheap beer until the sun comes up.
lifeguards want everyone to go home and take a cold shower and read technical manuals.
i’m not saying that there’s no place for rules in our society.
i’m an old punk rocker, but i’m not an anarchist.
i like some rules, as long as they’re based on reason and practicality(like ‘don’t kill your neighbor’, ‘don’t put poison in the water’, etc).
but some rules that we regard as sacrosanct are utterly arbitrary(‘no beer after 2 a.m’, ‘don’t dance in this bar’, etc).
how do we fix our victorian american heritage?
how do we change the laws so that honorable bartenders can sell beer after 2 a.m?
massive civil disobedience?
a beer-in?
and don’t get me started on the horrifying fact that soldiers are sent to fight and die in iraq at 18 but they can’t
have a beer in a bar until they’re 21.
we trust our soldiers enough to fly military jets and use automatic weapons but we don’t trust them enough to enjoy a can of bud light?
i think that every president of the united states should have a star trek style computer as an advisor.
‘computer, evaluate the law that states that new yorkers aren’t allowed to dance in certain bars(say this in a james t. kirk halting voice).’
‘computer working(say this with an old school computer voice, it’s much more entertaining). illogical. does not compute.’
-moby
