7 ms·

To Evade Pre-Prohibition Drinking Laws, New Yorkers Created an Inedible Sandwich

91 points by camtarn 7y ago

sprafa 7y ago
Also sort of the reason why the Spanish have tapas (Wikipedia lists it as one of the possible founding myths) - the King ordered drinks could not be served without food
- dvtrn 7y ago
  I used to drink at a cigar lounge in the Deep South (USA) that offered a $40 ham and cheese sandwich as the sole menu item for the exact same reason: local laws required food to be served at your establishment if you wanted an alcohol license. I saw one person order the sandwich in many years drinking there. Sure enough the bartender reached into the mini fridge under the bar, and would proceed to make a ham and cheese sandwich right there in the spot. Sure enough, he charged the guy Mayo was extra.
  - techsupporter 7y ago
    They used to do this in Texas but people got cranky that these "private club restaurants" (the "private club" thing being a workaround for Texas' famous wet/damp/dry laws, to have a place that could sell alcohol for on-premise consumption in a dry area) were just "bars in disguise" so the law was changed to be that any place where food service was 51% or more of sales were food is a "restaurant that happens to serve alcohol" and a place where 51% or more of sales were alcohol is a "bar." The latter were banned in dry and damp areas that hadn't voted to permit on-premise consumption bars. The wet/damp/dry bit was similarly crazy. For years, a so-called local option vote could be held inside any political district: county, city, justice of the peace, water supply, volunteer fire department, or school district. As long as the petition met the rules, the district had to hold a vote. That led to a situation where a school district near Houston had to hold a local option election, so then the legislature changed the law to delete school districts from the eligible list. Also: Dry - No alcohol sales permitted except in "private clubs;" damp - beer and wine only, on-premise hard alcohol allowed if by a separate vote; wet - all types of alcohol, on-premise or off.
  - burtonator 7y ago
    There was some music event recently that prevented vendors from selling water. Instead they sold you a peanut for $2 and the water was for free. Mind you the venue was selling water for like $8 a bottle.
    - vageli 7y ago
      > There was some music event recently that prevented vendors from selling water. > Instead they sold you a peanut for $2 and the water was for free. > Mind you the venue was selling water for like $8 a bottle. All it takes is one person to pass out from heat exhaustion to end this practice.
lgessler 7y ago
This reminds me of how weed is currently sold in DC. You pay $60 or so for a sticker or a dozen cookies, and a courier meets you somewhere and also happens to offer you a "gift". IANAL but my guess is that since possession of weed is decriminalized up to a certain amount (but dealing is not), this is a safer way of going about it.
- tosserpencil1 7y ago
  A classic comic strip features a prostitute with a cup of pencils on the corner talking to a man. "Pencils are $20 and you can come upstairs to use my pencil sharpener for free."
- rayiner 7y ago
  Weed is legal (not just decriminalized, like Maryland, where there is still a fine) in DC for medical and recreational use, including growing, subject to amount limits. What’s restricted is commercial sale.
- intuitionist 7y ago
  This is almost right -- as someone else said, Initiative 71 makes possession, use, cultivation and non-commercial transfer of small amounts of marijuana legal (not just decriminalized) in DC for adults 21 and up. So the regulatory workaround is as you say. I'm not a lawyer either, but this pattern probably wouldn't hold up in court; dealers' inventories need to be bigger than the legal limit for possession, and the "gift" thing is a pretty thin veil around what everyone knows is actually an illegal commercial transaction. But there's a general understanding that cracking down on small-time "I-71 compliant" businesses is not a police priority, although it does happen from time to time. Overall, I'm a pretty big fan of this approach to legalization; it allows for a competitive market without the risks of Big Cannabis advertising or of licensing schemes giving all the legalization profits to upper-class white people and cutting the economic victims of the drug war out.
- vageli 7y ago
  This reminds me of how pachinko operates in Japan despite the ban on gambling.
turk73 7y ago
NYC has some great history, but the laws and the taxes there are idiotic and apparently have been for a very long time. God damn social engineers.
anthonybullard 7y ago
Indiana at least until very recently had much more onerous regulations around food in bars(namely there must be a sandwich, a soup, coffee, and milk available). Here's an example compliance menu [1] EDIT: Included details of the regulations. [1]: https://www.kegworks.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Screen-Shot-2014-09-23-at-5.03.51-PM.png https://www.kegworks.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Scree...
- res0nat0r 7y ago
  A local brewery complied with this by having a sign that said they would serve pizza, but it was something like from Dominoes and would cost 150$ if you ordered it.
  - smelendez 7y ago
    In Louisiana, I believe breweries have the opposite problem: the majority of their revenue must be from beer, so if they sell too much food they're in trouble. I think some get around this with pop-up restaurants, maybe paying a fixed fee to be there. Another weird rule is that Louisiana bars cannot allow children, even with parents, but breweries can. So breweries are often full of children. One in New Orleans has a bounce house on weekends.
    - undersuit 7y ago
      Breweries in Montana are full of children. Play areas with toys are common and some places even go so far as to make a beer-free beverage like root beer or kombucha.
exabrial 7y ago
Reminds me exactly of the sugar taxes going on (except it you're Starbucks in Seattle, that sugar is exempt from law)
dickeytk 7y ago
In Oregon bars that serve liquor have to serve food as well. Some of the regulations: “Substantial food item” means food items prepared or cooked on the licensed premises and that are typically served as a main course or entrée. Some examples are: fish; steak; chicken; pasta; pizza; sandwiches; dinner salads; hot dogs; soup; and sausages. Side dishes, appetizer items, dessert items, and snack items such as popcorn, peanuts, chips, and crackers do not qualify as substantial food items.
unnouinceput 7y ago
Quote: "For Raines and the law’s other architects, this was the most alarming unintended consequence: their efforts to make New Yorkers virtuous had caused a spike in casual sex and prostitution." Wanna guess today where prostitution is most prolific as well? Where it involves drugs. Current drugs laws have the same effect as to Raines ones mentioned in article. If only legalizing drugs, just like tobacco and alcohol is, and tax it to make more money for state and federal budget, would be such a good idea.
Gibbon1 7y ago
Odd story. My grandmother worked for a while a fry cook. She worked at a diner. Next door was a bar. The state passed a law that said bars couldn't have windows. The bar next door to her work had a fine set of windows. The owners of the diner and bar next door installed a door and a window in the wall between the bar and the diners kitchen. And the bar got a restaurant license. Which was cheaper. Neener neener.
- smelendez 7y ago
  That's the opposite of the Raines Law, which I believe said bars could only allow drinking in areas visible through the window.
DoctorOetker 7y ago
In dutch there is the expression "glazen boterham" ("glass sandwich") which today at least refers to a glass of beer, I wonder if the dutch expression is somehow connected to this story... I always assumed this merely referenced the caloric content of the alcoholic beverage...
- alttab 7y ago
  I take it as a European "that's all I need for lunch" quip
- ZWoz 7y ago
  In Estonia there is "vedel leib" (liquid bread), meaning beer. "Leib" means rye bread (dark bread), not white bread for additional nuance. White bread ("sai" in Estonian) was fancy and somewhat expansive food, if we talk about 19th or early 20th century.
- tonyarkles 7y ago
  "Barley Sandwich" is a common-enough phrase in Canada as well, at least in the west.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Rebelgecko 7y ago
There's still laws like this in Utah. I was at a brewery that required you to buy food before they could fill your growler up. IIRC they had toast for 25¢
getup8 7y ago
Somewhat an aside, but Raines Law Room in the Flatiron in NYC is a great little speakeasy/cocktail bar and brings back this vibe a bit.
hprotagonist 7y ago
Rules-lawyering at its finest. This kind of reminds me of the “is a jaffa cake a biscuit” legal fight, which mattered a great deal for VAT purposes.
- sonofgod 7y ago
  See also -- Marvel's legal team: "The X-Men aren't really people." https://mentalfloss.com/article/92007/why-us-federal-court-ruled-marvels-x-men-arent-humans https://mentalfloss.com/article/92007/why-us-federal-court-r...
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    Or a classic alt.sex.stories signature: "All creatures in this story live in a solar system where one year is equal to 1,000 Earth years."
- mamon 7y ago
  There are some cases of that absurdity within EU: - snails are considered "landborne fish", so that French farmers can receive EU grants for breeding them, from the money pool set aside for fishermen. - there's a maximum allowed curvative of a banana, so that only bananas coming from former French colonies in Africa are allowed to be sold in the EU (South American banana species are more curved) - carrot is considered a fruit, so that Portugese producers of carrot jam can sell it outside the Portugal (EU requries that jam must be made of fruit). - According to EU officials, there's no proof that drinking water helps you hydrate, so producers of bottled water are not allowed to claim that in the advertisement, or on the labels.
  - rebuilder 7y ago
    Have you fact-checked those claims? In my experience, these "stupid EU" stories are more often false than not. The banana myth is a classic, and is untrue. There are standards for grading bananas, but no ban on selling bananas of the "wrong" curvature. I couldn't find a source for the snail story, except a single, fairly sketchy article referencing Polish news stories. I'd take it with a grain of salt. The carrot/fruit issue apparently comes from regulation concerning what jams, spreads etc. can be made of. The directive in question outlines a number of different foodstuffs you can make jams out of, including ginger and, of course, berries. Neither of these are fruits either. The directive does not claim they are. I didn't look up the water claim. That one sounds fairly believable to me as medical claims are usually pretty heavily regulated, but I wouldn't care to bet on it being true, either.

91 points by camtarn 7y ago

Also sort of the reason why the Spanish have tapas (Wikipedia lists it as one of the possible founding myths) - the King ordered drinks could not be served without food

dvtrn 7y ago
I used to drink at a cigar lounge in the Deep South (USA) that offered a $40 ham and cheese sandwich as the sole menu item for the exact same reason: local laws required food to be served at your establishment if you wanted an alcohol license. I saw one person order the sandwich in many years drinking there. Sure enough the bartender reached into the mini fridge under the bar, and would proceed to make a ham and cheese sandwich right there in the spot. Sure enough, he charged the guy Mayo was extra.
- techsupporter 7y ago
  They used to do this in Texas but people got cranky that these "private club restaurants" (the "private club" thing being a workaround for Texas' famous wet/damp/dry laws, to have a place that could sell alcohol for on-premise consumption in a dry area) were just "bars in disguise" so the law was changed to be that any place where food service was 51% or more of sales were food is a "restaurant that happens to serve alcohol" and a place where 51% or more of sales were alcohol is a "bar." The latter were banned in dry and damp areas that hadn't voted to permit on-premise consumption bars. The wet/damp/dry bit was similarly crazy. For years, a so-called local option vote could be held inside any political district: county, city, justice of the peace, water supply, volunteer fire department, or school district. As long as the petition met the rules, the district had to hold a vote. That led to a situation where a school district near Houston had to hold a local option election, so then the legislature changed the law to delete school districts from the eligible list. Also: Dry - No alcohol sales permitted except in "private clubs;" damp - beer and wine only, on-premise hard alcohol allowed if by a separate vote; wet - all types of alcohol, on-premise or off.
- burtonator 7y ago
  There was some music event recently that prevented vendors from selling water. Instead they sold you a peanut for $2 and the water was for free. Mind you the venue was selling water for like $8 a bottle.
  - vageli 7y ago
    > There was some music event recently that prevented vendors from selling water. > Instead they sold you a peanut for $2 and the water was for free. > Mind you the venue was selling water for like $8 a bottle. All it takes is one person to pass out from heat exhaustion to end this practice.

lgessler 7y ago

This reminds me of how weed is currently sold in DC. You pay $60 or so for a sticker or a dozen cookies, and a courier meets you somewhere and also happens to offer you a "gift". IANAL but my guess is that since possession of weed is decriminalized up to a certain amount (but dealing is not), this is a safer way of going about it.

tosserpencil1 7y ago
A classic comic strip features a prostitute with a cup of pencils on the corner talking to a man. "Pencils are $20 and you can come upstairs to use my pencil sharpener for free."
rayiner 7y ago
Weed is legal (not just decriminalized, like Maryland, where there is still a fine) in DC for medical and recreational use, including growing, subject to amount limits. What’s restricted is commercial sale.
intuitionist 7y ago
This is almost right -- as someone else said, Initiative 71 makes possession, use, cultivation and non-commercial transfer of small amounts of marijuana legal (not just decriminalized) in DC for adults 21 and up. So the regulatory workaround is as you say. I'm not a lawyer either, but this pattern probably wouldn't hold up in court; dealers' inventories need to be bigger than the legal limit for possession, and the "gift" thing is a pretty thin veil around what everyone knows is actually an illegal commercial transaction. But there's a general understanding that cracking down on small-time "I-71 compliant" businesses is not a police priority, although it does happen from time to time. Overall, I'm a pretty big fan of this approach to legalization; it allows for a competitive market without the risks of Big Cannabis advertising or of licensing schemes giving all the legalization profits to upper-class white people and cutting the economic victims of the drug war out.
vageli 7y ago
This reminds me of how pachinko operates in Japan despite the ban on gambling.

turk73 7y ago

NYC has some great history, but the laws and the taxes there are idiotic and apparently have been for a very long time. God damn social engineers.

anthonybullard 7y ago

Indiana at least until very recently had much more onerous regulations around food in bars(namely there must be a sandwich, a soup, coffee, and milk available). Here's an example compliance menu [1] EDIT: Included details of the regulations. [1]: https://www.kegworks.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Screen-Shot-2014-09-23-at-5.03.51-PM.png https://www.kegworks.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Scree...

res0nat0r 7y ago
A local brewery complied with this by having a sign that said they would serve pizza, but it was something like from Dominoes and would cost 150$ if you ordered it.
- smelendez 7y ago
  In Louisiana, I believe breweries have the opposite problem: the majority of their revenue must be from beer, so if they sell too much food they're in trouble. I think some get around this with pop-up restaurants, maybe paying a fixed fee to be there. Another weird rule is that Louisiana bars cannot allow children, even with parents, but breweries can. So breweries are often full of children. One in New Orleans has a bounce house on weekends.
  - undersuit 7y ago
    Breweries in Montana are full of children. Play areas with toys are common and some places even go so far as to make a beer-free beverage like root beer or kombucha.

exabrial 7y ago

Reminds me exactly of the sugar taxes going on (except it you're Starbucks in Seattle, that sugar is exempt from law)

dickeytk 7y ago

In Oregon bars that serve liquor have to serve food as well. Some of the regulations: “Substantial food item” means food items prepared or cooked on the licensed premises and that are typically served as a main course or entrée. Some examples are: fish; steak; chicken; pasta; pizza; sandwiches; dinner salads; hot dogs; soup; and sausages. Side dishes, appetizer items, dessert items, and snack items such as popcorn, peanuts, chips, and crackers do not qualify as substantial food items.

unnouinceput 7y ago

Quote: "For Raines and the law’s other architects, this was the most alarming unintended consequence: their efforts to make New Yorkers virtuous had caused a spike in casual sex and prostitution." Wanna guess today where prostitution is most prolific as well? Where it involves drugs. Current drugs laws have the same effect as to Raines ones mentioned in article. If only legalizing drugs, just like tobacco and alcohol is, and tax it to make more money for state and federal budget, would be such a good idea.

Gibbon1 7y ago

Odd story. My grandmother worked for a while a fry cook. She worked at a diner. Next door was a bar. The state passed a law that said bars couldn't have windows. The bar next door to her work had a fine set of windows. The owners of the diner and bar next door installed a door and a window in the wall between the bar and the diners kitchen. And the bar got a restaurant license. Which was cheaper. Neener neener.

smelendez 7y ago
That's the opposite of the Raines Law, which I believe said bars could only allow drinking in areas visible through the window.

DoctorOetker 7y ago

In dutch there is the expression "glazen boterham" ("glass sandwich") which today at least refers to a glass of beer, I wonder if the dutch expression is somehow connected to this story... I always assumed this merely referenced the caloric content of the alcoholic beverage...

alttab 7y ago
I take it as a European "that's all I need for lunch" quip
ZWoz 7y ago
In Estonia there is "vedel leib" (liquid bread), meaning beer. "Leib" means rye bread (dark bread), not white bread for additional nuance. White bread ("sai" in Estonian) was fancy and somewhat expansive food, if we talk about 19th or early 20th century.
tonyarkles 7y ago
"Barley Sandwich" is a common-enough phrase in Canada as well, at least in the west.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Rebelgecko 7y ago

There's still laws like this in Utah. I was at a brewery that required you to buy food before they could fill your growler up. IIRC they had toast for 25¢

getup8 7y ago

Somewhat an aside, but Raines Law Room in the Flatiron in NYC is a great little speakeasy/cocktail bar and brings back this vibe a bit.

hprotagonist 7y ago

Rules-lawyering at its finest. This kind of reminds me of the “is a jaffa cake a biscuit” legal fight, which mattered a great deal for VAT purposes.

sonofgod 7y ago
See also -- Marvel's legal team: "The X-Men aren't really people." https://mentalfloss.com/article/92007/why-us-federal-court-ruled-marvels-x-men-arent-humans https://mentalfloss.com/article/92007/why-us-federal-court-r...
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Or a classic alt.sex.stories signature: "All creatures in this story live in a solar system where one year is equal to 1,000 Earth years."
mamon 7y ago
There are some cases of that absurdity within EU: - snails are considered "landborne fish", so that French farmers can receive EU grants for breeding them, from the money pool set aside for fishermen. - there's a maximum allowed curvative of a banana, so that only bananas coming from former French colonies in Africa are allowed to be sold in the EU (South American banana species are more curved) - carrot is considered a fruit, so that Portugese producers of carrot jam can sell it outside the Portugal (EU requries that jam must be made of fruit). - According to EU officials, there's no proof that drinking water helps you hydrate, so producers of bottled water are not allowed to claim that in the advertisement, or on the labels.
- rebuilder 7y ago
  Have you fact-checked those claims? In my experience, these "stupid EU" stories are more often false than not. The banana myth is a classic, and is untrue. There are standards for grading bananas, but no ban on selling bananas of the "wrong" curvature. I couldn't find a source for the snail story, except a single, fairly sketchy article referencing Polish news stories. I'd take it with a grain of salt. The carrot/fruit issue apparently comes from regulation concerning what jams, spreads etc. can be made of. The directive in question outlines a number of different foodstuffs you can make jams out of, including ginger and, of course, berries. Neither of these are fruits either. The directive does not claim they are. I didn't look up the water claim. That one sounds fairly believable to me as medical claims are usually pretty heavily regulated, but I wouldn't care to bet on it being true, either.