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Why I’m moving, and where I’m going
So I may have to move out of Boston, after only just arriving here last month. Why for, you ask? Because the bloody city has run out of beer and wine licenses for restaurants. That’s just unacceptable to a borderline drunkard like me (yeah, yeah, I know it’s really not “borderline,” but a kid’s gotta’ put on at least a semblance of sobriety, you know?).
The problem is that there’s a 100-year-old state law which caps the number of licenses, and while some other areas in Massachusetts have their cap grow automatically as their population expands, Boston’s cap can only be increased by the state legislature. “People around here work hard, and after a long day they want to go out to eat and unwind with a glass of wine,” says a restaurant owner still waiting on a license. Amen to that, brother! Meanwhile, Mayor Menino has apparently requested a batch of 60 new licenses from the state legislature, but that request is being held up, possibly because of an unrelated dispute over docking fees. Docking fees? This city can’t even get booze into its new restaurants and they wonder why things didn’t work out so well with the Big Dig?
But I’ll tell you this much - if I leave Boston, I’m moving to Hammond, Indiana. City employees there know how to do things right. In Boston, our tax-dollars-at-work can’t even get the city a sufficient supply of beer and wine. In Hammond, the local cops perform illegal strip searches, surreptitiously record said searches, and then hand out copies of the recording! Now that’s what I’m talking about. Hell, I don’t even need a drink with my dinner if I’ve got free porn - I’ll probably just skip dinner altogether.
