What the Revenuers couldn’t accomplish, De Blasio has
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[Updated and edited to incorporate Brother Anthony’s refinement on what the bouncer’s actual restriction was]
i was never there, but it was a part of family lore thanks to our father: As a young man of 25-or so, he went with friends to the place in, about 1930, during Prohibition, when the place was a speakeasy There was a bouncer at the door, demanding proof of age for all males: 21-years-old, minimum, or you weren’t allowed admission to drink illegal whiskey (girls exempted, naturally)
Father always looked younger than his years, and the doorman was skeptical, despite being shown both a driver’s license and military ID. He finally conceded: “Okay, he can come in,” the man growled to Pa’s friends, “but he can’t drink” [at the bar]
The delicious enjoyment of ironic bureaucratic lunacy, private and public, was one of the best inheritances my father passed on.
