Bloomberg Approves Public Drinking So Long As It's Upscale

By Roy Edroso Tue., Aug. 25 2009 at 8:59 AM

Categories: Citystate, Civil Liberties, Drinking, Featured, Nanny State

Infamous nanny Mayor Bloomberg has found a restriction of liberties he doesn't like. "I never understood why we don't let you drink in the park," he told a community newspaper chain owned by Rupert Murdoch (where the interview seems not yet to have been printed, allowing the Post to scoop). "I mean, you go to watch the Philharmonic [in Central Park], you can't have a bottle of wine."

He was nonetheless protective, in a peculiar manner, of the cops who arrested Kimber VanRy in Brooklyn for drinking on his own stoop -- "Keep in mind we don't pay people that do these jobs an enormous amount."

The Mayor has dissented from the law before, sometimes by breaking it, as he did at a Brooklyn Bridge park event in May of last year (pictured)....

Lest you expect a return to New York's glory days, when we freely roamed public places with inartfully bagged malt beverages, recall that in 2003 Bloomberg defended the arrest of public drinkers in the Rockaways -- at a charity event, yet -- on the grounds that "people are going to get drunk and go into the water and drown." Skeptics at the time suggested the Mayor was friendlier to the sort of drinkers who listen to classical music in parks, i.e. yunnies, than to downscale beer drinkers, an impression his current remarks do nothing to dispel. (Come to think of it, wasn't VanRy drinking a beer?)

And by no means imagine he will defend you if you smoke a cigarette, or a joint, at even the toniest events.

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