Brooklyn Bar-Baby Debate Goes National
A debate that will be familiar to any resident of Brownstone Brooklyn—whether or not children should be allowed in bars—was elevated to the national spotlight when CNN picked up an old thread on Brooklynian and a more recent story in The Courier this week about how the Windsor Terrace bar Double Windsor had banned babies…
A debate that will be familiar to any resident of Brownstone Brooklyn—whether or not children should be allowed in bars—was elevated to the national spotlight when CNN picked up an old thread on Brooklynian and a more recent story in The Courier this week about how the Windsor Terrace bar Double Windsor had banned babies after 5 p.m. We are Windsor Terrace and Park Slope parents like everyone else, one of the owners told The Courier. But the bottom like is that this is a bar, and most of our customers feel like it’s not an appropriate place for kids after hours. A single father profiled in the CNN story, however, contends that a little common sense and moderation are all that are needed for peace and harmony: “I’m not going to keep her out past 7 p.m. When the bar starts filling up, that’s when we head home…I’m not knocking back double vodkas while my daughter is stumbling around.” We’ll confess to having taken our school-age kids to Radegast for an occasional late-afternoon beer on the weekends, though like the guy in the CNN story, we’ve certainly never stayed past 7 p.m. and it’s always been combined with buying the kids dinner.
Brooklyn Brewhaha: Babies in Bars [CNN]
Photo from Babble.com
quote:
I would play the 1 lone video game they had and drink my shirley temple.
that is Exactly what i did!!! the shirley temple (so gay sounding for a boy to drink…) what exactly was it? just soda right? i think with a cherry?
*rob*
Surprisingly, perhaps, I haven’t been following this that closely, but Double Windsor no longer lets in kids after 5PM, is that right?
The Brooklyn Public House on Dekalb attempted to set that policy about a year ago… but they’ve since taken it back. Most of their table business (from what I’ve seen anyways) involves a stroller or two. On the weekends, the German beer place on Fulton is packed with kids — at least one per table, surrounded by a bevy of relatives, or their parent’s college friends. Once I even saw what looked like a kid’s birthday party.
Of course, as someone who once held her best friend’s baby shower AT a bar (the Abbey…), I don’t have a problem with this. I mean, I am probably part of the problem.
But look — I went to bars with my parents in the seventies. The food was much better than at the anti-nuclear power protests that we also attended. When we make the yearly pilgrimage to Ireland, the pubs are packed with families. It is a non-issue. Have a burger, tea, a pint, some crayons and a coloring book for the kid and — done. Why is this news? Because some twit thinks it’s cutting into their social life? Because some breeding twit thinks no one should smoke in the outdoor garden at Soda? Eh.
Then again, I always used to bring my dog to bars too. Like I said, I’m sure I’m part of the problem.
“I feel the same way about babies in bars as I do about dogs and drunks in bars – there’s a time and place for everything, and when that time is done, please leave quietly”
That is possibly the most intelligent thing I’ve seen on this issue. Buy that man a drink.
We’ve got a baby, and we occasionally go to bars for some escape from being at home or at work. We take the kid, we have a couple drinks, and if the kid starts to make his presence known, we split. (Nobody wants a crying baby in a bar, much as nobody wants an unruly drunk or incessantly barking dog.)
Bars/taverns/pubs/what-have-you are social places, and as long as you’re not tone-deaf to who that society is made up of and what they’re expecting (babies in a strip club seem like a poor idea, much like bachelorette parties in a gay bar… though both seem to occur with some frequency).
I would probably also initially agree (not having had an applicable kid yet) that ‘youths’ are better served by the pub/food kind of place. Though giant loungey bars (union hall, etc.) seem fair game.
Perhaps instead of bringing back smoking (please, god, no) we should just make it easy for coffeeshops to serve beer and wine? Then your parents could unwind somewhere and have a drink, their kids could sit on the sofa and mash muffins into the cushions, and it would just be the laptop wielding future screenwriters of america who got pissy.
weird that you said radegast – why does that place seem perfectly appropriate for kids in the afternoon? is it the european thing? funny.
anyway, when my kid was an infant we would have dinner out while baby slept the whole time. after that ended, then we stopped going out at night with kid. agree tho if you split by 7, who cares? i grew up in a time where the local pub serving food was just as much a place for a family as the catholic church, so i do remember being in lots of pubs as a kid even tho my parents were not big drinkers.
kids and babies on the subway are actually way more of a scourge than ones in bars.
*rob*
hmmm this is an interesting topic
I agree with other posters that keeping it to moderation is ok and the parents really shouldn’t expect other patrons to change their behaviour just becuase some baby is now there in the bar. I think it’s a non-issue if the bar is open during the day to diners as well as drinkers and the kids/babies are gone by 7pm when the real “meet&greet” scene settles in to whoop it up.
the funny thing for me is that my father (parents were divorced) often took me to his bar in Jackson Hts on the way to his house in the middle of the afternoon. I suppose I was usually taken to the bar with him from the age of 7-12. He was a “regular” and most of his bar buddies were people he’d known for decades and I had known since birth, so it made sense for him to stop in, have a beer, say hello and then leave 20 mins later. I would play the 1 lone video game they had and drink my shirley temple. OH well, that was a Differnt time and different type of people
I took my nephew to a bar in the Village once when he was about 11. I didn’t realize that it was a bar, actually, and we went in for something to “drink”, i.e. cappucino for me and a soda for him and it was clearly more of a bar, than a restaurant. That was 10 years ago and it is one of his fond memories of me. I still think kids in bars are wrong though.
totally wtbound. i dont even consider bars that serve food real bars anyway.
*rob*
exactly…leave it to the establishment to decide.