The Brat-Free Bar
What's next, bringing the kids along to Live Nude Girls!? Some parents are all ornery that their kids aren't welcome in the local bar. Alex Williams writes for The New York Times:
THESE days little children are brought along to places that would have been considered inappropriate a generation ago: four-star restaurants, cocktail parties, rock concerts. But for all the sniping from adults who resent this territorial invasion, the onslaught shows no sign of letting up. In fact, one of its latest flash points is the local bar.When the owners of Union Hall — a moody, dark-paneled bar and brunch spot in Park Slope, Brooklyn — recently posted a sign that read “Please, No Strollers” under another one reading “No One Under 21 Admitted,” they did not see it as a declaration of war with the neighborhood’s sizable population of young parents.
“The word gets out that this is a place for baby buggies to go, we end up with 8 to 10 strollers, or 15,” said Jim Carden, an owner. He explained that the goal was simply to make sure that the preferred transportation for toddlers of the stay-at-home parents who had adopted the lounge as an afternoon hangout would not crowd out the regular patrons.
Perhaps he underestimated the neighborhood’s vocal and proactive parents. Local parenting blogs were soon bristling with denunciations.
“This was a perfect winter moms’ group place for those of us with infants going stir-crazy,” wrote one woman on onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.com, wondering testily why local mothers could not at least drop in for “a beer once a week when it’s not crowded.”
...A woman in Boston, recently posting to yelp.com, a national, user-generated city-guide site, seemed appalled to see a 7-year-old next to her at a bar. (“There were cubes, crayons and candy on top of the bar,” she wrote. “Does anyone else think there’s something wrong with that?”)
I sure do. If I wanted children, I'd have them. If I wanted to drink around screaming children, I'd bring a thermos full of Chardonnay to Chuck E. Cheese.
If you bring your children to someplace that's largely an adult establishment -- a coffee bar filled with adults, for example -- your kid had better well be trained to sit down, shut up, and eat their muffin.
If your child can't sit still, shut up, and eat their muffin, well, leave them home until you can get them trained. P.S. You accomplish this by acting like their parent, not saying, "Yesss, massah" to their every demand.