It’s fairly obvious that far too many people overindulge far too often. In an article about Massachusetts’ worst bars in terms of over-serving customers who should be cut-off, WBZ employs some interesting reasoning.
First, they mention that a state investigator saw a drunk guy in a Worcester bar. I guess I’m a little surprised that the Commonwealth needs an paid investigator to inform them that drunk people can often be found in bars–who knew? Next, they mention how undercover video taken outside of an unnamed Boston bar showed numerous drunk people leaving. It’s fairly obvious that people leaving a bar tend to be more intoxicated than they were when they came in, but the real eyebrow-raiser here is that the video in question was taken on New Year’s Eve. If you’re looking to write a convincing piece about how widespread a problem over-serving is, perhaps you shouldn’t use the drunkest night of the entire calendar year as a representative sampling of people’s behavior. Just saying.
Finally, the good folks at WBZ give us some hard numbers, naming the Thirsty Whale in Newburyport, and the Golden Banana and Paddy Kelly’s in Peabody, as the three bars with the worst records in eastern Massachusetts in terms over-serving. The numbers they cite to prove it are the number of arrested drunk drivers who have named those places as the location of their last drinks prior to being pulled-over. It’s amazing how all three of these places are out in the ‘burbs. Are they trying to tell us that bars in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville are that much more responsible when it comes to nudging drunk people toward the door? I don’t think so. Instead, all they’ve managed to show us is how patrons with drinking problems make it to and from bars with no rapid transit access and limited taxis. Nice work, WBZ.
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WBZ on Eastern Massachusetts’ Worst Bars: Location, Location, Location
It’s fairly obvious that far too many people overindulge far too often. In an article about Massachusetts’ worst bars in terms of over-serving customers who should be cut-off, WBZ employs some interesting reasoning.
First, they mention that a state investigator saw a drunk guy in a Worcester bar. I guess I’m a little surprised that the Commonwealth needs an paid investigator to inform them that drunk people can often be found in bars–who knew? Next, they mention how undercover video taken outside of an unnamed Boston bar showed numerous drunk people leaving. It’s fairly obvious that people leaving a bar tend to be more intoxicated than they were when they came in, but the real eyebrow-raiser here is that the video in question was taken on New Year’s Eve. If you’re looking to write a convincing piece about how widespread a problem over-serving is, perhaps you shouldn’t use the drunkest night of the entire calendar year as a representative sampling of people’s behavior. Just saying.
Finally, the good folks at WBZ give us some hard numbers, naming the Thirsty Whale in Newburyport, and the Golden Banana and Paddy Kelly’s in Peabody, as the three bars with the worst records in eastern Massachusetts in terms over-serving. The numbers they cite to prove it are the number of arrested drunk drivers who have named those places as the location of their last drinks prior to being pulled-over. It’s amazing how all three of these places are out in the ‘burbs. Are they trying to tell us that bars in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville are that much more responsible when it comes to nudging drunk people toward the door? I don’t think so. Instead, all they’ve managed to show us is how patrons with drinking problems make it to and from bars with no rapid transit access and limited taxis. Nice work, WBZ.
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Law, Local News, Pubs
This entry was posted on November 24, 2010, 4:43 am and is filed under Commentary on the News, Going Out. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.