U.S. begs: no more drinking and debating.

Americans are known the world over for being embarrassing drunks. We're constantly being told that other countries have a more mature relationship with alcohol, that their collegiate years are not spent chugging cheap grain alcohol and getting sick in communal bathrooms. But in a surprising turn of events, the U.S. is asking diplomats from other countries to lay off the booze, according to Reuters. At least during United Nations budget debates.

Joseph Torsella, deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for management and reform, came to the General Assembly's budget committee with a "modest proposal that the negotiating rooms should in the future be an inebriation-free zone."

Mr. Torsella went on to request that diplomats wait to break out the champagne until the conclusion of a successful session, rather than pre-gaming the budget sessions like freshmen on their way to a frat party.

The call for moderation comes after an incident in December in which the U.S. was unable to rally support for a proposal to freeze U.N. staff pay. According to Foreign Policy,"key negotiating partners, particularly delegates from the Group of 77 developing countries, were not showing up for meetings. When they did arrive, they had often been drinking." (Mr. Torsella also called for changes so that no-show countries couldn't hold up the proceedings.)

While the annual vote of the committee does come in late December—let's be honest, who doesn't overindulge in drink during December?—and we can appreciate anyone wanting a little tipple before tackling budget issues, there have apparently been incidents of "illness." Not to mention that pressing global issues probably shouldn't be resolved by booze-addled brains. We've all seen pissed partygoers immersed heated political arguments. Now imagine that they had actual power.

But apparently getting tossed before starting in on tense international negotiations is nothing new. As a diplomat told Foreign Policy: "By the way, it's not just Africans. The Russians do it... Canada used to bring whisky. The French used to bring bottles of wine."

kvelsey@observer.com

Yep, you won't be seeing this anytime soon.

There are two types of people in this world: those who think that alcohol creates problems and those who think that alcohol solves them. Most people believe in the latter, but some believe in the former. And for some reason that “some” always happens to be elected officials. Are we lucky, or what?

Because of this unfortunate coincidence, New Yorkers are looking at a mighty dry summer. Put away that flask, leave your portable wine carafe at home, and stuff a Smart Water into that drink holder on your beach chair because there will be no public drinking allowed.

Since the early days of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the City has been pinballing the idea of banning outdoor alcohol assumption at street festival and fairs, but this year they’re taking it further.

We would quote the Office of Citywide Event Coordination and Management, but their statement is dreadfully long, incredibly boring, and undeserving of that much space. Suffice it to say that alcohol is prohibited from events at parks, parades, block parties—Not block parties! Alcohol is the glue that bonds neighbors together!—special events and street festivals. So basically any time you step over the threshold of a door, inhale fresh oxygen, and/or feel UV rays on your skin, you should not have a drink in your hand, unless you want a ticket in the other. That even goes for the humble stoop. How low can you go?

This might be the government’s first step in assuring the creation of a mutually-destructive, Dystopian future society, but since we are good, law-abiding citizens here at The Observer, we’ll play along.

Our only question: does kombucha count as alcohol?

(Peter Oumanski)

My pregnancy, of course, was largely dry. (Both my general practitioner and my midwife assured me that the occasional drink—even a few ounces of wine every day!—would be fine, but I found that my cravings for egg salad sandwiches and watermelon eclipsed my nostalgia for riojas and tempranillos.) It wasn’t until high summer, when I was seven months along and needing to relax after a long day at work, that I decided to break my alcohol fast, and even then I watered the two fingers of sauvignon blanc down with so much seltzer that I probably would have gotten more of a buzz using mouthwash.

I harbored abstinence-induced fantasies of glugging a fishbowl-sized glass as soon as I went into labor, but since that ended up happening at 6 a.m., the first contractions promptly followed by retching over the side of the bed into a Citarella bag, I did not, in the end, feel like bellying up to the bar, and even for the first few weeks postpartum, the suggestion to crack a bottle of celebratory champagne sounded about as appealing as doing a Jäger bomb.

That all changed by the time my son was about two months old. Once I had adjusted to the constant sleep deprivation (which, like drunkenness, tends to negatively impact your decision-making skills—as I discovered in the wee hours one morning as I hovered over the toilet, holding my wailing infant to my chest and trying to keep his swaddle out of the stream) and completed the Mensa application that is the unassisted donning of a Moby Wrap, I felt ready to resume semi-regular drinking.

This has been much easier said than done. My husband works late, and as a freelance writer I can’t afford much paid babysitting. So boozing, for me, necessitates doing it with baby in tow.

I started with an adventurous outing, meeting a friend, who in my former life had been a favorite drinking buddy, at Noho’s Five Points for happy hour. I ordered a $5 glass of wine and single-handedly demolished a bowl of complimentary potato chips with the vacuum power (and approximate grace) of a Flowbee. Nothing abnormal there. But as the dinner rush started and people filled the bar, I received some questionable looks. Because on my lap, buried under the potato detritus, sat my son. He was relatively quiet, especially given the din, but seemed out of place attempting to gnaw on the craft beer taps. My friend was proud of me for balancing motherhood and malbec, and even bragged on Facebook that she’d lured Sam out to his first bar. But I was self-conscious, and for once not willing to raise my blood alcohol level enough to numb it away.

A few weeks later, I learned that a German beer hall in my neighborhood hosted weekly “play dates” in the mid-afternoon, before patrons employed by larger and presumably more continent bosses got out of work. I showed up at 2:30 on a Thursday to find colorful mats covering the floors, and fellow nursing moms nursing hefeweissbiers cross-legged as their infants flailed beneath them.

The atmosphere seemed friendly enough, until a sour-faced twentysomething bartender approached and had me sign a sobering waiver promising never to let my child touch anything outside the boundary of the play space and swear upon pain of expulsion to use the changing table for diaper duty—which was inexplicably in the men’s room. I get that it’s health code stuff, but the contract still seemed awfully formal. That, coupled with the fact that there were no drink specials, left me cold. So I turned to my last resort: Playgroup.

Every week I meet with a small klatch of other new moms and their babies at one of their Park Slope homes. Emails are exchanged the day before to plan the potluck menu.

“I’m picking up some hummus and carrot sticks!” one will write.

“I’m trying some no-bake energy balls I saw on Pinterest!” another will chime in.

One week, the host was going through a personal crisis. I jumped at the opportunity.

“If only you were a drinker, I would bring a bottle of wine for ‘snack,’” I typed, adding a winking emoticon to communicate that I was totally kidding, ha ha, unless... she was into it.

I hit send.

Seconds later, a reply came from one of the other members: “So glad you said it—I've been dying to suggest a little boozy playgroup but didn't want to sound like the alchy mom!!”

That Wednesday we cheered impishly as we popped a bottle of Prosecco. If David Attenborough had been narrating the scene, he might have observed, “The American stay-at-home mother, shamed out of consuming alcohol under cover of darkness at the local pub, is now content to tipple away during daylight hours with others of her species.” In my pre-baby life, daytime drinking might have signaled a problem; now, it seemed the only socially acceptable time.

But though I’ve found a tribe, I do confess to sometimes feeling irresponsible. The old, wine-soaked me who worried about being too hungover to go to the gym and the new, spit-up-soaked me who worries about the frequency and consistency of someone else’s feces seem somehow at odds. It’s as if, upon conceiving, my motherboard should have been replaced, deleting my appetite for mood-altering substances and increasing my tolerance of insipid cartoons—but it doesn’t have to be a complete reprogramming.

I know that there is a line between someone like Lucille Bluth, the comically negligent, perpetually soused matriarch on Arrested Development, and a self-sacrificing teetotaler like June Cleaver (what a scold!)—and that I remain, as ever, appropriately in between. I also know that less than 2% of what I imbibe reaches my breastmilk, and that if I am sober enough to drive I am sober enough to nurse, not to mention operate the heavy machinery that is my stroller.

Finally, I know that my husband feels free to drink wherever and whenever he so chooses without fear of societal scorn. So, as long as one of us remains sober enough to be the alpha parent, the other is free to dabble, ever so often, as the alchy.

Don't get caught doing this (Mecredis)

So if you're the type who likes to start fights with burly security guards while blacked out at Bar None, just make sure you follow in Cinderella's footsteps and get your drunk ass home before midnight.

Meanwhile, Victoria Bekiempis of the Village Voice pointed out that LES has bigger problems than alcoholic antics: there have been 19 burglaries in the last 28 days, and felony assault rates have also shot up. However, Capt. Cappelman does not see a connection between these incidents and those drunk kids that need catching.

(Photo via Mecredis on Flickr)

Nick Poe undergoes a sobriety check at the 7th Precinct (MyBlockNYC)

We don't know how the NYPD allowed this footage to be released, but here's Nick Poe-- artist, SoHo loft-dweller (as well as son of No Wave director Amos Poe)--undergoing a series of sobriety tests at New York's 7th Precinct in Chinatown after being pulled over for driving under the influence.

So even while passing every test (including blowing just under the legal limit for the Breathalyzer of .07%), Mr. Poe still had to spend a night in Central Booking, had his license put on probation for 90 days, and was forced to pay $1,000. Seems like those mini-cheeseburgers didn't do the job after all.

New Yorkers will get smashy.

Yesterday, the New York Post reported on a memo obtained straight out of the Division of Nanny Stateskeeping, the Department of Health's Partnership for a Healthier New York City. The document outlined a proposal to slash the number of alcohol retailers in New York City with funds from community "transformation" grants (which the Post gleefully identified as born out of the health-care laws President Barack Obama pushed through Congress):

One of the goals listed in the “request for proposal” document to community groups is “reducing alcohol retail outlet (e.g. bar, corner store) density and illegal alcohol,” the document states.

Some ideas are better left unspoken. Naturally, the Post didn't have a hard time finding people upset at the idea of the Bloomberg administration absconding with their booze. The story was posted at 1:51 AM last night.

Less than thirteen hours later, the mayor's office has dialed the idea back...to zero. Again, the Post reports (with a picture of Hizzoner swilling a beer):

Asked if the mayor backed the effort to limit booze-selling businesses, Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser said, “No.”

“One reason the mayor has been successful in office is because we think there are no bad ideas in brainstorming _ and then we weigh them against other concerns. We’re deeply committed to encouraging entrepreneurs to start and expand small businesses in the city,” the mayoral spokesman said.

Another reason the Mayor has been successful in office may be—and this is just an amateur analysis—that he has yet to knowingly institute the kind of mandates that would keep this city from anything resembling functionality and/or tearing itself apart at the seams in a barbaric meltdown reminiscent of something between I Am Legend and Escape from New York. Backpedaling on this policy initiative was—inasmuch as an opinion can be anything other than subjective—the inarguably correct move, here.

[Photo via James Devaney/WireImage]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Jane, Lowe and Piven.

Grown men behaving badly are everywhere on film, but a more stomach-turning band of incompetent losers has never been assembled than the scumbags in the stupidly titled I Melt With You. Four obnoxious human brussels sprouts get together annually for a week of debauchery and self-destruction in a rented beach house in California’s majestic Big Sur.Richard (Thomas Jane, from the TV series Hung), the alpha-male group leader, is a failed novelist who teaches high school English to make ends meet. Jonathan (Rob Lowe, who also ill-advisedly produced this nasty waste of time) is an addicted doctor in the middle of an ugly divorce who prescribes illegal drugs for rich female patients and brings along a bagful of uppers, downers and pills for every mood to keep his buddies stoned. Ron (Jeremy Piven) is a money marketer under investigation by the authorities. Tim (Christian McKay) is the birthday boy who turns out to be gay and terminally depressed over the death of his boyfriend in an automobile crash. Fortified by hard liquor, blaring acid rock and an endless supply of cocaine, these lost and rudderless guy pals talk about the wives they’ve cheated on, the children they’ve ignored, losing their hair, impotence and erectile dysfunction, their fear of aging, and their genitals. They all share commitment problems, to everybody except each other. As their days diminish in a blur of swimming naked in 60-degree waves, brutal hangovers and an orgy, they wreck a convertible at top speed while paralyzed on dope and reveal the secrets that pushed them down the rabbit hole of no return. The writer trashed his talent, the doctor settled for pushing drugs instead of saving lives, the Wall Street jerk immersed himself in money-making schemes and false values and the gay guy … well, he’s the smartest one of all. On the fourth day, they find him hanging from the bathroom ceiling and you wonder what took him so long. The rest of this interminable yawn turns into a half-baked thriller as the three survivors get rid of Tim’s body (for no reason) and a pretty cop (a miscast Carla Gugino) gets suspicious and hangs around the cliff house (also for no reason). You know they will all pay for their sins in sad and terrible ways, but you can hardly wait for it to end.

Erupting with midlife-crisis clichés, Glenn Porter’s screenplay is ludicrous enough to get laughs in all the wrong places, while Mark Pellington’s stale, predictable and adolescent direction strands a fine cast in midstream without a row boat. Don’t even think of wasting your time and money on this dreck, especially if you suffer from vertigo. As the actors weave and stagger about from room to room, with walls spinning and rap music endangering the eardrums, the hand-held cameras drive the viewer to nausea. The cacophony is by the Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, Dead Kennedys and worse. Don’t these aging boy toys ever grow up? Not in terms of musical taste, to be sure. I Melt With You is a disastrous catalog of flaws, all accentuated by dilated, out-of-focus cinematography. The coke-snorting, booze-guzzling and vomiting add up to nearly two hours of frustration, anesthesia and pointless, self-indulgent excess. They should have called it I Vomit With You. There’s plenty of that too.

rreed@observer.com

I MELT WITH YOU

Running Time 125 minutes

Written by Glenn Porter

Directed by Mark Pellington

Starring Thomas Jane, Rob Lowe and Jeremy Piven

0/4

Illo: Anna Parini

We weren’t three minutes into our pedicure—or two toes—and already The Observer was getting wasted.

The place was Dashing Diva in Greenwich Village, a chain nail salon with 12 locations in the city and two in California. The place’s decor resembles a little like what might happen if Elle Woods met Malibu Barbie. The only part that isn’t either bright pink or white are the racks of multicolored nail polish on the walls. The pedicure station is a banquette of pink pillows, cut off from the rest of the salon by a wall of mini pearly-pink tiles. It’s a nice place to get plastered.

We were there for “Girls Night Out,” a weekly promotion that offers a free Cosmopolitan with any manicure or pedicure on from 6 to 9pm on Thursdays and Fridays. This particular salon touted a one-drink limit (at least that’s what it said on FourSquare), but we knew better. Besides, we were paying $40 for this pedi.

“You want water or Cosmo?” the pedicurist asked, only after enticing us into paying $5 extra for a mandarin orange salt soak. $45. “Cosmo,” we replied.

The Observer sipped. Svedka was our best guess. There was only one other customer, and she was not partaking. We felt like the old man at the dive bar—a lost, lonely soul, slinging back cheap whiskeys and searching for a friend. Except this time there was someone scrubbing dead skin off our feet.

The pedicurist noticed the empty glass. “You want more?” she asked.

As she returned with another, we began asking questions. Who makes these? What ingredients do you use? She didn’t know, she said. She just poured them from a jug in the back.

“You very funny,” she said and kept scrubbing.

It was then that the other customer noticed our beverage. “What is that?” she asked.

“It’s a Cosmo.”

“Oh, like on Sex and the City!”

She ordered one, and we felt better. Looser. Thirstier. We asked for one more.

“Usually customer only get one,” she said. “You drunk?”

“No. Are you kidding? Not at all!”

“You drunk! Your face red!”

Was it? Oh, god.

“Listen, I’m a bartender,” we said. “There’s no way I’m drunk off two Cosmos.”

“Ooooo-kay.” She laughed, then she got us another drink.

It’s not uncommon to walk into a salon—whether hair or nail—and have an alcoholic beverage offered to you while your perm sets or your dye soaks or whatever shellac you might have dries. In fact, it’s quite de riguer.

“I’d say most New York City salons serve wine, at least after 3 o’clock,” said Joe, who’s been a hairdresser at upscale salons in the city for seven years. “I don’t really know about like, New Jersey though.”

For most women, this is not news at all. The Observer was served our first glass of wine at age 20, by Joe himself (one of the few reasons he wanted to withhold his last name).

It a wonderful practice, isn’t it. But is it legal?

According to the New York State Liquor Authority, it isn’t—at least, not without a liquor license. And, though a spokeswoman for NYLA said she was “sure there are a couple” licensed salons in the state, the authority was unable to name any. “We don’t organize them that way,” she said.

The Observer attempted a painstaking, manual search through the list of 30,445 licensed venues in New York county, but we could not find a single licensed hair salon.

Salons in general don’t profit from alcohol. They serve it up gratis—either as a polite gesture, an attempt to allay the anxiety that can accompany a radical haircut, or a marketing tactic. Which is why going through the hassle of procuring a license hardly seems worth the trouble. Especially since, as Joe told us, salons have been serving alcohol without complaint for “as far as I know, forever and ever and ever.”

They just don’t know they’re violating the law.

At the high-profile John Barrett salon above Bergdorf Goodman, Heather, a manager who declined to give her last name, wondered why we were asking if they served wine. After all, what did it matter? “I’m pretty sure it’s legal to serve it, as long as we’re not selling it,” she said.

We told her the truth. We also told her that we had been told that the salon did in fact serve wine—by the receptionist! Like two minutes ago!

She explained that yes, the salon would offer wine, but added that technically customers would be buying it from the restaurant downstairs. “We’re a corporate salon,” she said, “so we have to cover our asses.”

April Barton, owner of the chic, celebrity-attended Suite 303 above the Chelsea Hotel (and former Season 3 contestant on Bravo’s Shear Genius) confirmed that her salon does “occasionally” serve wine. “But it’s not really a big thing,” she said. “We used to do it a lot, but lately its slowed down.”

When we told her it was illegal, she froze up for a moment. “I didn’t know,” she said.

The Observer also spoke with Kerri Lee Ross, an account supervisor for Siren PR, the agency that handles Hollywood stylist Sally Hershberger’s salons in New York. She said it was “a fair assumption” that the salons served wine to their customers, but “to be perfectly honest,” she had never heard that it was illegal.

Severon Dickson, owner of the trendy, hole-in-the-wall Dickson Hairshop on the Lower East Side, says his barbershop stopped serving bourbon a few months ago because of the “Nutcracker Bill” passed in June. That bill threatened to take store licenses—specifically salon licenses—away from any establishment found selling “Nutcrackers”—a potent Kool-Aid-like cocktail found in bodegas and barbershops, sometimes served to minors in a Styrofoam cup or soup container.

Back when they offered booze, did they have a license?

“No, but no salons do,” said Mr. Dickson claimed. “Because you don’t have to have a liquor license to give away alcohol.”

Wrong! We dropped the bomb. “Oh, O.K.,” he said, unfazed. “It’s not worth the liability for me, and I’m definitely not gonna be carding every client. Which is fine, because people don’t come here to drink. They come here for haircuts.”

Even Joe, with all his years in the business, had no idea he was violating the law. “I’m glad you told me,” he said. “I’m planning to open up my own salon, and I was going to serve wine!”

Naive as they all may have been, salon managers tended to go into lock-down mode when asked about serving booze. Diva Salon said a manager might be available to speak in an hour. The Observer returned 15 minutes early to find a dark, abandoned salon, the gate pulled down. The receptionist at the Dashing Diva said no manager would be in for five days. When Ms. Ross called The Observer back, she insisted that she had never said Ms. Hershberger’s salon served wine. At the end of our phone call with Ms. Barton, she said her salon shouldn’t really count. “I’d prefer to say we didn’t do it,” she said. “It’s not our priority here…our salon’s about craft, beauty, music.”

The last thing we want to do is rain on everybody’s parade, but according to the Liquor Authority, there are legitimate health concerns involved. Because any New York establishment with a liquor license is required to serve food of some kind and also pass an inspection by the state or city Health Departments. Think about it: would you chow down in your hair salon?

Leonard Fogelman, a lawyer who has specialized in New York liquor law for 35 years, said he’s never even heard of hair salons applying for licenses.

“What it appears is that these salons are [making] a nice gesture to their guests, but the reality is that it’s violative of New York State liquor law,” he said. “It’s a misdemeanor.”

So for god’s sake, why doesn’t the Liquor Authority act? How can this outrage be allowed to continue?

“We do receive complains once an a while, but believe it or not, we forward them to the NYPD,” said NYLA spokesman William Crowley, who explained that busting an establishment without a license did not fall under it’s jurisdiction.

“We can’t take a license away that doesn’t exist,” he said.

So should the law be enforced—if for no other reason than to bring a little more revenue into state coffers?

“The issue is not the revenue, the issue is the appropriateness of the law,” said Gerald Benjamin, a political science professor at SUNY New Paltz and an expert on state policy. “Whether the rationale is sensible in contemporary times, and if it’s not, what should replace it.”

Mr. Benjamin added that it was the first time he’d heard of the issue.

“I am shocked,” he said. “Shocked, shocked, shocked.”

When The Observer woke up in our bed three hours later, toes perfectly soft and glistening lilac, we were pretty shocked too.

A match made in heaven.

Leave the flasks at home, New York moviegoers!

Last August, Gov. Cuomo passed a law that allows movie theaters with restaurants to serve booze as well, making a trip to the cinema that much more appealing. Now, AMC Theaters tells The New York Post that they are considering equipping their eight theaters in Manhattan with these eateries. Just imagine. Patrons buy their beer and their wine, take it back to their seats, repeat steps one and two to their hearts' content, and there you go. A perfect movie-watching experience.

Seeing as people like to drink, lawmakers hope the new policy will bring more city dwellers from the saloons to the screens, The Post report explains.

“Adults aren’t enjoying going to the movies [which cater to] adolescents,” said Cathy Peake, a spokeswoman for Assemblyman Joe Lentol (D--Brooklyn), who sponsored the bill.

No word on when AMC Dine-In Theaters will descend upon Manhattan, but Brooklyn movie houses such as Nitehawk Cinemas and indieScreen already have food outposts, and hope to tap the kegs this fall. Hopefully they'll have everything ready before The Muppets comes out!

Mr. Radcliffe, reformed boozehound.

The area around super-classy apartment building One Morton Square, in the edge of West Village, has a fine array of well-stoked boîtes from which boozy revelers can choose from. Hell, the Olsen twins used to live there! But it wasn't the best day for another of the spot's celeb denizens -- in the new issue of British GQ,  Daniel Radcliffe admitted that until August 2010, he hit the sauce a little bit too hard.

"I became so reliant on [alcohol] to enjoy stuff," Mr. Radcliffe said. ""I'm actually enjoying the fact that I can have a relationship with my girlfriend where I'm really pleasant and not fucked up totally all the time."

That's fine and all, but when you were "fucked up totally all the time," what were your favorite spots? The Observer called every place with a liquor license in the area in search of the spots he found the most spiritual.

First up, Barrow Pub. Pubs -- they're British! Surely, Harry Potter came by The Barrow to knock back something stronger than butterbeer, no?

"I didn't even know he lived here," the bartender told The Observer over the phone.

Criminy! What about the sleek lounge Lelabar? Surely this bougie wine bar lured the underage addict with dreams of drams of Pinot Noir.

"Haven't seen him," the bartender said. "I usually hear about all the sightings, and I live around here and I haven’t seen him."

Then we realized, Radcliffe, he's a rebel. He'd want to go to a real Rock 'n' Roll spot. Hello, Rockbar NYC.

"Haven’t seen him in here, but then again we get some people," said the barkeep. "Katy Perry was here over pride weekend."

Modesty, Rockbar NYC. Learn it.

OK, so clearly Mr. Radcliffe is into some solitary drinking in his Morton Street flat. He did, after all, pay $4.9 million for the place -- why leave it? And with its adjacent location, King Deli is the place where he'd stock up on sixers.

"What?" the King Deli staff said to The Observer. "Who is this? I don't know."

Not a beer guy! And of course he's not--it must be  straight to the hard stuff for Daniel Radcliffe.

"Yeah, I don't think so," said the operator of Golden Rule Liquor, on Hudson Street. "I know the Harry Potter guy, though.  A couple times I've gone into a restaurant and he’s there."

A lead-- the guy actually does leave his apartment!

Then we rang Sea Grape Wine Shop, which stands a few blocks from his abode. Bingo.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's been around," the cashier told us. "He's been here."

We pried for details about preference and frequency--a bottle of Merlot a week? Cognac every every Friday? daily afternoon pick up, case of Dom Perignon at the ready?--but he couldn't say for certain. We now know that, until his August 2010 decision to get sober, the lush that was Daniel Radcliffe got his stuff at Sea Grape.