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To Evade Pre-Prohibition Drinking Laws, New Yorkers Created the World's Worst Sandwich
To Evade Pre-Prohibition Drinking Laws, New Yorkers Created the World's Worst Sandwich
Near the end of the 19th century, New Yorkers out for a drink partook in one of the more unusual rituals in the annals of hospitality. When they ordered an ale or whisky, the waiter or bartender would bring it out with a sandwich. Generally speaking, the sandwich was not edible. It was “an old desiccated ruin of dust-laden bread and mummified ham or cheese,” wrote the playwright Eugene O’Neill. Other times it was made of rubber. Bar staff would commonly take the sandwich back seconds after it had arrived, pair it with the next beverage order, and whisk it over to another patron’s table. Some sandwiches were kept in circulation for a week or more.
Bar owners insisted on this bizarre charade to avoiding breaking the law—specifically, the excise law of 1896, which restricted how and when drinks could be served in New York State. The so-called Raines Law was a combination of good intentions, unstated prejudices, and unforeseen consequences, among them the comically unsavory Raines sandwich.
[...] The 1896 Raines Law was designed to put dreary watering holes like these out of business. It raised the cost of an annual liquor license to $800, three times what it had cost before and a tenfold increase for beer-only taverns. It stipulated that saloons could not open within 200 feet of a school or church, and raised the drinking age from 16 to 18. In addition, it banned one of the late 19th-century saloon’s most potent enticements: the free lunch. At McSorley’s, for example, cheese, soda bread, and raw onions were on the house. (The 160-year-old bar still sells a tongue-in-cheek version of this today.) Most controversial of all was the law’s renewed assault on Sunday drinking. Its author, Finger Lakes region senator John W. Raines, eliminated the “golden hour” grace period that followed the stroke of midnight on Saturday. His law also forced saloon owners to keep their curtains open on Sunday, making it considerably harder for patrolmen to turn a blind eye.
[...] Intentionally or not, the Raines Law left wiggle room for the rich. But a loophole was a loophole, and Sunday was many a proprietor’s most profitable day of business. By the following weekend, a vanguard of downtown saloon-owners were gleefully testing the law’s limits. A suspicious number of private “clubs” were founded that April, and saloons started handing out membership cards to their regulars. Meanwhile, proprietors converted basements and attic spaces into “rooms,” cut hasty deals with neighboring lodging-houses, and threw tablecloths over pool tables. They also started dishing up the easiest, cheapest, most reusable meal they could get away with: the Raines sandwich.
Law enforcement declared itself satisfied. “I would not say that a cracker is a complete meal in itself, but a sandwich is,” an assistant D.A. in Brooklyn told an assembly of police captains as the first Raines hotels sprouted up. Remarkably, the courts upheld these definitions of “meal” and “guest.” Reformers were understandably flabbergasted. The law itself was sound, Raines complained. It was the police and the courts that had made it laughable. He and his progressive allies had seriously underestimated just how far New Yorkers would go for a drink.
The court decisions were a turning point. With summer approaching, “Raines hotels” sprang up everywhere. By the next year’s election season, there were more than 1,500 of them in New York. Brooklyn, still a separate municipality at this point, went from 13 registered hotels to 800 in six months, and its tally of social clubs grew tenfold.
For the libertines of New York City, Zacks writes, the second half of 1896 was “too good to be true, a drunken daydream.” The hotel carve-out allowed drinks to flow at all hours. There was no obligatory last call, and the city’s liveliest drinking spots now offered cheap beds mere steps away. For Raines and the law’s other architects, this was the most alarming unintended consequence: their efforts to make New Yorkers virtuous had caused a spike in casual sex and prostitution.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday June 10 2019, @12:38PM (5 children)
Not quite the same thing, but many states still have bizarre alcohol laws in the U.S., many tied to food.
For example, in Pennsylvania [wikipedia.org], you can only sell beer and wine if you sell food. (Mostly: there are exceptions for beer distributors and wineries.) That has led to the bizarre situation where grocery stores open an in-store "cafe" that carries a few sandwiches or something, just so they can also sell beer there. You have to buy the beer at the "cafe," not at the check-out lines for the rest of the grocery store.
The standard pub sandwich there has been replaced by a display case of sandwiches that you don't need to buy, but it's still an excuse allowing a store to sell alcohol. (And given that effectively these grocery stores are licensed as "restaurants," and the state liquor control board only gives out so many of those, apparently there are periodic auctions some places to get a license... that is, a license to pretend to be a restaurant just to sell beer along with your groceries.)
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday June 10 2019, @12:46PM
(I should clarify that I don't know all the details of the laws in that state -- and much wine and all liquor is actually heavily regulated and sold only at special state liquor stores. But I find the grocery-store/cafe loophole to be amusing and much in the spirit of the fake sandwich.)
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday June 10 2019, @01:00PM (3 children)
Apologies for another self-reply, but I meant that apparently grocery stores need to sell prepared food, with tables, etc. to qualify enough as a "restaurant" to be allowed to sell liquor. Obviously grocery stores mostly sell food too in other parts of the store, but they need a separate "cafe" section that acts like a restaurant, apparently so they can pretend that someone is likely eating a meal in order to purchase alcohol.
(Score: 2, Informative) by nitehawk214 on Monday June 10 2019, @06:18PM (2 children)
Correct, except you don't have to purchase food, and you can take the alcohol to go. You still need separate registers which is a major pain in the ass. This is how groceries stores like Giant Eagle and Wegmans operate. The alcohol register section closes when the blue laws require them to. They both had restaurant sections anyhow, so it wasn't a major change for most of them.
Additionally there are "no fuel and alcohol at the same register" laws for Sheetz, Wawa, and other full-service gas stations. I always pay for fuel at the pump and so only pay for food/alcohol at the register, but I assume if you wanted to pay cash for fuel, you would have to go through the checkout line twice.
Before these changes took place there was the ubiquitous "6 pack shack", which had a nasty hot-dog roller thing and one table so they could qualify as a "restaurant".
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 11 2019, @01:31AM (1 child)
Yeah, though I would note that my understanding is some grocery chains have deliberately installed cafes in a number of their stores (which weren't previously there) to take advantage of the new situation.
I guess my point was that these laws in modern times are even more ridiculous than those mentioned in TFA, as they essentially work on the same premise, but don't even require the fake sandwich to be served.
Essentially: "Good god-fearing people shouldn't be able to purchase alcohol except with meals... but we'll let you take one (or six) for the road... and oh, we won't track whether you're even buying a meal to eat here anymore, but you still have to theoretically be able to buy a meal, so please be sure to look those sandwiches in the case over closely before paying for your six-pack of beer." It's even more absurd than the historical crap in TFA.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday June 11 2019, @09:15PM
You have understood the bizarreness of PA correctly.
Even some el-cheapo grocery stores now have a little walled off area with some tables and real sandwiches so they can sell beer.
The beer distributors managed to convince the laws to let them sell 12's and 6's so they can try to keep up. Until recently your choices were "buy an entire case at a beer distributor" or "buy 6 at a 'restaurant' and pay a huge markup".
The grocery stores are at least competitive in pricing. There was a lot of lobbying on both sides of this. And not just from prohibition-proponents, the distributors wanted to go back to the old way where they had to sell cases but could lock out most competition. The grocery stores wanted less byzantine laws on who could sell what.
And as far as wine and liquor goes... well that is an even longer story of state-run monopolies that goes back decades.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh