Bring Your Own Breast - 207
New York Metro
September 5, 2006

Forget about individual rights, the rights of small business, or anything the tobacco lobby ever told you; here’s the real reason you need smoking back in the bars.

Last Friday night as I worked behind the bar at a small, neighborhood joint in Hoboken, a group came in a little after 11:45 p.m. It being otherwise quiet on a relatively slow summer weekend, I was more than happy to see patrons darken the doorstep. Until I noticed one of them holding a baby.

Neither the City of Hoboken nor the State of New Jersey has any law regarding the admission of a child to a licensed establishment. Provided they’re not served alcohol, it’s simply left to the establishment and/or common sense. But I don’t work at Applebee’s, Houlihan’s, Tchotchke’s or some other cookie-cutter family-themed corporate “Wal-Mart Lounge.” I work a neighborhood pub, where people drink, play darts, watch sports and curse at the TV. In the past, a thick, acrid fog would deter but the densest of parents from dragging their wee ones into an adult place like that. But now that the smoke has lifted, it seems perfectly normal in the minds of some to bring a baby into the bar.

Personally, I have no problem with children—provided no one’s claiming them to be mine. But it certainly made me cringe when these people brought a baby into the establishment at 11:45 p.m. Nevertheless they appeared relatively sane, I was sure mommy and daddy would be responsible enough to know what they were doing, so I needn’t make a stink, right?

Well I spoke, or should I say didn’t speak too soon, since what followed was one of the most bizarre incidents of my eight-year bartending career.

She whipped it out.

Mommy pulled up to the bar and BAM—she began to feed little junior right there in front of everyone. She didn’t take herself into the restroom or adjourn to one of the empty tables off to the side. She sat at a bar at a quarter to midnight on a Friday and, with perfect strangers looking on she produced her breast and fed her infant child.

At this point I began to wonder if this was a test of some sort. Was she with the National Organization for Women or some whacko fringe parental rights group just trying to provoke an incident? I guess it’s her right as a woman to breast feed in public, though I question whether it’s all that appropriate in a pub. Nevertheless, as much as she had the right to do it, my regulars and I had every right to have loud, sophomoric conversations about it. After a long discussion as to whether junior was drinking “from the tap” or “straight out of the can,” we decided not to charge him a corkage fee.

Then slowly it began to dawn on me that these people were just plain idiots. After passing off junior to daddy, mommy whacked back half a pint of cider as if she was putting back what the little tyke had taken out. Meanwhile daddy was dancing with junior in one hand and a pint Guinness in the other. It became apparent that Brad and Buffy Yupiscumb here had rolled down to the pub after their dinner party and didn’t even think to drop off Baby Biff. At that point I had to ask them to leave, for “liability reasons,” citing my concern that someone could bump into daddy and knock little junior to the floor.  They griped and groaned their way out of the door—leaving no tip, of course.

In this new era of cleaner air, it’s important that people not confuse the motive behind the legislation—to make the environment safer for workers and patrons alike. And while there is a feeling of liberation among parents and non-smokers now that Clean-Air legislation is in effect, that doesn’t mean come on down to the pub and get banged up while you breastfeed your infant. That sort of judgment is cloudier than any smoke-filled barroom.

Like I said, over the years I’ve pretty much seen it all in that place—saliva, mucous, earwax, vomit, urine, feces, blood. Now I can add one more thing to the list—breast milk. It sure was a hell of a lot less creepier cleaning the ashtrays.

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