Today's Gay Etiquette Question

From Steven Petrow's Civil Behavior column in the New York Times comes this question:

Dear Civil Behavior: I recently joined a gay Alcoholics Anonymous meeting after many years denying I had a drinking problem. Now I have a new problem: My birthday is coming up, and every year I throw myself a party to celebrate. This year is a “big” birthday for me, and friends are asking what wild and crazy party I’ll be hosting this time around. Truthfully, I’m uncomfortable hosting a big drinking party this year — I don’t even want to have alcohol in my apartment at all. Should I just cancel it? Or should I host it but serve only nonalcoholic drinks? And what do I tell my friends, many of whom don’t know about my joining A.A.? As a gay man, it feels as if I’m coming out all over again. — Anonymous

Give us your answer then hit the link for Petrow's response.

Britain Proposes Minimum Price On Booze To Curb Binge Drinking & Crime

The British government has proposed a minimum price on alcohol in order to curb binge drinking and alcohol-related crime. Via the BBC:

The Home Office has launched a 10-week consultation on the plan, arguing it will help reduce the levels of ill-health and crime related to alcohol. It is also considering banning multi-buy promotions, such as two-for-the-price-of-one. The 45p proposal is 5p higher than the figure suggested by ministers in March. It comes after pressure has been mounting on the government to follow Scotland's lead, where 50p has been proposed. The aim of a minimum price would be to alter the cost of heavily-discounted drinks sold in shops and supermarkets. It is not expected to affect the price of drinks in many pubs. The 45p minimum would mean a can of strong lager could not be sold for less than £1.56 and a bottle of wine below £4.22.

The tabloid Daily Mail reports that the European Commission has warned that any minimum price violates international free trade laws.

Putting a minimum price of alcohol is illegal, the European Commission has warned David Cameron. The nine-page letter from Brussels to the Prime Minister says the scheme would break laws governing the free movement of goods. The average family drinks bill will soar by almost £100 a year under the Government’s plan for minimum pricing for alcohol, it was revealed last night. Wine-producing nations such as France, Italy and Spain are planning to take Britain to court for breaching the EU law on free trade.

RELATED: This summer NYC launched a study into binge drinking which some believe heralds a possible similar move by Mayor Bloomberg. Domestic beers sell for $8 or more in many nightspots, but $2 specials are not unheard of. New York City already bans "all you can drink" specials such as beer busts.

Savage Vs Brown: The Drunk Moderator

New York Times columnist Mark Oppenheimer says he was pretty much hammered during the debate between Dan Savage and Brian Brown.

Terry Miller, Dan’s spouse, came out to offer me a drink. I eagerly accepted. From then on, I did not stop drinking. It started with Terry’s Mai Tai, as Mr. Miller named his fabulous rum drink, and continued with the red wine that Mr. Brown politely brought when he arrived without his wife, who was pregnant with their eighth child, and then the white wine that Mr. Colwell provided to accompany dinner. (For those who are curious, we ate Northwest sockeye salmon with Washington sweet corn, heirloom tomatoes and new-potato gnocchi; dessert was roasted peaches with an oat-and-almond crumble.) But even if I was no longer sober by the end of the meal, I still managed to exert enough discipline to hold the debate to an hour.[snip] Every time they disagreed, I drank some more.

Both Brown and Savage later told Oppenheimer they considered the debate to have been a waste of time. Savage: "Playing host put me in this position of treating Brian Brown like a guest. It was better in theory than in practice — it put me at a disadvantage during the debate, as the undertow of playing host resulted in my being more solicitous and considerate than I should’ve been. If I had it to do over again, I think I’d go with a hall."

TODAY: SantaCon 2012

At this writing hundreds of hammered Santas are staggering through Manhattan in their annual pub crawl dubbed SantaCon. Bars, pubs, and nightclubs along the designated routes are making donations to Toys For Tots.

Organizers warn: "Don ye now your gay apparel! Anyone caught attending Santacon without a FULL costume will be pelted with reindeer droppings and receive coal in their stocking. Simply wearing a Santa hat is not acceptable." Also noted in the amusing set of rules: "Food will be collected at the start point by elves in leather thongs and delivered to the Food Bank for NYC."

Follow SantaCon on Twitter for photos and merriment.

CHICAGO: City Scales Back Gay Pride Parade To Curb Public Drunkenness

Well, this is a new one. Chicago's city leaders have ordered an earlier start and a reduction in the size of the city's gay pride parade, saying the move is meant to reduce public drunkenness.

Chicago is altering the route, size and starting time of its annual Gay Pride Parade to curb public drinking and accommodate crowds that topped 800,000 last year. The most important change is the starting time. The parade held on the last Sunday in June will step off at 10 a.m. instead of noon. “Unless you’re a hard-core drinker, most people don’t drink at 10 o’clock in the morning,” said parade coordinator Richard Pfeiffer. Ald. Tom Tunney (44th), Chicago’s first openly-gay aldermen, added, “There’s people concerned about alcohol being consumed on that day. Complaints are that people actually bring their coolers and consume a lot. An earlier start time will promote less drinking.”

RELATED: Two years ago New York City reduced the length of its pride parade, but that move was unrelated to drinking as alcohol sales are not permitted at city parades.

TONIGHT In NYC: Free JMG Pride Party & Marriage Celebration With Open Wine Bar & Legendary Drag Performer Jackie Beat!

If you're in Manhattan tonight, please consider joining me and fellow JMG readers for a special Pride Party in the private lounge at the Gramercy Theatre, 127 East 23 Street. Beginning at 10pm we'll have an open wine and champagne bar courtesy of Barefoot Wines. Slurp! Come celebrate one of the greatest victories in LGBT history!

AND the first 20 people to respond to this email: JMGParty@gmail.com will start the evening with free tickets to the new show by legendary drag performer Jackie Beat, Pray Away The Gay. (Enter the discount code "JMG" for $18 tickets if you don't make the freebie cut.)

I'm looking forward to seeing lots of you there!

Booze Consumption By Country

From a just-published report by the World Health Organization. The Economist sums things up:

The biggest boozers are mostly found in Europe and in the former Soviet states. Moldovans are the most bibulous, getting through 18.2 litres each, nearly 2 litres more than the Czechs in second place. Over 10 litres of a Moldovan's annual intake is reckoned to be 'unrecorded' home-brewed liquor, making it particularly harmful to health. Such moonshine accounts for almost 30% of the world's drinking. The WHO estimates that alcohol results in 2.5m deaths a year, more than AIDS or tuberculosis. In Russia and its former satellite states one in five male deaths is caused by drink.

Information-laden country-by-country PDFs are here.

Drinking Tips For The Weekend

Photographed at some bar somewhere.

NEW YORK: Liquor Authority Bans Malt Liquor Drink Used In Bronx Gay-Bashing

The New York Liquor Authority has moved to ban Four Loko, the caffeinated high-alcohol malt liquor drink that became known to many of us when it was used in a vicious gay-bashing in the Bronx, where gang members forced one victim to guzzle ten cans as they beat him.

The State Liquor Authority successfully pressured the state's biggest beverage distributors to stop delivering the wildly popular drink next month. The deal allows the state to fine any store found selling the stuff after Dec. 10, unless the merchant can prove it was ordered before the deadline. The 23.5-ounce cans come in lemonade, fruit punch and watermelon flavors. They have as much alcohol as three beers, along with a three-cups-of-coffee jolt of caffeine. "The caffeine wakes you up, causing you to drink more," said state Sen. Jeff Klein. "It can be lethal." The potent drink has caused havoc on college campuses nationwide. Young people like the beverages because they are sweet and a cheap way to get drunk. "One can and you're wasted," said Jeff Armani, 21.

The banning is unrelated to the Bronx attack, although its use there certainly put the drink on lawmakers' radar. Several other states have also recently banned Four Loko.

Wine Rack

For a mere $30, party-hearty gals can have the Wine Rack, a sports bra with a 750ml capacity and a sipping tube. Of course, your bust line will deflate as your buzz inflates. Soon to be seen at Phish concerts, no doubt.

Vodka Eyeballing, SRSLY?

Stand aside beer pong, because according to the British tabloid Daily Mail, drinking vodka through your eyeballs is some kind of fad in the UK.

Even as drunken student antics go, it was, by any stretch of the imagination, a disturbing scene. Surrounded by cheering rugby players, applauded by fellow members of the university netball team, 19-year-old Melissa Fontaine tipped back her head and giggled as fellow drinkers in the Students' Union bar pulled apart her eyelids and allowed them to pour a shot of vodka into her left eye. 'Vodka eyeballing', as it is known in student circles, is the latest drinking craze to sweep through Britain's universities. Those who do it claim that it induces feelings of drunkenness at break-neck speeds, providing an instant high.

But the devastating long-term damage it causes is becoming a major concern among doctors and university authorities who already worry that Britain's student drinking culture is out of control. Melissa, who left university last summer and is now 22, believes they are right to be worried. Her constantly watering left eye has been left permanently scarred by her antics. More worryingly still, she has been warned that her eyesight may deteriorate further as she gets older. 'I'm in constant pain because of what I did,' she says. 'And I'm terrified that it will get worse. I wish I could turn the clock back and change things. But I can't.'

At 40% ethanol, vodka's corrosive effect on the cornea can be immediate and permanent. According to the above-linked story, this idiocy has already surfaced in America, where barmaids have done it for extra tips. Kids today.

(Via - Gothamist)

In honor of yesterday's date, Rachel Maddow devoted a segment to the proper making of a champagne cocktail and a Manhattan. Apparently the Great Bitters Shortage of '09 is at last over.

Ain't No Party Like A Midwest Party Cuz A Midwest Party Don't Stop

Red = more bars. Yellow = more grocery stores. Via Consumerist:

Starting in Illinois, the beer belly expands up into Wisconsin and first spreads westward through Iowa/Minnesota and then engulfs Nebraska, and the Dakotas before petering out (like a pair of love handles) in Wyoming and Montana. The clustering was so apparent that we wanted to check how it compared to the "official" data on this activity. So we gathered 2007 Census Country Business Pattern on the number of establishments listed in NACIS code 722410 (Drinking places (alcoholic beverages)) and divided by Census estimates for state population totals for 2009 and found remarkable correspondence with our data. On average there are 1.52 bars for every 10,000 people in the U.S. but the states that make up the beer belly of America are highly skewed from this average.

State Of The Union Drinking Game

Mmm, Clammy

It was launched almost two years ago, but it wasn't until this weekend when I saw their six-story Jumbotron in Times Square that I learned about the existence of Budweiser Clamato. Their press materials claim that beer+clamato is a longtime Mexican tradition, hence the rollout began in Arizona, Texas, and California. The photo I used here was titled "ewgross" on Google Images. I concur.

And Let's Hope It Was A Domestic

Wingnut talk radio listeners are peeved because President Obama was seen drinking a beer at an NBA game "while the economy tumbles."

One caller to WWL complained, "People are losing 5, 10, 20 thousand dollars a day in the stock market, and he's sitting there drinking a beer!" She also said, "It's insulting... there's a lot of people suffering." She insisted President Obama should not publicly have fun during a time of so much pain. [snip] [A]nother woman was upset about the courtside presidential beer. "The president is the president 24 hours a day. I don't think he should drink on the job."

Other callers supported Obama getting to relax, with one pointing out, "Well, we know he's got a designated driver." According to the host of the show, a president has never been filmed drinking at a sports event.

How To Become A Millionaire

Step 1: Get shitfaced.
Step 2: Fall on tracks.
Step 3: Lose leg to train.
Step 4: Sue NYC.
Step 5: Collect $2.3M.

On Drunkenfreude

Susan Cheever has a great essay up on the NY Times in which she observes that nobody in Gotham seems to get stumbling down drunk at parties anymore. The first two paragraphs:

As dessert ended, the woman in the red dress got up and stumbled toward the bathroom. Her husband, whose head had been sinking toward the bûche de Noël, put a clumsily lecherous arm around the reluctant hostess. As coffee splashed into porcelain demitasse cups, the woman in the red dress returned, sank sloppily into her chair and reached for the Courvoisier. Someone gently moved the bottle away. “Are you shaying I’m drunk?” she demanded. Even in the candlelight I noticed that the lipstick she had reapplied was slightly to the left of her lips. Her husband, suddenly bellicose, sprang from his chair to defend his wife’s honor. But on the way across the room he slipped and went down like a tray of dishes. “Frank! Are you hurt?” she screamed. Somehow she had gotten hold of the brandy. “S’nothing,” he replied, “just lay down for a little nap. Can I bum a smoke?”

That dinner party was almost 10 years ago; it was the last time I saw anyone visibly drunk at a New York party. The New York apartments and lofts which were once the scenes of old-fashioned drunken carnage — slurred speech, broken crockery, broken legs and arms, broken marriages and broken dreams — are now the scene of parties where both friendships and glassware survive intact. Everyone comes on time, behaves well, drinks a little wine, eats a few tiny canapés, and leaves on time. They all still drink, but no one gets drunk anymore. Neither do they smoke. What on earth has happened?

I too have noticed a pulling back in public drunkenness (all those Blowoff nights very excepted), but I've always attributed it to my now running in much older circles.

Movement To Lower Drinking Age

Saying that the current drinking age of 21 encourages binge drinking by underage students, a coalition of over 100 college presidents is calling for a lowering of the drinking age back to 18.

College presidents from more than 100 schools across the country are calling on lawmakers to do something about binge drinking: Consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18.

"Twenty-one is not working," says the group's statement, signed by presidents from prominent colleges such as Dartmouth, Duke and Syracuse. "A culture of dangerous, clandestine 'binge drinking' - often conducted off-campus - has developed." Even before the presidents begin the public phase of their efforts, which might include newspaper ads in the coming weeks, they face sharp criticism.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving says lowering the drinking age would lead to more fatal car crashes. It accuses the presidents of misrepresenting research and looking for an easy way out of an inconvenient problem, and urges parents to think carefully about safety at colleges whose presidents have signed on. "It's very clear the 21-year-old drinking age will not be enforced at those campuses," said Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of MADD.

Duke officials would not directly respond to that criticism but released a statement from university president Richard Brodhead: "Possessing and consuming alcoholic beverages is against the law under the age of 21, and we are all obliged to uphold the law."

The current law, he said, "pushes drinking into hiding, heightening its risks, including risks from drunken driving, and it prevents us from addressing drinking with students as an issue of responsible choice."

It's an interesting proposition. When I was 18, the drinking age was 18 and the gay bars were full of 16 year-olds, much as they are full of underage 20 year-olds today. Of course, in 1976 I too was going to gay bars while underage. Back then, drunk driving did not carry the enormous social stigma that it does today and penalties were relatively light.

Chillaxin'

I'm off for three days of gay gay gay camping in the Poconos at Hillside Campground with Aaron, Chris, and the Thruple. It happens to be their "Hog Ranch" weekend, a prospect which would have thrilled me ten years ago, but today makes me rather apprehensive. Strange. As my back has been wrecked for several days, I'm planning on parking myself under the trees, beer cooler within reach. By the way, Thermacare heat wraps? Magical. I have no idea what mysterious force powers those suckers, the one I opened 14 hours ago is still hot. Weather in the mountains is forecast to be rather cool this weekend, lows in the 40's. A perfect antidote for this baking cavern of concrete called Manhattan. Have a great weekend, y'all.