…AND BE FORGOTTEN WITH THE REST. Awful news from Mory’s Temple Bar–a place I loved, but which had been showing increasing strains in the past few years as it struggled to cope with an ethos of not merely egalitarianism (you don’t need to be a Weatherman to weather that one, at Yale) but health- and temperance-fascism.

I remember countless hangover hot chocolates and lunchtime soups bought from Au Bon Pain, the year I was working in a New Haven suburb after college. I would replace all of them with raw cauliflower and dirt, if I could have Mory’s back the way it was when I was new.

Keep that in mind the next time you confront the choice between convenience and tradition.

And… the first day I worried about the future of Mory’s was the day I learned that the Party of the Right could no longer count on them to wink at underage tippling. I very, very rarely saw anyone get drunk at Mory’s–far less so than at parties on campus. Mory’s provided a camaraderie of drinking, an ethos, even a “shame culture,” which made drunkenness less appealing–and abusive drunkenness, whether in terms of fighting or of sex, even less acceptable. So it is especially gnawing that stepping up enforcement of our catastrophically stupid drinking laws may have led to the death knell for Mory’s.

If I had Liddy Dole here right now, I’d be hard-pressed not to smack the lipstick off her face.