“SPEAKEASY” SURPRISES

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 November 1929, Page 7

“SPEAKEASY” SURPRISES

A DRINK IN NEW YORK

“How about a drink?” said ■ my American friend as we sped uptown from the docks in New York (writes an Englishman on holiday there). “How do you get it?” I asked. Here

was the Land of Prohibition, I thought, and the first question was, “How about a drink?”

Still, I wanted to know. So many learned people had written learned dissertations about the working of the Volstead Act, all saying different things, that 1 felt fogged, “Soon as you please,” J said. “Right,” said my friend. “We’ll try a- mild beer first.” He stopped the taxi at an inconspicuous-looking swingdoor, alighted, and simply pushed the door open. No locks, no watching policemen, no “Open Sesame.” . “Oh, they don’t mind beer,” he said. “There are lots of things they don’t mind here, and the first is beer.” We stood at a bar and drank a cool pint, of excellent beer for a. shilling each. Then we welre in our taxi again. “Blank’s, on Forty-dash Street,” my friend told the driver. After bumping about on roads that would have put an African jungle to shame (they were making a new underground railway, I was told), we drew up at what looked like a private house. “Practically every house on the streets round here is a “speakeasy.” . He rang th,e bell, a curtain was pulled back, a Lace peered out at us, and the door slid open with a click. My friend was '(veil known here. We climbed to the first floor, and here was a sight to make London rub its eyes. Here was the perfect bar. A deep blue light shed , a moonlight effect. In one corner was a buoy, which flashed out a red light inter-

mittently. Above this was a notice: “The S.S. Tryangetit sails at noon.” “Cocktail?” queried my friend. “Bronx Manhattan, Martini, Sidecar —or just a British Scotch and splash?” He added, “You can drink beer if you like, but it is the real stuff, and costs 10/- a bottle.” We had a couple of Bronx, and that cost him just 9/-1

“Don’t be afraid of drinking at places like these,” he said. “The stuff comes from home, therefore its pretty good. Also, the police don’t raid these ‘joints,’ or if they do they telephone an hour beforehand.”

“You see, they think it is better to have a number of respectable places open than a lot of mushroom ‘joints’ selling synthetic poison. Those are the dens they really are trying to stamp out.” “Sec that young fellow? That’s a scion of the ‘Four Hundred’ —what you call the ‘Upper Ten’ in England. His family have a very good private bootlegger. All the best families have.” “Is it like this all over America?” I asked. “No,” he answered. “Most of the West and Middle West is dry as a bone. Parts of the South, too.. No, Ford Maddox Hueffer was right when he said ‘New York is not America.’ ”