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Thursday, January 24, 2008
MOM OF TODDLER LAMENTS THE NEW RULE AT UNION HALL
I got this detailed letter from an OTBKB reader who is sad about the new Union Hall stroller ban:
I'm sad about Union Hall's new rule.
I agree with you that in the evening hours, or when there is a loud event or band, Union Hall is not a great place for young kids. And I agree that kids should not be served liquor. No question about that. But during the weekdays and soon after they open on weekends (12 noon) I think it was a great place for parents to socialize and to bring their young kids along.
Were I a suburbanite with a sprawling 3000 square foot house (or even a house in Brooklyn, for that matter) my friends and I would gather at our respective homes, let the kids run around and enjoy some good adult conversation, and perhaps a drink. In Brooklyn I live in a 650 square foot apartment where we've carved out two bedrooms for my husband, myself, our 14 mo. old son and an elderly deaf cat. I can at most invite 2 or 3 couples and their kids over to our living/dining/TV room before we're packed in like sardines.
What's the solution?
Get together out of the apartment, which is a great New York tradition I might add. In the summer time we'll head to the park, or go out to lunch with another couple and kids to one of the kid-friendly restaurants in the Slope (although we live in Sunset Park). In the winter, sometimes we go to a bar during "off" hours with our kids, let them run around, let the adults chat and have a drink whether it be alcoholic or not. We assume that a bar or bar/restaurant would be happy to have some business during the off hours.
As for Union Hall we celebrated our son's first birthday there. Yes, it was more of a party for my husband and I celebrating our surviving our first year of parenthood, but it was wonderful to have a place to sit and have friends drop by, see us, and have a drink and some comestibles. We started at 12 noon on a Saturday and were gone by 2 when a young crowd had gathered and a bocce tournament started. The bar was empty except for us from 12 noon until 1pm-ish and I don't think we were in anyone's way.
I lived in England on and off for about two years in another lifetime in the late 80s/early 90s. I loved the pubs during weekend afternoons when families would arrive, have lunch, and see each other. I'm sad that the closest thing we have here, Union Hall, has shut down such an environment.
My 2 cents. Perhaps I'll feel differently when I no longer have a toddler.
January 24, 2008 in Postcard from the Slope | Permalink
Comments
Why don't Union Hall create some mommy "hours" during low-attendance early afternoon (when most single people are at work) and advertise it as that? And create some "singles" hours (those are called happy hours - starting at 5 pm for the stressed workforce). It is good for business if UH treat both parties w/respect.
Having said that, to the singles/non-parent alcoholics who actually come so early to drink... do we need to say more? And to parents, why does hanging at a bar seem like a "good" thing? Is there any toys or activities suitable for children there?
What is wrong with you people?
Posted by: Jada | Mar 27, 2009 12:43:03 PM
How many drinks can someone have if they're caring for an infant anyway? What's the limit - one? Two? Three? Then they're staggering home with a stroller -- yikes. My parents days of hanging out in bars were over when they became parents. The notion that someone would bring a child to a bar is probably something that you'll be telling at an AA meeting years from now. Sober up and take care of your kid you crybaby. Go hang out in a Starbucks with the rests of the douche bags. Baby in a bar -- yeesh!
Posted by: Cliff G. | Feb 19, 2008 9:00:04 PM
Seriously, keep your babies and children out of bars, pool halls, social clubs, concerts, etc. Bringing your child to a bar, especially in a stroller -- that's child abuse on many levels. Firstly, if you're not allowed to drink and drive, you shouldn't be pushing a stroller drunk either. Secondly, you're exposing your children to child behaviors and language than will influence and corrupt their development.
When you make the adult decision to raise a child, you've also made the decision to give up your own child-like behaviors. You make this change, this sacrifice, for the well being of your child. Time to grow up parents. Time to grow up.
Posted by: Dan | Feb 19, 2008 8:53:19 PM
Wear long underwear and hang out in the park. Go to smiling pizza. Toysrus. DAYCARE. Bars are for adults. That's why there are liquor laws. If you don't have enough space in your apt. for your kids, well I guess you shoulda thought of that before breeding.
Posted by: culprit | Feb 15, 2008 9:04:54 AM
Are there no cafes? Why a bar? Frankly some dinghy bar is the last place I'd hang out with my child. Hanging out over a latte with a toddler seems more appropriate than a bar. Must you go EVERYWHERE with your kid? Even in England the pubs have stopped admitting children. I say hurrah...we have enough drinking problems as it is. A child doesn't belong in a bar, period.
Posted by: Jayne | Feb 12, 2008 9:53:55 PM
Who is responding in a child-like, inflexible, narcissistic manner here? It certainly isn't the mother posting above, and I see nothing in her post that merits the froth and histrionics below.
There are inconsiderate parents, just as there are inconsiderate dog owners, cellphone-yakkers, bike riders, etc. etc. I hazard to say they do not make up the majority of parents in our neighborhood (however much some of the childless posters here feel otherwise).
There is a world of difference between taking a well-behaved small child to a cozy, well-furnished bar like Union Hall during OFF HOURS for one or two drinks with friends, and taking a child to a bar when it's crowded and raucous, or not properly supervising your child in any bar/restaurant/store where he/she can disturb others or pose a hazard.
I for one do not believe that children only belong in Two Boots or the Tea Lounge, as long as both child and parent are considerate to others (in terms of both behavior and considering the timing of the visit). Taking a kid to Ginger's or Great Lakes at 9pm on a friday night is not the same as going to Union Hall for an hour at 3 or 4pm. The get-a-nanny-or-stay-home types may find themselves feeling a bit more nuanced on the subject in ten year's time.
Posted by: petunia | Feb 12, 2008 12:43:38 PM
Seriously, just get a nanny.... or don't have kids.
Posted by: KP | Feb 11, 2008 1:32:33 PM
You had the %$#^&& kids not us!!! you deal with it why should those of us who want a LITTLE ADULT ENTERTAINMENT have to deal with you and your SPOLIED BRATS.
Posted by: Luis | Feb 11, 2008 10:49:25 AM
Could not agree more with Danielle and Sleepysloper above.
When you have a child you need to understand that not everyone else in the world does as well.
Respect the adult-sacred spots, such as bars, as you would have wanted when you were not a parent.
And for god's sake get rid of those huge ungainly strollers, they are unwieldy, a nuisance to all and the pedestrian equivalent of an SUV. Perhaps you'll find that some of those establishments that have lost their love of babies might open their doors again. I do not understand why all NYC'ers aren't using the foldable types that my mother carted me about in on the hills and buses of San Francisco.
Posted by: dre | Feb 9, 2008 10:35:16 AM
Um, sorry all, but why is it such a problem in NYC (of all places) that some establishments, such as BARS, be declared baby-free?
C'mon now--- as a child growing up in the city my folks would never have even thought of bringing me to a bar at any time.
Sorry all you breeders-- not everyone wants to have your precious annoying darling around-- it's the hard but real truth. Crying babies in huge strollers (and by the way, WHY??? I was raised in city-friendly folding strollers-- why the SUV strollers that everyone else detests?) are a pain the ass for everyone, and have no place in bars. Why can't a few places be sacred to adults only?
You had kids, you gave up the singles lifestyle. Get over it and the sense of entitlement having a child seems to bring...children have NO PLACE IN BARS, DUH.
Posted by: annah | Feb 9, 2008 3:49:12 AM
Union Hall is a bar that serves food. It wasn't a problem when there were 3 or 4 moms meeting up once a week, but it soon turned into 30 mommyies 4 days a week, not drinking, being rude to the staff and other patrons and taking up 4 times the space that any other patron would take up. I'm sure that Union hall had their own reasons for the ban, I know that I personally was run off by this mommy group, and I am happy to see that it wasn't just me that was frustrated. There is a chuck e cheese at Atlantic center, baby loves disco at Southpaw and I'm sure if you organized a group through the management of an establishment you could have great places to gather. But the park slope parent entitlement just has to stop, getting run off of the sidewalk by double strollers is annoying enough, but tripping over them to get to a bar just seems ridiculous! People who aren't parents live here too.
Posted by: Charlie | Jan 29, 2008 8:00:43 PM
"Someone tell me where we are supposed to hang out in the winter...?!!"
Answer: ...in your house.
Bars are for adults. Look, if you want out of the house so bad, hire a sitter. Or, take your kids to a family-establishment (parks, playgrounds, large restaurant establishments where you can be out of the way and handle your child easily without getting in the way of others).
Those are the choices. The entire landscape of NYC was not built to suit children.
The most brutally honest way to clarify the responses parents are seeing from other adults is simple: Think back to when you had no children. Recall how annoying, distracting and frustrating it could be to have to deal with them and/or their oblivious parents at times? It still is.
You can't see it anymore because...you have a kid.
Posted by: Danielle | Jan 28, 2008 11:30:08 AM
I wonder if Union Hall is trying to punish those parent/kid groups that go at noon on a Saturday when the place is empty, or perhaps those parent/kid groups that are there at 9 or 10 PM on a weekend night. A couple months ago I was there on a busy Saturday night & several toddlers that could barely keep themselves standing were wandering with minimal supervision while their parents chatted. The kids were crawling, tripping up servers, disrupting bocce games and just generally being a problem. Most parents would have been horrified, and worried for the safety of their kids! A friend of mine was just about ready to go up to the parents and say something when finally a server did just that and the people left in a huff. I don't know if that's a recurring problem but I'm sure it's a liability for UH and I'm sorry that it had to disrupt the good times of the good parents who keep things under control.
Posted by: maybe... | Jan 27, 2008 11:07:00 PM
Well you should hang out in your own homes and perhaps invire some friends over who also have kids but this idea of having playgroups in public places, let alone a bar is just ridiculous.
Your lifestyle must adjust to you having children but the rest of the adult world does not have to make the same adjustment...
Posted by: Vita | Jan 27, 2008 11:03:00 PM
Tea Lounge serves drinks and allows children.
Posted by: Mike | Jan 27, 2008 7:09:09 PM
In a place like New York, where space is a premium, dare I say that the solution might be to buy and use smaller strollers, not these massive designer ones that are so common in the slope?
Posted by: ParkSlopeJ | Jan 27, 2008 5:37:15 PM
The entitlement factor here is just so frustrating, precisely because it has crept up on some fairly rational people. 10 years ago a stroller folded into something that could almost into the umbrella stand. Now they are an over-built, non-folding nursery on wheels that the child never gets out of. I'm all for welcoming families into the great places we have to gather here in the slope, but Strollers should be treated as bicycles: locked up outside.
Posted by: sleepysloper | Jan 27, 2008 12:33:10 PM
I'll stand behind Union Hall's policy, as long as they also enforce mandatory sterility of all their other patrons, because I don't want to hear them complain they can't go somewhere with their children when these frat/hipster bocce boys end up having children in 10 years.
Posted by: jsjunta | Jan 25, 2008 9:53:51 PM
Union Hall rule-makers, whoever they might be, are fools for this. If there are too many strollers at a particular time, or if they are in the way, tell them to move. Most days, it was one or two moms' groups for an hour on the couches with practically no one else in the bar. This was a perfect winter moms' group place for those of us with infants going stir crazy. There are only a few places large enough to accomodate us and Tea Lounge is overrun. Why can't we have a fricking beer once a week when it's not crowded? Everyone claims this neighborhood is just FULL of baby-friendly places but if you want to meet with other moms (and therefore strollers - as our babies hit 15 and 20 pounds, it gets hard to carry them long distances bodily) it is extremely difficult. We have also been turned away from more than one lunch place (restaurants, not bars) because we had too many strollers even though each establishment was ENTIRELY empty at the time. Someone tell me where we are supposed to hang out in the winter...?!!
Posted by: bri | Jan 24, 2008 6:22:06 PM
