drinkboston.com

By Scott N. Howe

Like you, turning 21 was a big deal for me. It was big because I was finally an adult, and, as such, I could enjoy the most awesome right, privilege and responsibility available to an adult: I could walk into a proper bar and order a proper drink.

This is not to say that there was anything especially “adult” about me at age 21. Nor is it to say that the places I frequented were in any way proper, or that I was ordering proper drinks. Still, I had officially passed from the world of drinking warm cans of whatever in the woods to a wider world, a world where I could walk into the neighborhood watering hole with my head held high, grab a stool next to a 50-something plumber, and down a cold Busch while watching a ball game. Or, I could plop down in a shiny fern bar and sling back frozen mudslides with secretaries and salesmen (Note: I turned 21 in the 1980s. Substitute your own silly drinks.)

Did I always drink like an adult when I turned 21? Of course not. But I could, and that felt good.

And what felt most good was the “adultness” of it all. Drinking legally meant that I could go to bars and socialize with people my own age or older — not teenagers, not children. Drinking legally meant adult conversation on adult topics, accompanied by adult music. It also meant adult dating (with, one hoped, adult results). Drinking legally meant dropping into a bar after work, or in the middle of the day, or after a movie, or … well, whenever I felt like it and for whatever reason or no reason at all. Because I was an adult.

Which brings me to a major problem in the adult drinking world: children in bars. Argue all you want about the hypocrisy of the drinking age or our Puritanical mindset. Hit me, if you’d like, with your fond memories of pubs in the British Isles where generations upon generations gather ’round to sing the songs of olde. I’m not interested. What interests me is preserving our bars, lounges and cocktail conclaves for the people they were built for — the adult drinking public.

Mom and dad, if you want to go out and down a few, please hire a sitter. Don’t slam your stroller into my stool, elaborately set up a mini-day care center in a nearby booth, and then spend the rest of the evening pestering the barkeep for apple juice. And you, alterna-couple, if you’re going to bring little Jake or Lola into my local, show a little courtesy. Propping your spiky-haired, ironic-T-shirt clad offspring on the bar and plying him/her with Shirley Temples is fun for a while. But it gets old. Fast.

Look, like most of you, I love the pat-pat-pat of little feet and the cute cooing of the cunning and the cuddly. Kids are OK by me. In fact, I believe that children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way. Just keep them out of my bar.

Unless they’ve got a valid ID.

It’s time to broach an unpleasant subject: public toilet seats sprinkled with pee. This is caused by women who refuse to sit while urinating and instead hover above the toilet, thus soiling the seat and forcing successive users to adopt the same uncomfortable high-rise position. It’s a problem in all public ladies’ rooms, but particularly those in bars, where trips to the toilet are more frequent. Rock clubs, where I go to see drinkboston.com contributor Scott Howe’s band the Hammond Group, are especially notorious; their bathrooms are heavily trafficked and dimly lit — a bad combo for anyone hoping to keep her bum dry.

We can’t chalk up the annoying behavior of high-risers to alcohol and darkness alone, however. It really stems from an old-fashioned, entrenched, completely unfounded belief that toilet seats are breeding grounds for infectious diseases. To all you dainty dolls afraid to park your precious derrieres on a toilet seat that others’ backsides have touched, I say this: you want to see a breeding ground for infectious disease? Look at your desk. Microbiologists have found four hundred times more illness-causing bacteria on the typical office desktop, with its germ-filled computer keyboard, mouse and phone receiver, than on most toilet seats. Hands, which are out in the world touching everything, and not bums, which are covered by clothing all day, pass the vast majority of bacteria that make people sick. So worry more about the faucet handle in the bathroom than the toilet seat, princess.

Howard Heller, an M.D. and infectious disease specialist at MIT Medical, says, “It’s very difficult to get sick from a toilet seat. A little extra caution might be warranted if one is traveling in an area where enteric infections like cholera are more common.”

In other words, if you find yourself in a public restroom in Angola, you may want to play it safe and hover. Otherwise, sit down on the damn toilet. Please. I mean it. My thighs are killing me.

Are you a parent? If so, you may recognize this situation. A friend of mine has taken to barhopping vicariously through drinkboston.com, given that she has a toddler and an infant and just moved to the ‘burbs. She wrote me an email recently with the subject, “You know you spend too much time at drinkboston.com when…” and a message that continued, “…your 3-year-old organizes a cocktail party in the play kitchen on his second day of pre-school and serves his classmates and teachers lemonade cocktails.”

Isn’t that cute?

Robin Chase, the founder of the car-sharing company Zipcar, has launched a new transportation service called GoLoco. The Globe wrote about it last week. A sort of Facebook for carpoolers, GoLoco “fuses ride-sharing and social networking,” says the article. “The online service … brokers trips between friends, neighbors, and strangers, then automatically divvies up the cost, the seats in the car, and the carbon dioxide emissions.”

I’ve been a member of Zipcar for several years, and this GoLoco business sounds great — especially for bar-hoppers like me! How many times have I wanted, for instance, to get from a bar in east Somerville to one in Jamaica Plain and thought, ‘If only I could find two or three other people who wanted to do the same thing, I wouldn’t have to spend $35 taking a cab by myself across greater Boston!’

I’m guessing GoLoco isn’t exactly going to bill itself as a designated driver locator for tipplers — the scenario the Globe article uses to illustrate the service is an oh-so-clean-cut carpool to a contra-dance in Concord, MA — but isn’t it a great thought? Like, what if cabs got in on the network? A driver could pick up three or four people in the same neighborhood and take them to a general location they’ve all requested via cellphone or Blackberry. Traveling between Boston’s far-flung neighborhoods would suddenly be faster and much less expensive. Not to mention much safer than drinking and driving.