The Boston Globe reported that the head of the city’s Licensing Board said that the Lansdowne Street bar where a man was killed by a broken beer mug last week will retain its liquor license and that the board will support the pub’s right to use glassware.
I reported in this blog yesterday that the Lansdowne Pub stopped using glassware and glass bottles this week at the request of a different licensing department, which could still ban glass permanently at the bar during a hearing next month.
At the bar early Saturday morning, Hector Guardiola, 25, of South Boston, allegedly threw a glass that shattered and fatally injured Michael DiMaria, 23, a New York man. Earlier this week, Patricia Malone — Boston’s director of consumer affairs and licensing, who governs entertainment licenses — asked the bar to switch to plastic cups and nonglass bottles until the hearing with her on Sept. 15. She declined to further comment tot he Globe whether she would permanently ban glass at the bar.
“I will not be asking them to go to plastic,” Michael Connolly, chairman of the Boston Licensing Board, which governs liquor licenses and can ban glass at bars, told the Globe. “This is an establishment with a good record that had an incredible freak accident . . . and at the moment I certainly don’t see their [liquor] license in jeopardy.”
I agree with Connolly here. The tragic death at the Pub seems, at least initially, to have nothing to do with any actions taken by the Pub, and rests with the alleged actions of Guardiola. It would be an unfair result for the Pub to be forced to use plastic, which connotes (fairly or not) that an establishment is of a lesser caliber.
