Speaker 0:41

Good morning, Mark. Hey, Francis.

Speaker 2 0:43

I want to talk today about something that appeared on the Diners Journal blog of The New York Times, uh, by Ron Lieber. I don't think it appeared in the print edition of the paper. I think it just appeared on the blog.

Speaker 0:55

Okay.

Francis 0:55

and many people have written us about this, Everybody wants the Restaurant Guys' opinion on this. Ron Lieber wrote on May the 11th, 2010, "Why I Got Kicked Out of a Restaurant on Saturday Night." I read that. This is the blog entry. And I'm gonna read some from it, and, and I really want to solicit your input on this. So write us Oh, I thought for

Speaker 1:15

just one second you'd actually wanna solicit my input, but I-

Speaker 2 1:17

No. No, no, no but okay.

Speaker 1:18

It must be the listeners.

Speaker 2 1:19

Not at all. Uh, but we'd love to know what you think of, of this little interaction here. Um, "On Saturday night, for the first time in my life, I was kicked out of a restaurant. The restaurant was m- restaurant Marc Forgione in Tribeca," where Mark and I made it all the way to the front door of that restaurant. We were almost went in there the other day. Um, "It's a good restaurant with a great cocktail and clever bread operation, but that's as far as I got into the meal. About 10 minutes after my party of four sat down, we heard yelling, loud, sustained, top-of-his-lungs yelling coming from the kitchen. Mr. Forgione was dressing down a member of the staff in full view of many of the customers. The dining room quieted as patrons exchanged uncomfortable glances." That's, um, that's out of line, I think. I think that is a sign of unprofessionalism, Gordon Ramsay-ish unprofessionalism, and, uh, I, I, I think that's- It's- And as a diner, it makes me uncomfortable. It shows me that you're not a professional, and it makes me wanna leave.

Speaker 2:10

It's not okay.

Speaker 2 2:11

It's not okay. Okay, let's go on with the, uh, the blog entry. "No one said a thing, though. Soon the target of the chef's harsh words delivered... The target of the chef's harsh words delivered our amuse-bouche, and the poor guy was so rattled he could barely speak above a mumble." Another thing about if you wanna be a temper tantrum chef

Speaker 2:30

You rattle your sh- your staff

Speaker 2 2:32

When, when the ship is going down, if what you wanna do is prove what a man you are and scream and yell, uh, although to me, that proves just the opposite, that you've lost control and you're a little baby. You know, we often train our leaders, when things start getting tough, even if it's because someone has made a mistake, unless you can get... You, you make a choice. You either decide that we'll be better off without that person on the team for the rest of the evening, and you remove them from service with one word, and they're out. That's authority. That's real authority. Or you do your best to coax them through. But if you let that one mistake or five mistakes or however many mistakes, if what you wanna do is scream at them and rattle them more, you're being counterproductive, and of course, people aren't gonna perform for you after that.

Speaker 3:14

One of the things that I, I tell my staff all the time because, because it happens a lot, where somebody wants to explain what happened, or they want to yell at somebody for something they've done wrong, or they... Here, this is our time right now, uh, in the moment, is our time to fix what's wrong.

Speaker 2 3:30

Right. Right.

Speaker 3:31

Okay? That's what we do now. At the end of the shift, well, then all those other things come out. That's when we say, "You know what? You're not doing your job. we need you to, ship out." Whatever macro changes you're gonna make, they don't happen à la minute. À la minute, you fix the problem, and you move forward, and you rely on your system to keep you moving forward.

Speaker 2 3:51

And when someone loses their temper during service, it shows that that person is not a professional, is not in control, and is acting in a way that's counter to the interests of, of everything that is professional, which is trying to get through the evening.

Speaker 4:03

Right. So c- You may be making yourself feel better, but you're making other people feel worse. Right. You're- You, you may be even making yourself perform better because that fires you up, but you're making the other people around

Speaker 2 4:12

you perform worse. But the unit will perform worse. Exactly. Can you imagine you're watching a Broadway show, somebody misses a line, and some other actor says, "Now wait a minute." Right. "Okay." Exactly. "You were supposed to say this." And then they have an argument about it on stage, and then try and go back to the play. Well, it doesn't work. Imagine a ship in a storm, and a sailor makes a mistake, and they spend 10 minutes or five minutes or two minutes yelling at each other on the deck. Sail the ship. Instead of

Speaker 4:34

bailing.

Speaker 2 4:35

Sail the ship. You know? Okay. "So a few minutes later, the chef was at it again. Fifteen seconds, another fifteen, and without much forethought," this is the blogger speaking, the New York Times blogger, "I pushed back my chair and walked through the open doorway of the kitchen." Ladies and gentlemen

Speaker 4:50

Stay out of the kitchen.

Speaker 2 4:51

Do not- walk into the kitchen of a restaurant ever under any circumstances. There is a door that you can use. It's the front door, and that... If I were a diner there, I would stop by and I'd say to the host, "By the way, tell the chef he lost a couple of customers tonight, and we're not coming back because he, he's not in control of himself. How could he possibly be in cr- control of the kitchen? And by the way, I don't like hearing people talk to other people that way. Goodbye." And the front- But I

Speaker 5:16

think that's enough. I think enough is... Uh, you know what? I don't like hearing people talk to other people that way. I don't wanna eat in this establishment.

Speaker 2 5:22

Right.

Speaker 5:22

I think that's, that's a fine reason to leave a restaurant.

Speaker 2 5:25

As, as a patron, the front door is always your option and the most powerful option you have 'cause enough people walk out that front door and, and there'll be a different guy behind the kitchen door. okay. So, um, he walked through the open door of the kitchen. I- this is the blogger again. "I don't remember exactly what I said, though I did not raise my voice to the point beyond where people in the kitchen could hear it. I told the chef that his behavior was making me and others uncomfortable. I let him know that I thought it was mean, and I asked him to cut it out. I don't remember exactly what he said in response, but ever, whatever it was, I found it irritating." You're in another man's kitchen, in another man's business, telling him... Now, he might have been yelling at somebody who was about to put Clorox in the soup. You have no idea- Right what he was yelling at him about. Or

Speaker 6:05

he might have had a knife in his hand and g- ready to stab another coworker.

Speaker 2 6:09

Okay. W- I mean,

Speaker 6:09

there, it... Very unlikely.

Speaker 2 6:11

Unlikely. Okay. But none of your business.

Speaker 6:13

But-

Speaker 2 6:13

Okay. And if it, if it's ille- if something illegal is going on, call the cops. If you don't like the place, walk out, write a letter to The New York Times, or you know what? If you had walked out and written this blog, that would've been powerful.

Speaker 3 6:23

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 6:24

Right? Exactly. Um, but, oh, so, "I asked him to cut it out," blah, blah, blah. Um, uh, "I found it irritating enough that I reminded him that I was paying to eat there and told hi- told him, again, to stop berating his staff at that volume." You walked into a man's business that if he loses that business, his house is on the line. It's his, it's his kitchen, and however poorly he runs it, it's hi- and you told him what to do Maybe 20 seconds after I'd returned to my seat, he approached the table. He apologized barely, and th- then let me know that he thought it was incredibly rude of me to come into his kitchen and tell him how to do his job. And you know what, Mr. Lieber? He was correct.

Speaker 6:59

He was correct.

Speaker 2 6:59

Because you had all the right on your side until you walked into that kitchen. Who the hell do you think you are? That, that's his business, and if he wants to run it poorly, it's his right to run it poorly. It's his money on the line. It's his reputation on the line. It's his business. It's his kitchen, and if he wants to run it that way, that's up to him. And if you don't like it- And you don't have a

Speaker 7:19

right to be in the kitchen. It's not a public place.

Speaker 2 7:21

Y- right. You don't have a right to be in the kitchen. It's not a public place. Exactly. And you know what? He was out of line. He was wrong, and I'd have left, but that's your option is to leave. And you, Mr. Lieber, have the power of being the, the Diners Journal blog editor for The New York Times. You had a super powerful weapon at your disposal-

Speaker 7:38

Well, the other iron-

Speaker 2 7:38

Or a tool at your

Speaker 7:39

disposal the other irony is we now know the chef is willing to come out into the dining room. Ask to talk to the chef.

Speaker 2 7:44

Yep. Yep.

Speaker 7:45

Ask the chef to come into the dining room.

Speaker 2 7:47

Um, I repeated the fact that his yelling had been ruining my dinner. Fair point, b- but again, you ruined your, your position there. But his yelling was all, he, he, according to the chef, was all in the interest of maintaining quality, he said. Well, again, I, I don't think yelling in front of customers, right there, you ruin quality of your restaurant. But... And then he, the chef says, "I think it's time for you to go." And then the blogger says, "Are you kicking me out?" I asked. "Yes," Now, the blogger writes, "I'm not naive about restaurants. People who work there sometimes yell, though usually out of earshot, and when I eat at a higher establishment like this, I try to respect the artistry of the proprietor. I ask to have the food cooked the way the chef thinks is best. I don't ask for salt. I don't ask for skim. I do ask to have the different gelato flavors in several-- separate bowls, knowing full well that they don't do it that way in Italy. Uh, they have it wrong in Italy, too, but I digress. In this particular instance, however, something didn't feel right. I don't know if Mr. Forgione had been watching too much Gordon Ramsay," probably he had, "uh, or had learned the wrong lessons from his mentors. Listening to him in action, however, conjured up the particular type of nausea that results from watching people yank their misbehaving kids around on the subway or seeing my own kid smash a defenseless insect." I agree with you. I agree with you. I hate to see that, and I think it's incredibly rude, and it's just awful, and I would've left.

Speaker 9:00

And if you listen to the show a lot, you know that, you know, we talk about the, the, the Gordon Ramsay-esque type chef who's all about berating and, screaming and yelling, which, which frankly, uh, you know, for people I know who work for Gordon Ramsay, he's not so much like that in his, in his own kitchens. He's just like that on television, showing all these other would-be chefs that that's the right way to do it, when really it's not.

Speaker 2 9:24

When I called him on Monday to tell him I was writing this post about the evening, Mr. Forgione, in fact..." By the way, that's a phone call you go, "Oh, he was in New York Times what? Oh, no." Um, uh, he, "Mr. Forgione said that I had scolded him like a child on Saturday night," and I believe him. Okay, I believe him because- I'm sure that it- 'Cause, 'cause if you had the

Speaker 9:39

cojones-

Speaker 2 9:40

Because if, because

Speaker 9:42

I don't know what I said means I scolded him like a child.

Speaker 2 9:45

And if you had the cojones to get up from your table and walk into my kitchen, first of all, I would physically remove you from my kitchen. Be, be aware, Mr. Blogger, that, that he, that he would've been in his right to take you by the shoulders, turn you around, and push you out that door. Abso- There are knives and fire in that kitchen. That's an employee-only area, and you have no business being in there, okay? Uh, "First and foremost," this is from Forgione, "First and foremost, you came into my kitchen and spoke to me disrespe-disrespectfully in front of my cooks." Unacceptable. It's true. He's right. "The kitchen is a sacred space." Okay, a little over the top. He told me that re- he, that my reply to his attempts to explain why he was yelling, while I was in the kitchen was, uh, "We're not interested." So the blogger said, "We're not interested at, at what Forgione said as he was explaining. That sounds about right, since we hadn't come to the restaurant to listen to him yell repeatedly at his staff, uh, what it, what it was, whatever it was about that they were doing wrong. That wasn't what got us kicked out, though, according to Mr. Forgione. He claimed that he didn't decide to ask us to leave until he explained to us tableside that his yelling was all in the interest of making everything perfect." That's his point of view. I disagree with it. It's his restaurant.

Speaker 10:50

Well, I believe it was with the intent of making things perfect.

Speaker 2 10:53

Right, but

Speaker 10:53

it's- I just don't, I just don't think that's the right way to accomplish it. It

Speaker 2 10:56

made things worse. Okay. But Comes to the tableside and wants to explain and the blogger says, "Well, you aren't." And then he continued, uh, Forgione says, "You waved a hand in my direction as if I was an annoying bug. Someone who acts like that in my restaurant, I would never serve." And you know what, Mr. Blogger?

Speaker 11:13

Neither would

Speaker 2 11:14

I. Wave your hand at me in my restaurant, see what happens. Wave your hand at Sirio Maccioni and see what happens. Now, uh, look, I don't ever yell at my staff like that, but I've done things wrong in the past. But right or wrong, I go to work every day. I work many, many hours. For 17 years, I've been working many, many hours. I put my house on the line for that restaurant, and if you think that you're gonna sit in a chair, tell me how to run my business, wave your hand at me and tell me you're not interested, and then expect me to serve your f- you food while you sit there and be your servant? We're not your servants, Mr. Blogger. That's a, that's a restaurant. It's my restaurant, and I offer a service, and you may like it, and you may not like it. You may not come into my place, order me around, even if you don't like what I'm doing, even if you're justified, treat me disrespectfully, and then expect me to bring and clear your plates.

Speaker 12:00

Well, I, I guess, I guess the whole irony is you were upset that the chef/owner treated his employee with disrespect And so what your response to that was to disrespect the, the chef/owner and to not expect a reaction, I, I think is, is just foolish.

Speaker 2 12:19

Well, and I think, you know, it's funny because people who act, in a way that m- that does not merit respect don't necess- shouldn't necessarily be treated with respect. But you... Why do you think you can come into a person's business, even a person you don't like, even a person who you think is doing something wrong, and insult them, basically, even if it's justified, and what you do is insult them. I think probably the insult was justified, but do it and walk out the door. Right. Don't think that you're gonna insult someone and say, "Now, bring me my coffee." You know? I... You know, you may get the coffee, but you're gonna get it in your face.

Mark 12:49

Francis, Francis and I are very curious as to what you guys think about this. Uh, absolutely. So please email us, theguys@restaurantguyspodcast.com we're really curious. A lot of people sent us this and said, "Hey-" What do you want? we need to comment on it." We wanna know what you guys think about this.

Speaker 2 13:03

My, my take on it is the clash of two monumental egos- Yeah.

Speaker 13:08

I, I

Speaker 2 13:08

think- neither of whom I'd like to dine with or, or... No, that's not really true. I probably would like to dine with neither I

Speaker 13:12

feel like, I, I do feel like the, the hot ego cloud and the- Oh, my and the cold ego cloud-

Speaker 2 13:17

Yeah

Speaker 13:18

uh, met in that kitchen, and a, and thunderous lightning and thunder occurred.

Speaker 2 13:21

But you know what I have to say, one thing about it is, I really, I, I like th- I think he posted on the blog hoping that people would say, "Yeah, you did the right thing," and reading the comments on the blog, a lot of people think he did. Um, I don't. I don't think he did the right thing, but I'm glad he posted the blog. This is a very interesting topic of discussion, and we'd like to have, uh, more discussion about it with you on The Restaurant Guys. Uh, we'll be back in just a moment with the, uh, Daniel Okrent. He's the author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. It's the best book on prohibition I think I've ever read.

Speaker 13:46

And he's not just the author of Last Call.

Speaker 2 13:48

Oh, yeah, Mark's got a secret bomb to drop on Dan when he comes on the show. So we'll be back in just a moment. You're listening to The Restaurant Guys

15:20

Hello, everybody, and welcome back. It's Martin Francis, The Restaurant Guys. And today our guest is Daniel Okrent. His book is Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

Speaker 15:31

Daniel, welcome to the show.

Speaker 4 15:32

I'm happy to be here, guys.

Speaker 15:34

You know, Dan, Francis thinks that you're famous because you wrote this really, really cool book about prohibition.

Speaker 4 15:39

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 15:40

But I, I know better. I know where I'm coming. You're, you're, you're not just a Pulitzer finalist, you're also the inventor of the greatest game on Earth.

Speaker 4 15:49

Oh.

Speaker 15:50

Fantasy baseball.

Speaker 4 15:51

Well, uh, I guess I have to cop to it.

Speaker 15:54

Just as, uh, J. Robert

Speaker 4 15:55

Oppenheimer had to cop to inventing the atomic bomb.

Speaker 15:57

I'm gonna tell you that y- last night I spoke to my brother and I was talking to him and I said, so I have a guest on that you're gonna think is really a cool guest on my show," because frankly most of my guests he doesn't think are, are that cool. and I said, "S- you'll never guess who it is." His first guess, James Gandolfini. I said, "No." Well we're built the same. I said, "No, but you're gonna think this is almost as cool." I said, "Dan Okrent." He said, "The guy who invented fantasy baseball?" Ooh. And I said, "Wow, that was pretty impressive." 'Cause I, 'cause I, I gotta tell you, I'm reading the book, I'm like, "I know this name. I know this name." My brother and I started our first fantasy league in 1989.

Speaker 4 16:41

Oh, so fairly early.

Speaker 16:42

Yeah. And we've been, we've been running it for 22 years, and I heard a wild rumor- That the Oak-Rent Finokies have never won in the 30 years of, of your fantasy baseball.

Speaker 4 16:53

A, this is true.

Speaker 2 16:55

Oh,

Speaker 16:55

I'm sorry. And C,

Speaker 4 16:56

I think it's time to talk about the book.

Speaker 16:59

I totally agree. Good,

Speaker 2 17:00

good.

Speaker 17:00

I totally agree.

Speaker 2 17:01

All right, so let's talk about this book. By the way, um, you've caused Mark to, to lose, more hours than if he were drunk. We should do- uh, uh, uh, all the, all the arguments that the prohibitioners would have had, there should be on, uh, men not coming home to their wives could be applied to fantasy baseball as well. Hey,

Speaker 4 17:15

maybe there should be a constitutional amendment

Speaker 2 17:17

banning that. I don't think so. You, the first one didn't work out so well. But let's talk about Last Call. This book- A

Speaker 17:23

really great book.

Speaker 2 17:24

Thank you this book is, 370-something pages of... I mean, I just, I couldn't put it down. And you, you really get into prohibition and what this quite ironically called noble experiment, sort of how it happened and, and what the implications were across levels of society in America. And believe me, I've read about the, ab- about prohibition from, you know, either incidentally in other books about the Stork Club or speakeasies that happened at the time, um, as well as books about prohibition itself. This is the most comprehensive, interesting... You know, I just, I was inside the book from beginning to end.

Speaker 4 17:57

Well, could you say that again, please?

Speaker 2 17:58

I don't think I, I don't think I can. Um, well- Thank you

Speaker 4 18:01

very, very much.

Speaker 2 18:02

Well, now, what made you... What, what prompted you? I understand you, It was in your, research for another book that, about Rockefeller Center that, that you sort of got, got hooked on this topic of prohibition.

Speaker 4 18:12

Right, that's how I got interested. The, the land that Rockefeller Center was built on was the heart of the speakeasy belt in Manhattan in the mid-'20s. And I wrote a chapter about how the Rockefeller interest acquired the rights to, uh, 228, ground leases. And, uh, in doing that research, I found, I kept on finding myself bumping up against these speakeasy owners who had more political power than the Rockefellers did. I said, "Wow, that's interesting." And then the, the next think, thought was, "Prohibition, what a strange time. Oh, what a strange... Wow, there hasn't been a book about that in 35 years." Um- And, you know, I, I think that the title that I originally wanted to use for the book, How the Hell Did That Happen?

Speaker 2 18:50

You know, which, by the way, can I Was that right, right below that was What Were We Thinking? Was that the next

Speaker 4 18:54

one? Yeah, there's that one as well. Uh, so it, it was, how did it happen? What was it? What, how was it that a freedom-loving people decided to put in its organic law, in the Const- in the Constitution, not just a law, but for 14 years, nearly 14 years, that something that they had done since the first pilgrims arrived here was something that they could no longer do? And it was just, it beggared belief, and that's the kind of thing that sends a writer, uh, into the, into the deep.

Speaker 2 19:19

Well, and so obviously there are 400 pages here. I can't go into everything. But what were some of the things that You, you know, we all have a knowledge of prohibition. We have a knowledge of speakeasy culture, and I wanna talk about a little bit later the, um, the, uh, the current aesthetic going through cocktail bars in New York, uh, you know, the secret doors at, uh, PDT and Milk Honey- Mm-hmm which of course I use all the time 'cause I really think they're really cool. But I, I've taken to calling that, I, I think I've coined a phrase myself. I've, uh- Yeah it's, it's sort of prohibition, like aesthetic. I call it, fohibition, bars, you know? Um, so we're obviously have a fascination with the flappers and the, and the, the prohibition social life, especially of New York at the time. Um, what did you find in your research that you f- that you found to be surprising and striking that, that, you know, was counterintuitive, that people don't remember went on during prohibition?

Speaker 4 20:07

Well, where to begin? I mean, so many different things, but I think probably the political lineup of those who were for it and those who were against it. Uh, I would've guessed that those who were for prohibition were extreme right-wing moralists who wanted to control what other, how other people behaved, and to a degree that there were people who did fit that definition. But among the other organizations and types who supported prohibition were the, the Progressive Party, the Settlement House Movement, people like Jane Addams. The Progressive Party had 18 members of Congress, uh, who, who voted on the prohibition amendment. 17 of them voted for it. The Industrial Workers of the World, an extreme left-wing organization, they supported prohibition. They believed that liquor was a, a tool used by the capitalists to keep the working man down. So it was this kind of unsettling. And the, and the far right-wingers, the economic right-wingers, the "malefactors of great wealth," as Roosevelt called them, they hated prohibition because they believed the government should just stay out of their lives. So that was a little disorienting when I would find myself, uh, politically aligned with people I never would expect to find myself politically aligned with.

Speaker 2 21:09

Well, and in the end, the, the forces that were the, the major movers and shakers behind bringing down prohibition were, um, were right, right, far right. Yeah,

Speaker 4 21:18

mainly Republicans, uh, led by Pierre du Pont of the- Mm-hmm the chemical family. Um, and his very specific wish, which I, I quote from letters he wrote to his brothers, uh, that I found in his archives. He said that, "If only we can bring back the tax on the working man's beer, we'll be able to get rid of this damnable income tax." So they saw, prohibition, really as a Was something that got in the way of their ability to hold onto as much money as they possibly could.

Speaker 2 21:42

But wasn't it, wasn't it, uh, wasn't Roosevelt also behind abolishing prohibition?

Speaker 4 21:47

Eventually. Uh, when he ran for governor of New York in 1928, he'd said nothing of it, and, and Eleanor Roosevelt was in fact a rather active dry. She really believed in prohibition. She also hated the fact that Franklin drank his martini every night. Um, he, Franklin, uh, takes the position, the, the, the wet position only as a result of the Democratic Party having been moved there by Al Smith during his campaign in 1928. And he too makes the tax argument. He gives a speech in Newark during the campaign in October of '32 and says, "If only we could bring back the tax on, on liquor" We would return within the first year a quarter of a billion dollars to the federal treasury. And in fact, he was right, he underestimated. The first year after r- repeal, 9% of all federal revenue came from liquor taxes that had not existed for the previous 14 years.

Speaker 2 22:33

Wow.

Speaker 22:33

you know, you touched on the fact that how shocking it was some of the people who were aligned in this movement. in reading the book, really found that remarkable. And I, you know, obviously the suffrage movement having such a, a big influence on this, I, I didn't realize that it had such a large influence on this movement.

Speaker 4 22:50

You couldn't have one without the other. The, the suffrage amendment and the prohibition amendment moved in through American politics and into the Constitution virtually as twins. Uh, less than a year apart, they, they were finally adopted. Uh, the brewers, the big breweries of the late 19th century knew that women would support prohibition, or feared they would, and campaigned very openly, very aggressively, and very underhandedly against women's suffrage because of that. Of course, brewers being stupid in t- in politics, that drove more women into their, into their corner, so that when suffrage finally is granted, uh, first on a state-by-state basis and then eventually constitutionally, women did vote for prohibition. Mm-hmm. You know, I think my favorite story about that, uh, has to do with the writer Jack London, who, uh, uh, in 1911 in the California suffrage amen- um, referendum, voted for prohibition. When he told his wife he had done so, she was shocked, and she asked why. And he said, "Because I know that if woman gets the vote, she will vote to close the saloons, and if she can close the saloons, I will be able to stop drinking." He did it for his own sobriety's sake.

Speaker 2 23:50

Wow. I'm mad at him. Now, one of the things that, that I think p- most people are aware of, um, but maybe not to the extent, and you deal with it in delicious detail in your book, is the fact that much of America just ignored the law. And what we did, we wound up doing was criminalizing a, a, you know, a huge segment of our population who would otherwise have been law-abiding citizens.

Speaker 4 24:15

Although we have to remember, it wasn't against the law to drink. It never was against the law to drink alcoholic beverages. It was against the law to manufacture them, to sell them, and to transport them. So no, you couldn't carry your booze across the street.

Speaker 2 24:27

But you had to deal with criminals in order to get it.

Speaker 4 24:29

You had to deal with cri- And yeah, and the reason why it was not against the law to drink is that the people who wrote the, the enforcement legislation realized that if they had made it against the law to drink, no one would ever testify against a supplier. So the, the drinking was all right. Uh, it was the selling of it that, that was proscribed. Uh, it didn't work. It worked for a couple of years in the very beginning- But particularly in the big cities and along the coasts and along the Canadian border, if you wanted to drink, it was easy. The, the editor Malcolm Binga, who was the editor of the Detroit Free Press, wrote in the early '30s, it was very, uh, difficult to get a drink in Detroit during prohibition. You would have to walk into a very crowded bar and shout really loudly to get the attention of the bartenders.

Speaker 3 25:10

I,

Speaker 4 25:10

you know, I, I, I have a section in the book in which I try to determine what the wettest city in the country was, and what the wet cities had in common, um, they had large immigrant populations, they were on the coast or the Canadian border, large Catholic, populations, and political figures who really didn't care and made no effort to, uh, to enforce.

Speaker 25:28

now prior to prohibition, you talk about this a, a lot in the book, there were some, some really bad things that were going on with alcohol in the country, correct?

Speaker 4 25:37

Oh, it was terrible. I mean, people in, in 1830, which was the peak, or maybe the nadir of American drinking, the average American drank more than seven gallons of pure alcohol a year. That's the equivalent of 90 fifths of liquor, and it's three times the amount that we drink today. Imagine that, and realizing that, there were many people who didn't drink at all. Those who did drink were really, really drinking, and- So that's

Speaker 2 25:58

two-fifths a week.

Speaker 4 26:00

It's almost two-fifths a week. And- And

Speaker 26:01

that includes you, your, your 17-year-old, and your grandmother.

Speaker 4 26:06

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 26:07

Okay.

Speaker 4 26:07

You know, the, the... Look, the country was almost founded on alcohol. There was more beer in the hold of the boat that brought John Winthrop to the Massachusetts Bay Colony than there was water.

Speaker 2 26:16

Okay, but let's remember, that boat sucked. Life sucked without drinking, okay? Of course they did. I mean, you know, you gotta light the fire, you gotta get the wood. I mean, come on.

Speaker 4 26:24

Well, particularly on the frontier, life did suck. It was very hard, it was unpleasant, and this was a re- a release and a relief for, for a lot of people. You know, speaking of the frontier, I had always imagined, I don't know what I had imagined, that, uh, Johnny Appleseed ha- going through the Ohio Valley was scattering seeds for, I don't know, Golden Delicious or-

Speaker 2 26:40

Right

Speaker 4 26:40

Macintosh apples.

Speaker 2 26:40

Right.

Speaker 4 26:41

It was all for hard cider. Mm. And the hard cider was absolutely omnipresent in the life in rural America in the 18th and early 19th century, and into the 20th century as well. And that's one of the reasons why in the Volstead Act, the Enforcement Act, uh, it was still, legal for farmers, for, for homeowners or any individual to, quote, "Preserve his fruit juices by fermenting them." Mm-hmm. And that was really a way to allow the farmers to continue to drink during prohibition.

Speaker 2 27:05

Yeah. and of course, I know many stories of, vineyards in California that would ship grape juice concentrate and frozen bricks to the East Coast, and I love this. I saw old pictures of this stuff, where the crates of, frozen grape pomace bricks Would arrive in Newark, New Jersey, where, it'd be stamped with, a warning that said, "Grape concentrate. Warning, do not add yeast or fermentation will occur."

Speaker 4 27:26

Right. Like Do not put, do not add water. Put it in a c- in a, in a closet or it will turn alcoholic.

Speaker 2 27:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Careful.

Speaker 4 27:31

You know, there was also a huge business in malt syrup, even, uh, Anheuser-Busch, uh, sold millions of gallons of malt syrup, which you could take home and you can make your own beer with. That was perfectly legal. Uh, liquor that you had in your own home at the time of prohibition, you could keep that. There's my, one of my favorite characters in the book is Walter B. Parker, who was a New Orleans civic leader. You can imagine how popular prohibition was in New Orleans.

Speaker 27:52

Ugh.

Speaker 4 27:52

It, it, it wasn't even a rumor in New Orleans. Uh, nobody stopped drinking there.

Speaker 27:56

Right, right.

Speaker 4 27:56

But Parker, he doubled the size of his wine cellar, bought 5,000 bottles of wine, and swore that he was going to drink a whole bottle with dinner every night as long as prohibition lasted, and he did. And then in nine- on December 6, 1934, after repeal, he wrote a letter to a friend of his that said, "Now I'm gonna stop drinking."

Speaker 2 28:14

Well, you know, one of the things that's really was unfair about prohibition is while you were allowed to keep bottles at home, it decimated the American brown spirits industry and, and really we never quite recovered from that because that's an industry that requires aged stock. So, you know, it didn't even grandfather out or allow those guys to get rid of their stocks, and you're holding s- uh, whiskey sometimes for four, five, seven, 12 years, and you have 12 years' worth of whiskey in your warehouse, and the federal agents just came and axed it, right?

Speaker 4 28:42

Well, actually, a lot, it's, that happened to some, but also a lot of it got into the market, uh, somewhat legally as medicinal liquor. Yeah. I have a bottle at home on my shelf. It says, "Jim Beam, bottled and bond for medicinal purposes only." The American Medicinal Spirits Company brought together 58 different brands, largely bourbons and ryes-

Speaker 28:59

Uh-huh

Speaker 4 28:59

and continued to market them legally. You could go in virtually any city in the country to a physician and for $3 buy a prescription, take that prescription to your pharmacy, the pharmacist would fill it. You could get a pint of liquor every 10 days. Um, Charles Walgreen, the druggist in Chicago, in 1920, he had 20 drugstores. In 1930, he had 525 drugstores.

Speaker 29:21

Yeah.

Speaker 4 29:21

And it wasn't milkshakes.

Speaker 29:22

Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Hey- Can I have an egg cream and I got a little headache. Yeah, I got a little something. Can I get a little something? I

Speaker 4 29:28

love, I love what some of the prescriptions I found said. There's a Detroit phar- pharmacist, physician whose prescription said, "Take for stimulation three times a day until stimulated."

Speaker 2 29:39

Hey, listen, Dan, we need to take a quick break. We'll be back on the other side. We're talking with Dan Okrent. His wonderful, wonderful new book about prohibition is called, it's just released now, it's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. We'll be back in just a moment. You're listening to The Restaurant Guys

29:54

Welcome back. It's Mark and Francis, The Restaurant Guys. We're talking with Dan Okrent about his book, "Last Call." You should learn more about this book and even pick it up

Speaker 2 30:00

I don't know why I'm feeling so happy talking about this book. One, it's a great book, and two, I reali- when I think about how bad things might be, well, we're not living in Prohibition. Yes. You know what I mean? It's like this was... What a stupid idea this was.

Speaker 4 30:11

The other thing that it tells us is that, uh, when really horrible things happen in our politics, uh, this too shall pass. I mean, here was this enormous political movement that was able to amend the Constitution, the only single-issue, uh, operation that's ever been able to do that, and yet even that passes in no time at all.

Speaker 2 30:27

I, I... Weren't people just... When did people come to realize that the country ju- that, look, people s- that so many people thought You know, this is just a bad idea, and you have no right to tell me that I can't drink liquor in my own home or, you know, if I, as long as I'm not, you know, getting behind the wheel of a car or bothering anybody else, so we're just gonna ignore it.

Speaker 4 30:48

Well, there were several things that happened. Uh, there was the, uh, increase in crime, which was very, very visible. There was the, uh, growing lack of respect for, uh, law and order, for, uh, governments, for the, for law itself, uh, particularly young people said, you know, th- here's this thing that's in the Constitution. Nobody's paying attention to it. Why should I take laws seriously?

Speaker 2 31:07

Right. If you, if you ignore one amendment, why, what, what makes the others- Right, exactly more important? Yeah.

Speaker 4 31:11

Yeah, and, you know, and there were, uh, many poisonings, uh, thousands upon thousands of poisonings from people who were getting bad liquor. You know, anybody who could make alcohol could, you know, color it, flavor it, put on a label, and pass it off as the real thing, and often some really awful su- substances got into that, and there were some very serious poisonings. Uh, finally, um, the last two things that happened is that after the 1928 election when Al Smith, who was the first wet to campaign openly for the presidency, uh, as a wet-

Speaker 2 31:40

He was wet and Catholic.

Speaker 4 31:41

Well, he, that was the point. He was defeated, I believe, because w- two reasons. One, I think any Democrat would've lost in 1928. The country was very prosperous at the time, but also because he was a Catholic. However, the drys thought that he was defeated because he was wet, and they took that as a license to increase the penalties on the, uh, violations of the prohibition laws, and some awful, awful things happened. A woman named Eda Mae Miller in Lansing, Michigan, uh, she was arrested for selling two pints of liquor to an undercover cop, and because it was her fourth arrest, she got a life term-

Speaker 2 32:12

Oh, my God

Speaker 4 32:13

uh, statutorily mandated by the, by the Michigan legislature. Things like this got a lot of publicity, and people said, "Well, we've gone too far." And then finally, the Depression arrives, and aft- when the Depression arrives, there's a desperate need for revenue. The government doesn't have any capital gains tax revenue. It has plummeting income tax revenue. Uh, it needs the cash desperately, and somebody said, "Look ar- look around. Try to find it. Oh, how about those bottles and kegs that used to provide so much of the government's revenue back before Prohibition?"

Speaker 2 32:41

You, you provided some pretty stark statistics in your book about, uh, how many speakeasies there were in Manhattan during Prohibition, and, uh, I saw your article in New York Magazine where there's actually a map of where all the different speakeasies were in New York City- There was- or s- many of them and details about them. And the other statistic that you talk about is how, how many cops were on the take probably, and how much money was spent paying police officers.

Speaker 4 33:07

You know, it's, uh, the, the figuring that, uh, the assistant attorney general in charge of enforcement, uh, she, she, she put the numbers together. Um, if there were 32,000 speakeasies and each cop, and each one had to pay $5 to the local cop- Um, a, a day. That was $160,000 a day. Multiply that out and you're talking about the, you know, tens and tens of millions of dollars of every year in graft. And that's just if it was a $5 payment. Sometimes it was a much larger payment than that.

Speaker 2 33:33

And what

Speaker 4 33:33

you- The corruption, America has never seen official corruption remotely as severe and as widespread as it was during Prohibition.

Speaker 33:40

Which, which leads us to one of the major problems of Prohibition, and that was organized crime.

Speaker 4 33:44

Yeah, there was no organized crime before that. You know, organized, crime existed in major cities. in any given neighborhood would have a, you know, a criminal gang that would control, you know, say, uh, gambling, drugs, prostitution. But they had no reason to go beyond that neighborhood, and then along came Prohibition, and you have these enormous quantities of physical goods that have to be transported from one place to another. So you need confederates and allies in other cities. This led to a conference at the Hotel President in Atlantic City in 1929, where the leaders of the mob in six major cities got together and made a, uh, kind of, you know, formed a confederation.

Speaker 2 34:19

That was, that was the famous Commission, right?

Speaker 4 34:20

That was the Commission, and, uh, uh, it begins there. The pre- it's a predecessor of the Commission, which comes at the Appalachian Conference, but it, it is the same idea. And it was, you know, it was Luciano from New York and Capone from Chicago and King Solomon from, from Boston and so on. They divide the country. Uh, they set prices. They determine territories and create what became the National Syndicate that had never existed before that.

Speaker 2 34:43

Great idea, Prohibitionists. Really great idea. I love that idea. You

Speaker 34:47

mean because, uh, those, organized crimes, units have never been completely taken back down?

Speaker 2 34:52

Well, and also if you look at, you know, when you think about, you know, most of the cops were on the take, what this says. Sure. And, and as much revenue was coming into the police force from being on the take, you know, a significant portion of what they would get from their regular salaries, you know, we think of Nicaragua or Colombia. Well, you know, and the thing is, once a cop is on the take for one thing, well, you really are down a slippery slope then, aren't you?

Speaker 4 35:16

Well, it was not even a matter of a, a large share of their money coming from it. In the case of the federal agents, the 2,000 federal prohibition agents, this was a job that paid the modern-day equivalent of about $25,000 a year, and hundreds of people wanted every one of those jobs- Yeah because it was really like getting, having a winning lottery ticket. The amount of money collected, I mean, think about it, the people who were selling liquor illegally were not only making a lot of money because people wanted liquor, but it was all tax-free. The amount of, the, the quantity of dollars that went into criminal pockets was so enormous that the notion that you could simply spread it around, uh, widely enough to people in law enforcement was a very simple, uh, place to leap to. Um, one, one major b- bootlegger said that his real goal was not to corner the liquor market, but to corner the graft market. Right. And he said, of course, there was m- more people who wanted graft than, than he had imagined, so he wasn't quite able to do that.

Speaker 2 36:06

That's wild. Well, now, you talk a lot in your book also about, Uh, how, how this changed culture. I mean, it did a number of things that are rather surprising. One is, uh, prior to prohibition, drinking establishments were segregated by gender, and, and prohibition led to the gender mingling in, in liquor houses. How did that happen?

Speaker 4 36:27

Well, in fact, uh, I wouldn't even say that it was separated by gender. Women did not drink in public. There was no place for a woman to drink in public. The saloon, which was the official, characteristic drinking place, was a male-only institution.

Speaker 2 36:38

Right. There was one kind of woman who might be in the saloon, but only one kind of woman might be in the saloon.

Speaker 4 36:41

Only one kind, and she wasn't there to drink. Exactly.

Speaker 2 36:43

Right. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 36:43

Um, so, uh, along comes prohibition in 1920, and when you have a breakdown in the social order because of, uh, a radical change in laws, then people begin to behave in different fashions, and so it becomes kind of sporting. Women, you know, this is the '20s. This is at the beginning of the Flapper age. What's it like in those saloons and that are now speakeasies? So women start to show up. Once you have women in a, in a bar, then you can't just have them bellying up to the bar. You had to have table service, which never existed in the saloons. Once you have men and women together in bars, um, you have to have music. I mean, how can, can you imagine not having music to, for them to dance to? Well, there had been no nightclubs before prohibition. The whole idea of entertainment accompanying the serving of liquor is precisely a product of prohibition. even stretched to things like having to put in, toilet facilities for women. Um, the saloons, being all male, had one, one bathroom, and was used by men. Well, what do we do about these women? Well, let's find that, you know, that broom closet or the space under the stairs. We'll put in a toilet, a sink, and a lockable door. Well, that was the birth of the powder room, which never existed before.

Speaker 2 37:42

Well, and you know, it's funny. When you look at especially in New York, and I know in Chicago, there are so many places that started in, as- uh, speakeasies that just transitioned into legal places Right, just went

Speaker 37:53

right to it.

Speaker 2 37:53

Like, the Stork Club was the most famous club in America, and everyone knew it, and, and it became, you know, Sherman Billingsley Stork Club be- you know, became the Stork Club and l- survived until the '60s.

Speaker 4 38:03

Well, and the one that survives today, 21. Of course. Uh, 21 opened as, opened as a speakeasy in 19- in, um, New Year's Eve 1929. Uh, and the only difference between life at 29 and Dec- uh, 21 on December fo- 5th and December 6th, 1933, when there was, uh, when, when repeal came, is that as of December 5th, they didn't have to pay tax. As of December 6th, they did.

Speaker 2 38:24

Right, so it was- It

Speaker 38:24

became more expensive to do business.

Speaker 4 38:27

Right,

Speaker 2 38:27

right. There's a- Yeah, absolutely there's a famous yarn, and I don't know, I didn't see it in your book. I don't know if missed it or, or, or if you had it there. There's this famous article about how, the mayor of, uh, the City of New York was in 21 in their private, wine cellar downstairs, and, um, and there was a raid. And whenever there was a raid, there was a button they pressed, and the bar sort of flopped down, and the liquor all smashed two stories below into the sewer system. And because of the rules of evidence in New York, you needed to have a bottle of liquor to prove someone guilty. And anyone who was... Any VIPs who were downstairs just stayed there until the raid was over. And the federal agents were raiding the place, there was a phone down there, and the mayor, um, got very upset. I don't know if this is fable or true. Maybe you can help me out. And s- and, uh, he got kinda pissed that they were bothering 21, and so he, called the New York City Police and had the cars of the federal agents towed away while they were, while he was inside. While they were

Speaker 39:13

raiding.

Speaker 2 39:14

Had you heard

Speaker 4 39:14

that story? I, I, I think, I think, uh, the, the, uh, Frances, that's a mix of two stories. Uh- Oh, well,

Speaker 2 39:18

straighten me out

Speaker 4 39:19

what I believe happened is that happened at the Central Park Casino. It was Mayor Jimmy Walker.

Speaker 2 39:23

Uh-huh.

Speaker 4 39:23

Uh, and that was his favorite watering hole. He wasn't much of a 21 guy. I'm sure he went there sometimes.

Speaker 2 39:28

Uh-huh.

Speaker 4 39:29

But the Central Park Casino was the place where he went to do his drinking throughout prohibition, and where there was this, uh, uh, this, this call sent out for, uh, the ticketing. I don't know that they were towed, but at least the ticketing of the federal agents' cars.

Speaker 3 39:40

I love that. Okay? I totally, totally love that.

Speaker 4 39:44

You did get right about the part about the evidence. You had to have evidence. It's, uh, somebody said at the time, you know, "An aroma is not evidence," if that's all that was

Speaker 3 39:50

left

Speaker 4 39:51

of the liquor. Well, but that aroma, what's interesting to me, for those of you who know the geography of New York, um, in the 1950s when the Donnell Branch Library was being built on West 53rd Street, that's directly behind 21, uh, apparently during the excavation, there were workers who were kind of overcome by the fumes of liquor that had soaked into the ground 20 years earlier.

Speaker 2 40:10

I s- I sort of believe that, but whether it's true or not, it's a great story.

Speaker 4 40:13

Exactly. That, that fact is too good to check.

Speaker 2 40:14

Yeah, exactly. All right, finally, I want to deal with one, one issue, and then I, I know we have to let you go. I know you have to be somewhere. But, um, the... You talk about how Prohibition had the effect of creating the American dinner party as an institution.

Speaker 4 40:31

Yeah, you know, what, what, the dinner party and the cocktail party. Malcolm Cowley, the critic, uh, goes to Paris in 1920, comes back in 1923, and he's kind of overwhelmed by this thing called the cocktail party, where men and women get together to, as he wrote, "To listen to phonograph records, drink gin cocktails, and gossip about their absent friends." I mean- Doesn't

Speaker 2 40:48

that sound

Speaker 4 40:49

grand? the point was, here is a party in which the purpose is getting together to drink. Didn't exist before that. Men and women did not drink together. The very wealthy did in hotel d- uh, dining rooms, but it was simply not part of the social code of the day. And then the, the breakdown of so many social codes because of Prohibition changes the way we live with each other and the way we drink with each other.

Speaker 2 41:09

Well, Dan, I have to say, one of the crazy things about your book is it made me grateful for at least the upside of Prohibition, all of the unintended consequences that were the upside of Prohibition.

Speaker 4 41:17

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 41:18

And, uh, thanks for writing it, Dan. It's a great, it's a great book. Dan, it

Speaker 41:21

really, really was a terrific book. Dan, thank you very much.

Speaker 4 41:24

Thank you very much, Mark.

Speaker 2 41:25

It comes out this month. It's called Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. The author is Daniel Okrent. You can find out more about the book at RestaurantGuysRadio.com. We'll be back in just a moment. You're listening to The Restaurant Guys

41:35

Hi there, everybody. Welcome back. It's the Restaurant Guys. I love this book. I love that guy. Yeah. I mean, you know, and it's funny because I know a lot about Prohibition

Speaker 2 41:42

I'm fascinated by it, and so are all our friends. You go out with David Wondrich, and Dale DeGroff, and, and Gary Regan, and all the... And everybody's got anecdotes about it. Plus, we spend a lot of time in those bars. I mean, down the 21 Club, you can go- Mm-hmm if you sort of have an in the know, if you, ask for a tour of the cellar, if you go down into the kitchen, you go into what looks like the laundry room, they have... The bar literally still, it's still functional. They press a button, and all the bottles smash into the sewer below. And they have the wine cellar there that is hidden by a, a two-foot thick stone wall that's opened by a key that looks like the key on a jewelry box that you access through a, I'm gonna say it's a four-foot long key on the end of a coat hanger, and you would never know that wall is there. And it's gotta weigh tons, but it's perfectly hinged by Italian merchants at the dawn of Prohibition to hide, um- Liquor liquor. And it, and it's, it's fascinating and the, and this is the most comprehensive and enjoyable book about, uh, Prohibition I've ever read.

Speaker 42:42

Well, I'll tell you what, what was interesting about it for me was there was all this history of how did this happen But then you, you know, you have all the stories of, well, what happened when it happened?

Speaker 2 42:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 42:51

You know? And then what happened when it stopped happening?

Speaker 2 42:54

Yeah, and how did it affect our culture, and how did it affect, uh, the revenue- It cha- it changed our country for- and

Speaker 42:58

how

Speaker 2 42:58

did

Speaker 42:58

it affect taxes? This changed our country forever.

Speaker 2 43:00

and we've got lots of bits and pieces of it. And if you read our, our weekly emails about all the cocktails we do, I mean, about half the cocktails we do are historic, either historical cocktails or based on historical cocktails that somehow, you know, we reference whether they're immediately post-Prohibition, uh, post-Prohibition era or pre-Prohibition Jerry Thomas era cocktails. It's like BC and, and AD when you talk about the, the world of liquor. But this deals with it in a s- in a sober yet fun and, comprehensive way. It's been- Well, you

Speaker 43:28

talk about the confluence of things that happened right around this time. Yeah. I mean, you have, uh, you know, women voting and, this movement for, towards Prohibition, and, then organized crime coming up, and, and- And the first, the- the Great Depression factoring right into the end of it, working your way right into World War II. I mean, it's such a, big, important slice, of America.

Speaker 2 43:49

And the other thing is, let's remember, it was a big mistake, okay? It was. It

Speaker 43:52

was an awful mistake.

Speaker 2 43:53

It was a big mistake. And I'll tell you, you know, I believe, and I think that we should really look at our drug policy overall, and we should look at our alcohol policy overall. And we gotta realize that, yeah, maybe if you're dry in, in Prohibition era, you would like... You know, you have this utopian idea of what happens when you make something illegal, but you wind up with, just the opposite of what you had wanted to happen. With

Speaker 44:13

scofflaws.

Speaker 2 44:14

And, you know, I think that sometimes we do that with other of our laws. Mm-hmm. And I think we should really think through the consequences of what human nature is and, realize that we live in an imperfect world.

44:23

And, uh, and, uh, let's go get a drink. Let's go get a drink. I hope you've enjoyed the hour listening to The Restaurant Guys. I know that we certainly have. I'm Francis Schack. And I'm Mark Pascal. We are The Restaurant Guys