In case you were still maintaining the hope that this was just a discarded plotline from the first season Community, Mayor Bloomberg's soda ban will finally kick into effect on March 12th. The city has started sending out brochures to any restaurants and eateries that will be affected by the changes on some of the finer points of the ban. And it turns out this ban threatens the sanctity of children's birthdays the city over: pizza joints will no longer be allowed to sell 20-ounce and 2-liter bottles, and kid-friendly restaurants won't be allowed to serve plastic pitchers. We can think of some mutant, sewer-dwelling, crime-fighting reptiles who would be very disappointed right now—do any of us really want to live in a city where Mary Kate and Ashley Olson would not be free to get their pizza party on?
The Post points out that pizzerias typically charge $3 for a 2-liter bottle of Coke. Under the ban, customers will have to buy six 12-ounce cans at $7.50 to get the same amount of soda. “It’s ludicrous,” Robert Bookman, a lawyer for the New York City Hospitality Alliance, told them. “It’s a sealed bottle of soda you can buy in the supermarket. Why can’t they deliver what you can get in the supermarket?” Ah, but a spoonful of sugar is all Bloomberg thinks children really need.
Also affected by the ban: bottle service mixers. Typically, spending a couple hundred dollars on a bottle of vodka would entitle you to a full complement of mixers (a carafe holds about 32 ounces). Which means only water and juice—not sodas, cranberry juice and tonic water—will be free. “Oh, my God. Seriously?” Lamia Sunti, owner of West Village club Le Souk Harem, told the Post. “It’s not like one person is going to be drinking the whole carafe. It’s silly.” Obviously no person would, but have you MET a Ninja Turtle? Those guys need all the carafes they can get, considering how they inhale their pizza.
