Oh Man! Hospitality
by Clare Briggs · November 23, 2018
Oh Man! Hospitality
Clare Briggs
Clare Briggs is a famous cartoonist who lived from 1875 to 1930.
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- George Turner says:
- Jaybird says:
- George Turner says:
Featured Comment
There is that connection between fascism and cynicism where the people themselves eventually accept their powerlessness and forget any dream of a just society.
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I had to read this twice.
This is about Prohibition.Report
If it? Reads more like “My friend has entered the next stage in life and I haven’t and he’s not fun anymore…
(Having gotten married in roughly the middle of my peer group, I have been on both sides of this one.)Report
Curious about the year on this?
I took it to be about Prohibition but it definitely works on that level too.Report
Yeah, after Jaybird’s comment I looked it up. It was 1924, so prohibition is definitely running in the background at least. I personally found it relatable in the other sense, having been the single guy visiting married friends and the married guy being visited. Not that my wife was waiting hand-and-foot (or even around), but I think it identifies the sort of disconnect that exists when Good Time Charlie (err Ed) settles down.Report
Yeah, I was thinking that he didn’t have a supplier and then he remembered Ed.
And then Ed was dry.Report
Certainly makes sense.Report
I think its about prohibition too, but probably because I read this comment first. I also remembered the previous entry, see atomickristin, in which the man complains that if the government can ban alcohol, why not ban meat or candy?
So, here, the man is lonesome and wants a drink, and he goes to a friends house where he is plied with candy and tobacco, but the dietary vices are not substitutes for the social vice.Report
To be fair, the different vices provide a quite different experience!
I almost commented about whether tobacco was really seen as a vice, but while the degree to which it was seen as a vice generally is disputable in other comics it is clear that Briggs did believe tobacco to be unhealthy. (Which is kind of funny, because spokesperson for cigar companies was one of his more lucrative gigs.)Report
“Vice” may be too strong a word. But I do think the Mormon views on meat, tobacco, coffee, tea and booze reflected broader 19th century folk views that these are problems at least if consumed immoderately.Report
But what he really wanted was to be happily at home with his wife like in that other Clare Briggs Prohibition cartoon. https://ordinary-times.com/2018/11/02/oh-man-prohibition/
Everyone is like “oh no don’t get her started”Report
Which he? One guy seems very happily married. The other guy seems single and resentful.Report
I’m (gently!!) poking fun at the idea that in the previous cartoon I linked to, the protagonist was happily at home with his wife. Several people claimed that was the case, but as I already talked about far too much LOL I maintain the wife was the spoiler in that one.
This cartoon has a similar theme – he can’t have fun without alcohol. Even though everyone is being perfectly hospitable he doesn’t see any of it because the lack of alcohol.Report
From what I’ve read about prohibition, it wasn’t too hard to get a drink. Speak-easys were a plenty. You were allowed to brew or vint or distill at home. There were copious religious and medical exemptions.
So the guy misses the scene of the bar and male-only bonhomie.Report
Alternatively, there could have been lots of people that couldn’t figure out how to get a drink during prohibition….Report
Before Colorado legalized it, I am not sure that I knew where to buy weed.
I mean, I guess I know that I could have bought some in Acacia Park downtown… but what would that have meant? Going downtown, walking through the park, and… what? Wander around muttering “bud, bud, looking for bud”? And then hope a guy/gal said “I got the hookup” and then we do an exchange? And then I hope that s/he’s not a narc?
And all this when, let’s face it, I look like a narc?
I mean, for you: before it got legalized, did you know where/how to buy weed?Report
Oh, I forgot the obvious point: I have a couple of friends that I’m pretty sure would have been able to hook me up had I asked. I didn’t ask and they didn’t really talk about it… but if I had asked, I’m sure that they’d have shared.
The only way that I’d have known to get weed that didn’t involve dealing with people I would have categorized as “criminals” in my head would be to deal with people like Ed.Report
In the Bay Area? The only way it could have been easier is if it had been a category in Craigslist.Report
Hrm. I suppose that that’s a good point.
I wonder how much of the country was for alcohol the way that the Bay Area was for weed.
Enough for Prohibition to fail, I guess.Report
I’m curious about that too. New York were full of speakeasies, and no doubt also Atlantic City, San Francisco, etc. Probably all big cities. And it’s hard to picture places with a long history of brewing, like Milwaukee and St. Louis, really going dry.Report
I’m trying to think now what would be a good analogy.
Trying to buy… LSD? Ecstasy?
If I wanted to buy some, I wouldn’t even begin to know where to start. And I live near a college!
(I have officially reached the age where I cannot possibly *NOT* look like a narc.)Report
I am not trying to get you started on a life of drug abuse, but …
I’m sure you know people who know people, or at least know people who know people. And Maribou must know some faculty through her job, who no doubt know people who know people who research psychoactive substances, and thus know people as part of their job. And none of these chains are going to turn you in for asking.Report
Hey, I’m just trying to think of what it’d have been like during Prohibition to find hooch.
I know that Colorado Springs was swimming in marijuana back before medicinal was legalized (let alone recreational) but I don’t know how I would have gone about buying some.
That might be a reflection of how square I am rather than how tough it would have been to get.
I suppose that that is always the issue with black markets. The worst part of prohibition wasn’t the people who drank surreptitiously. It was that they had to know a guy who knew a guy to do so.
Civil Society works better when your square people don’t have to know a guy who knows a guy.Report
And Prohibition was before they took your car if the guy you tried to buy contraband from turned out to be a cop.Report
Per my Grandparents Cain, in the small town in south-central Iowa where they lived, Tony with an orchard just outside town made wine from various fruits, assorted people brewed beer, and a couple of local moonshiners competed on quality. Law enforcement apparently wasn’t interested because: the market was a very rural county or two, no other crimes were involved, and the local judge probably drank Tony’s wine.Report
Missed Dope Connections:
You were dealing buds near the Japanese Tea Garden last Wednesday, around noon. I walked by and we made eye contact a few times, but I just kept going. Regrets. I’ve been back a few times but didn’t see you. Let me know where and when!Report
Like medical marijuana, there was an excemption for medically prescribed alcohol and doctors could prescribe the full range of products.
There were also religious exemptions. Short, this wasn’t acid levels of ban.Report
This is one of those things where I realize how old I am.
California only just got medicinal weed in 1996.
For me, that’s pretty dang recent. For younger folk, it’s been that way for as long as they can remember.Report
Berkeley effectively legalized marijuana by making it the lowest possible police priority back in 1979.Report
For decades one of the SLACs has published its letter to facility reminding them of the things incoming freshmen will have no idea about. I’m old enough to remember when they included things like: “Men landing on the moon is old history”; “They’ve never used a typewriter”; and “They’ve never licked a US postage stamp.”Report
The Mindset List by Benoit College in WisconsinReport
The last time I actively looked for someone who would sell me marijuana was 1993. The last time I actually smoked it in a small gathering of friends (one of whom was carrying) was 1995.
THE KIDS TODAY WILL NEVER KNOW THE STRUGGLE OF DANKRUPTCYReport
The College Republicans always had a contingent that loved their weed. If they were getting it, it couldn’t have been that hard.Report
What he misses is the scene of the saloon. One of the modern bar as we know it is a creation of Prohibition. Before Prohibition, nearly all drinking establishments were male only preserves. Women who drank, drank at home or at certain social events. Since speak-easies needed a broader customer base then the old saloons. Liquor and spirits of dubious quality were more widely available than beer and wine. This made cocktails more prevalent. All of this combined created the modern bar, where men and women drank together.Report