TALE OF TWO CITIES
Maybe our mayor will note Chicago’s policies on bag bans and liquor sales, says Joe Fiorito,
A certain somebody wants to be let alone; well, then, perhaps he ought not to have entered public life. Or perhaps he ought not have entered public life dogged by the bottle and the pipe. Let it rest.
He is now alleged to have gone to Chicago, and perhaps points beyond, for a 30-day spin-and-dry. We wish him luck. But let us consider the town Billy Sunday could not shut down; hog butcher for the world, tool maker, stacker of wheat, player with railroads and the nation’s freight handler. The city of big shoulders. I would merely like to point out, yet again, that when Chicago had the chance, it elected as mayor a man who was, at the time, the second-most powerful man in the United States, while the city of Toronto elected a crack-smoking bobblehead.
If a certain someone was paying attention — perhaps he picked up a newspaper at the airport — he will have noted that Chicago city council has now dared to tread on the turf Toronto walked away from like wee little cowards not so long ago.
Chicago just passed a ban on plastic bags. The vote was 36-10 and not, as one would hope, 25 or 6 to 4. Oh come on. That’ a song, people; get with it.
The Chicago plastic bag ban takes effect next fall and will apply to any chain store — defined as a group of three or more stores with the same owner — or any franchise store of 10,000 square feet or more. Smaller stores will have to give up the bags a year later. An editorial in the Sun-Times, written before the vote was taken, noted that the alternative to plastic is not and should not be paper, which degrades more quickly but is environmentally worse to produce. Amen to that. Merchants, naturally, were opposed. I remind you that merchants are never the ones crawling around on their hands and knees in murky sewers raking the plastic away, nor have you ever found any merchants scouring the waters or fishing plastic bags from trees and bushes. Truth to tell, the Chicago bag ban is not exactly a ban, it is a 10-cent fee; as you recall, we tried that here for a nickel. Some crack-smoking blowhards, allegedly now in rehab, tried to spin it that the nickel was a tax. Read my lips: it was never a tax, it was a requirement that merchants — the ones who paid for the bags in the first place — retrieve that cost from customers. Oh, and I suppose you also think that the “free” bookmarks given away by booksellers also don’t cost anyone anything, either, even though they cost, on average, a dime apiece. But I digress. Bag ban bravo, Windy City. My only consolation in Toronto — can I call us the Windbag City? — is that here, in spite of all the blather, you are still likely to see many people, including big tough guys, heading off to the corner grocer carrying a shopping bag under their arm; me, too. But if a certain person with substance abuse issues has, as is rumoured, moved on from Chicago, then perhaps it is just as well because, in a related development — certain to tempt anyone who has ever had a come-to-Jesus moment — Chicago city council has also just decided, without debate, to allow supermarkets to sell booze as of 8 a.m. on a Sunday; previously, you had to wait until 11 a.m. before you staggered into your local Kroger’s for one bourbon, one scotch and one beer. I am shocked, I tell you. I did not know there were so many Chicagoans in the habit of picking up a mickey on the way to church, or the Steak Queen, or wherever.
Soon, perhaps, all those hog butchers and stackers of wheat will be hauling their own shopping bags when they head off for their earlymorning quarts of milk and pints of vodka.
Toddlin’ town, indeed. Joe Fiorito appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. jfiorito@thestar.ca