Get a grip on glassware

Remember those teachers who made everyone in the class stay in for recess because one jerk couldn’t stop misbehaving in class?

Well, with a warning that it might require some high-end bars to start using plastic cups instead of glasses for serving drinks the Boston Licensing Board is the teacher — and the patrons of those bars who in a couple of cases used bottles or glasses as weapons are the jerks.

The Herald reported last week that the board threatened to forbid the use of glassware at offending bars if it finds a pattern of their use as weapons. Two chi-chi bars were before the board to discuss recent assaults at their establishments.

“If we see a pattern of glass as a weapon it will no longer be allowed,” board Chairwoman Christine Pulgini told representatives of Minibar, a bar in the Copley Square Hotel. “You may be high end, but you’re not acting high end.”

But if the issue is drunken patrons hurling glasses or breaking beer bottles over each other’s heads — well, Michael Anthony, general manager at Townsman, said it all when he spoke to a Herald reporter. To borrow an expression, glasses don’t hurt people — drunk people hurt people. There are easier ways for the city to get an offending establishment’s attention than forcing it to serve margaritas in Solo cups. Shut it down for a while — and don’t let it buy its way out of a license suspension. Or slap it with an eye-catching fine. Nothing will encourage a bar to hire a few more bruising bouncers than the prospect of having to fork over big bucks if its patrons misbehave.

The city clearly felt some blowback from Pulgini’s comments, as the mayor’s office rushed to assure the public that no, there are no immediate plans to impose a ban on martini glasses. It seems as if this was a case of the board making its anger clear over what is truly absurd behavior by adults.