It's enough to drive you to drink

Drinking is not always easy in New York.

Drinking is not always easy in New York. The liquid lunch is still mostly frowned upon - unless you are talking iced tea or water - and, according to my girlfriends, first dates with American men are still more likely to involve tepid lattes at Starbucks than inhibition-loosening martinis in a dimly lit bar.

It has been 70 years since the repeal of Prohibition, but this country remains curiously neurotic when it comes to consuming alcohol. There are more laws and regulations in America to do with booze than there are bubbles in a magnum of Veuve. I am not sure who is to blame. The Puritans, per- haps, the conservative right, or Donny Osmond. (Mormons and Merlot do not mix, as you know.)

Even today, there are communities across the country that are dry. Martha's Vineyard has an oenophilic name, but the sale of wine, even in restaurants, is banned in parts of the island. And, as many a gap-year traveller to the US knows, there is no penetrating the bars or clubs here if you are not 21 - even though kids here are deemed old enough to command a car when just 15.

There is a functioning Prohibition Party still, which was founded back in 1869, and its candidate for the presidency, Gene Amondson, is right now asking voters to trade their champagne for cherryade and to take up arms against Budweiser and Coors. The White House sommelier need not quake, however. There will be no President Amondson in 2005.

Coming to New York for the first time, there are a few things to get used to. Off-licences are "liquor stores" here. And remember that they are not open on Sundays. (Mostly.) Supermarkets can sell beer, except on Sundays, but no wine or spirits. Liquor stores cannot sell soft drinks, which normally includes tonic water.

It gets worse. There is no walking home with your purchase in plain view. Booze must be brown-bagged at all times, lest you flaunt your intention to partake and, God forsake, encourage others to do the same. To be spotted actually swigging on the street by a police officer spells immediate arrest.

But things are improving. For a year now, a new law has allowed a limited number of liquor stores in New York City to open on a Sunday. If they do so, they must close on another regular weekday, however. And now we even have the wine doggy bag phenomenon.

It was The New York Times that alerted me to this welcome rewriting of the regulations by the State Liquor Authority. As of September, restaurants in the city and across the state were free to permit diners to take home any wine that may be left in the bottle when it comes to paying the bill. Doggy bag seems an inapt moniker in this case. I suggest we call them "booze bags" from now on.

Needless to say, the new regulation is not simple. Only a "bona fide restaurant", with "suitable kitchen facilities connected therewith, containing conveniences for cooking an assortment of food", can send patrons home with half-full bottles. The wine must have been "purchased in connection with a full-course meal" and that meal cannot be consumed "while standing or walking". Bar food does not count.

Moreover, the restaurant must take several steps before handing back the bottle. The bottle must be recorked and then placed in a clear plastic bag that is sealed and "tamper-proof" and, finally, the receipt for the full meal must be attached to the outside.

Such pesky details, I suspected, might defeat even the most sophisticated of restaurants. To find out, I immediately repaired to one of my favourites in the city, Les Halles, on Park Avenue South. I carefully paced myself to ensure that once I was done, my bottle of house Les Halles St-Emilion would not be completely emptied. "I'd like to take this home," I informed my waitress, who was from Paris.

Just as I thought. After telling me that that was out of the question, I tried to assure her - and then the manager - that things had changed. Taking the bottle was no problem, I insisted. But did they have the special bags? Of course they didn't. And it's not clear to me what a tamper-proof bag would look like.

Soon, the folks at Les Halles lost patience. My St-Emilion was returned to me, but concealed in an entirely opaque white plastic bag that bore the name of a local chain of chemists. "Just take it, monsieur," the waitress begged, exasperated by the whole subject. "The laws in this country are crazy."

Crazy or not, restaurant and patron were breaking them at that moment. My bottle clanking against the keys in my pocket, I none the less got home unimpeded by curious police officers. There, we enjoyed the rest of the fine red wine - with the pug getting none of it.

Time to put the cowboy boot in

What's next, a Tupperware convention in Greenwich Village? There was enough weirdness last month, when New York played host to 50,000 Republicans and George Bush. Didn't they know the city is about as Republican as Fidel Castro's Cuba?

But now it's the turn of the country & western brigade. Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared at a press conference last week in a cowboy hat, no less, to reveal that the 2005 Country Music Awards will be held, not in Nashville, Tennessee, as they have been for 30 years, but in Madison Square Garden.

There must be a country fan somewhere in the five boroughs. But the only cowboy I have ever spotted in town is the naked one on Times Square. (Well almost naked, save for the white briefs.)