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What you said about what we said last week
Last week’s Washington City Paper was devoted to the 2015 Summer Arts and Entertainment Guide, a collection of book, comedy, dance, film, gallery, museum, and music recommendations guaranteed to make the next few hellaciously hot months of your life a little cooler. As former City Paper Editor Mike Madden put it on Twitter, “Here’s what you’re doing this summer, D.C.” The guide, which features listings through mid-September, is no longer in newspaper boxes, but you can get a copy by visiting City Paper’s HQ.
Booze You Can Use
The evolution of distillery laws in D.C., including a new regulation permitting on-site consumption, was the subject of Jessica Sidman’s Young & Hungry column. As TheBottomlessMimosa (@TheBoMimo) accurately tweeted, “Liquor laws are more complicated and old-fashioned than I thought!” Reader Dave B picked up on a particularly strange part of the new law that requires at least half of the spirits in cocktails served at distilleries to be made on-site: “Re: Number of spirits in a cocktail. How does that legislation actually read? Are they just counting the number of alcoholic ingredients? That would be stupid. In that case, you cant have a Negroni, but you can have a shot of whiskey with one drop of Gin. It should be based on the amount of alcohol contributed to the cocktail. In that case you can have the Negroni but not the 99.99% whiskey. Gin is about 40% alcohol. Campari and vermouth are about half that (for purposes of this argument). X volume at 40% is equal to 2X volume at 20%.”
Sidman explained that the law is based on volume, to which Dave B replied, “It should be based on volume*ABV. Math is hard though. Maybe you could boil off some of the water in the vermouth and Campari to reduce the volume. Then add the water back in as a non-alcohol beverage. This seems like a lot of effort.” For a cocktail? Ain’t no mountain high enough.
Helmet Dread
Finally, our bike columnist, Gear Prudence, tackled the age-old question: Why is that cyclist’s helmet on his handlebars and not on his head? While GP had a simple answer (it’s the heat, not the stupidity), our commenters had other ideas. mldickens wrote, “Helmet on handlebars – it’s because their mom makes them take it, but they don’t want to wear it because that’s uncool. Gotta keep it around so you can put it on just before you get home!”
Department of Corrections
The Summer Arts and Entertainment Guide erroneously featured a photo of the metal band Death next to an entry about the protopunk band Death. Thank you to the many readers who pointed this out.