DADWAGON

Sometimes you have to wonder what the fine folk who run New York City are thinking.

The Times ran this piece yesterday about a playground in a housing project in Bedford-Stuyvesant, for many years one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods and still an area with more than its share of violent crime. The playground has a jungle gym set up to look like a prison, complete with the word “Jail” printed on it, and a cell door and prison bars.

A few locals, not surprisingly, were not amused. Said one parent of a 6-year-old: “it was like promoting kids to go to jail.”

Protests to city officials have been made of late, largely spearheaded by a professor at the City University of New York named Lumumba Bandele. Badele pointed out to the the Times that “this community along with six others in New York City makes up the majority of the prison population in New York State,” a context which makes the playground feature “insulting.”

I tend to agree. Not that kids shouldn’t be allowed to play prison games if they want–I certainly did. But to locate it in Bed-Stuy (the city said one other such jungle gym exists but wouldn’t say where) is insensitive at best and racial profiling at worst.

Readers, go check out the photos of it in the article. Tell me if I’m wrong.

(This is the Tantrum, in which Dadwagon’s writers debate one question over the course of a week. For previous Tantrums, click here.)

Are you out of your mind? Of course not.

The social contract holds that a first-rate dinner should not be spoiled by many things, and intrusive behavior from a nearby high chair is one of them. If you can truly guarantee that your child is an angel throughout the meal, then you will be allowed in. But I challenge you to make such an ironclad guarantee without the involvement of a tranquilizer dart. I’d never subject you to dealing with a charmingly ebullient little kid at dinner when you’re paying a fortune and expecting something transcendent; I’m asking you to do the same.

The fact is, at a serious restaurant—and I’m talking about Daniel or Le Bernardin here, not your neighborhood tuna-burger kinda place, where child-friendliness is best gauged on a case-by-case basis—the dinner is essentially a performance, with subtleties and complexities intended for adults. (“Restaurants are to people in the eighties what theatre was to people in the sixties,” as Nora Ephron put it in her script for When Harry Met Sally...) If a child is old enough to see an O’Neill play, then I’d say he’s ready for David Bouley. Not till then.

Besides! The whole point of serious dining is to get the hell out of the house and do something grown-up for a couple of hours. Preferably after dark! You keep your kid at home, I’ll do the same, and we can clink glasses from adjoining tables. Given the hassle and cost of a sitter, not to mention the dinner check itself, it will happen very, very infrequently.

Apparently, people just can’t get enough of the “babies in bars in Brooklyn” controversy: LX.TV, which is part of NBC, is having me on at 5 p.m. ET tonight to discuss the subject, so tune in to TimeWarner Cable channel 161 to watch the excitement!

Also: The producers asked me where they could get pick-up shots of parents with babies in bars. I told them Pacific Standard, on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, might work, so if you want to participate in the great debate of our times, bring your child there and order a pint or two.

Update: Alas, the TV producers don’t have time to shoot at Pacific Standard today. But go there and have a drink anyway, with or without your kid. They’ve got amazing beers on tap.

Did anyone out there read Matt’s newest “Frugal Traveler” blog post? What am I saying–did anyone out there not read it? The man’s an industry unto himself. Anyway, shockingly, it’s all all about free liquor. Whoa! Matt and alcohol? I can’t believe it.

That’s a joke. For those of you who don’t actually know Matt in person (there are some, hard as it is to believe), but he’s actually a TOTAL FRICKING DRUNK. Don’t believe me? Well, how about this article on bars that give away free food? Is there a phrase for twelve-step in drunken-ese? Or this one, where he goes drunk biking? Or this one on Vilnius, which is supposed to be about tracing his family’s roots, but is really about black beer?

Here at Dadwagon, of course, we all know that he likes to get sloshed with Sasha, but hey, we all love that. We’re drunken fathers too. But to make it a profession? If you’ve got the number for a good interventionist, please send ASAP. Things are gonna end ugly with this, I’m afraid.

In his honor, then, I would like to recommend that our dear readers peruse some of the selections at Youtube that pop up after a simple “drunk baby” search. It’s enlightening.

My favorite: this little one about a squirrel, some Heineken, and a videographer who hates animals. Enjoy.