Let Boston bars stay open until 4 a.m., he says

FTA: Somewhere in this sea of backward baseball caps, skimpy tops, and sausage vendors lurk serious public policy considerations.

So that's the new euphemism for drunken frat guys these days? Sausage vendors?

Huh, learn something new every day.

Four reasons why Harmon's proposal doesn't make a wit of sense:

1. The Seventh Inning Rule: Ever been to a game at Fenway? The ballpark works a variant of this system, cutting off the sale of alcohol after the seventh inning, giving fans a little while to sober up before the hit the road. And fans, in consequence, stream into the bowels of the park, and return to their seats each clutching a pair of beers. That's because at Fenway, two beers is as much alcohol as any one fan can buy at a time. But that's not true in a bar. It's not my scene. But if I were intent on partying all night, I'd have the barkeep line up a row of shots at 1:55AM, and keep on going as long as I wanted. All you can do is bar the further sale of alcohol - you can't keep people from finishing the drinks they already have. Worse, there's good evidence that 'limited time' offers spur consumers to overpurchase - they buy as much as they can imagine wanting, not as much as they want right then. So you end up with people tanking up, stockpiling drinks, and generally bingeing. Thanks, but no thanks.
2. Supply and Demand: Harmon complains that Boston lacks late-night transit. And his solution to this very real problem is to keep the bars open even longer after the T shuts down? More to the point, he posits that private companies may capitalize on the market by ferrying customers home. But even if that would work - and its not clear that consumers want it or the city would allow it - it would rely on aggregating demand. If all the bars shut down at the same time, spilling their customers into the streets, there are enough passengers to run a business. Stagger departures over a couple of hours, and it gets much, much harder to make that work.
3. Speakeasies: We know that Senator Galluccio (apparently) got himself in trouble by emerging incredibly drunk from a restaurant hours after its liquor license ran out for the night. The proprietor says he was just eating - good luck selling that story. The reality is that if there's alcohol behind the bar, some customers are going to find a way to get it. At best, you're going to need a wide-ranging enforcement operation. At worst, you add on another two hours of unsanctioned drinking.
4. The 24-hour diner: Most of these problems could be avoided if people were genuinely interested in what Harmon asserts they are - having a salty snack, sobering up, and then heading up later on. That's what diners are for - and they have the added benefit of not serving alcohol. Wouldn't it make sense to clone the South Street Diner a dozen times, rather than license bars to operate even later into the night? And since we have almost no 2AM dining options, what does that say about the market demand Harmon assumes is there?

Now, I don't have a seat on the Globe's Editorial board. But from where I do sit, this proposal is just plain wrong. You can mandate an earlier closing hour. You can extend T service on weekends, footing the substantial bill as the price of public safety. You can attempt to offer other outlets - like late-night diners - to absorb the bar patrons being turned out on to the street. But at the end of the night, "someone's daughter" will still be passed out in the gutter. The problem here is excessive and irresponsible drinking, and tinkering with closing times won't solve that - in fact, it's likely to make it worse.

Montreal has a drinking age of 18. Clubs are open pretty late, as I recall.

How does that all work out for them? Do they have less of a drunk student party problem in neighborhoods? Do they have less binge drinking landing youths in the hospital? Fights and arrests for drunken stupidity? How late does the transit run?

This is a real city that isn't all that much different than Boston in many important ways - what can we learn from them? From other cities? Why reinvent the wheel when the laboratory is out there?