Friend Street bar says it's taking steps to keep people from getting smashed in the head with beer bottles

The Greatest Bar, 262 Friend St., sought to reassure the Boston Licensing Board today it will try to prevent a recurrence of a Dec. 22 incident in which a woman had her forehead opened up at closing by a bottle-wielding man apparently upset she had bumped into him on the dance floor earlier in the evening.

Bar attorney Curt Bletzer told the board at a hearing on the incident that bouncers now more closely monitor the multi-level bar's stairways at closing. And he said bar managers are considering a new policy that would require patrons to finish their beers on whatever floors they're on, rather than being allowed to take them downstairs or upstairs.

Bletzer acknowledged the guy "opened her head right up" with the bottle - after first spraying her with beer from it on a stairway landing during a heated discussion that apparently grew out of an incident earlier in the evening on the dance floor.

Bletzer pleaded for board understanding, saying bar staffers that night were unaware of the earlier incident and so had no reason to know that when the guy and his squad passed the woman and her posse on the stairs that the two would exchange words and that the guy would then use the beer bottle in his hand as a weapon, first as a beer spritzer, than as a cudgel.

He said that the bar manager called 911 for an ambulance as soon as he realized what had happened. Bletzer and a police detective said the woman declined a ride to a nearby hospital - but that later that night, she went to the emergency room at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington.

The board decides Thursday what action to take, if any, about the incident and an unrelated one two nights earlier in which detectives on a routine inspection found an 18-year-old with a fake Maine license downing a whiskey and ginger ale after a Bruins game.

Last month, board Chairwoman Christine Pulgini expressed exasperation at glassware-related injuries at Boston bars and said she wants her board to look at possibly barring bars with repeat incidents from serving drinks in glass.