ALL NEWS POSTS:

No more booze on London’s Tube

Attention College Drinkers going abroad:

Newly-elected London mayor Boris Johnson says he is pushing through a ban on drinking on London’s Underground transport system. The ban will be phased in starting June 1, 2008 and will encompass all trains, buses, stations and platforms as an effort to curb minor crime and hopefully improve safety. For Americans traveling or studying in Britain, this is a change that will remind them of home. Now that pint can will need to be wrapped in a brown paper bag, just like on the Subway or the El.

Coffin Custom-Made to Look Like a Beer Can

South Chicago resident Bill Bramanti loves Pabst Blue Ribbon so much that he could never part with it. Now he will never have to.

The 67-year-old man ordered a custom casket from Panozzo Bro. Funeral home in Chicago Heights, and had Scott Sign of Chicago Heights make a huge wrapping designed to make the coffin look like a can of his favorite brew.

But that’s not all: He threw a party last Saturday for his friends and filled the coffin with ice and PBR, using it as a cooler.

“Why put such a great novelty piece up on a shelf in storage when you could use it only the way Bill Bramanti would use it?” said Bramanti’s daughter, Cathy Bramanti, 42.

But Bramanti says he does plan to be buried in the casket when the time comes, “I actually fit, because I got in here.”

No More ID for Grandpa

New provision on Universal Carding bill in Tennessee would remove penalties for not carding a person who “reasonably appears to be over the age of 50.”

Current law in Tennessee requires universal carding for alcohol purchase. That means that even senior citizens must present ID before they are allowed to purchase alcohol. This provision has led to a growing revolt among angry, older beer drinkers.

“There were, apparently, I hope this is politically correct, a lot of much older people who just didn’t like being carded, and they especially didn’t like being carded if it was somewhere where they were a usual customer,” says Emily C. LeRoy, associate director of the Tennessee Oil Marketers Association, which represents many convenience stores.

The current bill is scheduled to expire July 1, and lawmakers expect to extend it, but with one caveat: lawmakers removed penalties for clerks who don’t card a customer who “reasonably appears to be over the age of 50 and who failed to present an acceptable form of identification.”

LeRoy says, if the customer is someone the clerk “clearly knows” or has carded before and knows for sure is over age 50, they do not have to card them.

“It’s been kind of a hassle checking everyone,” said Shannon Hammett, store manager at Riverside Wine and Spirits Warehouse in Chattanooga. “The store clerk has good judgment. People complain (about showing their ID), especially if they are busy, like on Friday when everyone just wants to go have a beer.”

Looks like to get beer in Tennessee, all you have to do is hit up the costume shop before hand, and do your best fake limp.

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