SLA says East Village resident's drunk brunch suit doesn't belong in court

Last month, East Village resident Robert Halpern sued the State Liquor Authority (SLA) over a loophole in the 1999 law that allows bottomless brunches (drunk brunch, drunch, etc).

As the Post reports, the SLA has responded to the the Manhattan Supreme Court suit. They don't think much of it, and asked the court to dismiss.

“Halpern’s motivation behind alleging these complaints is his self-interest against increased noise and crowds in his community,” the SLA says in court papers.

“Halpern substitutes his own personal judgement for that of the Authority. … Halpern’s remedy, simply put, cannot be found within the walls of this Courthouse.”

Here's how The Real Deal first reported on the lawsuit last month:

“There are too may people running around drinking all the time,” Halpern told The Real Deal. “It’s become more and more of a drinking culture here.”

Halpern’s argument is that bottomless brunches are prohibited by a provision against selling unlimited alcohol for a set time and a set price. The Liquor Authority’s legal counsel has previously taken the position that “brunch specials” are considered special events and exempted from the provision. The suit makes the case that weekly bottomless brunches should not be exempt.

I asked Halpern, a lawyer and longtime resident of the East Village, what the next steps are with the suit.

"Next step in this case is for me to reply to motion to dismiss, and the papers get submitted on Dec. 6," he said in an email. "A motion to dismiss is a commonplace tactic. I don't think there's much merit to the motion, especially considering I am not asking for money, but for a ruling that the Liquor Authority is wrong.

"A judge could rule that the bottomless brunches are illegal under the statute, and the Authority could still decide not to to anything about them, though they are obligated to investigate complaints," Halpern said.

In search of drunk-brunch answers at the Post

This past week, East Village resident Robert Halpern sued the State Liquor Authority over a loophole in the 1999 law that allows bottomless brunches.

Steve Cuozzo uses that as a jumping off point in a column at the Post. Drunk brunch, and drinking in general among the millennial set, is a citywide scourge, he writes.

There’s never been as much binge boozing as there is today. It stretches far beyond the Lower East Side’s infamous “Hell Zone” to Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg and Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side. In the Meatpacking District, vomit on the pavement makes me cringe more than smelly carcasses once did. Even hotel rooftops and high-end restaurants are affected: Top chef Michael White actually employs a bouncer to stand on Lafayette Street to protect his Italian trattoria Osteria Morini from “young, affluent, intoxicated people stumbling from one place to the next,” a manager explained to me.

Any explanations?

A few causes of this drunken oblivion are obvious. Affluent young singles cluster in neighborhoods oversaturated with saloons. Restaurants promote “beverage programs” more than food.

Some media outlets seem bent on driving half the youthful population into AA. Time Out New York’s September issue feature on the craft-beer scene is blurbed on the magazine’s cover as “67% information, 33% inebriation.”

Also! Citing stats that show Manhattan is home to 38 percent more women than men among recent college graduates, Cuozzo believes the imbalance is driving this demographic to drink.

What’s that got to do with binge drinking? When gender expectations are wildly out of sync, anxiety is soothed with alcohol’s fast-acting flood of relief.

East Village resident sues State Liquor Authority over bottomless brunches

East Village resident Robert Halpern, a lawyer who has lived here for more than 30 years, is in the news after he sued the State Liquor Authority over a loophole in the 1999 law that allows bottomless brunches (drunk brunch, drunch, etc).

The Real Deal first had the story yesterday:

These weekend specials, where you pay a set price for unlimited alcohol during brunch hours, are prohibited by law, according to Halpern’s complaint, and they’re contributing to the “deterioration of the neighborhood.”

According to Halpern’s calculations, there are 679 active liquor licenses in the East Village alone, and the Liquor Authority keeps approving more. There were 305 new liquor licenses approved in the area in 2016, and 243 in 2017.

“There are too may people running around drinking all the time,” Halpern told The Real Deal. “It’s become more and more of a drinking culture here.”

From the Post:

“Anybody who has lived in this neighborhood for a while knows that it’s gotten out of w​h​ack. There’s no balance anymore in terms of people living here and people just deciding to have fun here,” he said.

The SLA has claimed that bottomless brunches — where customers pay a set amount for endless mimosas and Bloody Marys — are exempt from a rule prohibiting unlimited drinks because the “service of alcohol is incidental to the event.”

Halpern insists that’s nonsense.

“Alcoholic beverages are not ‘incidental’ to the bottomless brunches, they are intrinsic to them,” he said.

And the Daily News:

A Liquor Authority spokesman said that state law prohibited over-serving — even during bottomless brunch.

"Serving unlimited drinks is prohibited under the Alcoholic Beverage Control law, and instances of over serving by our licensees are aggressively investigated and prosecuted," SLA spokesman Bill Crowley said, adding that the law does provide for certain "special circumstances."

His complaint reportedly enumerates 17 bottomless brunches available in the East Village, including the Cloister Cafe on Ninth Street, Jeepney on First Avenue and Pardon My French on Avenue B.

Report: Cuomo clears way for brunch drinking to start at 10 a.m. on Sundays

As you may have heard, Gov. Cuomo and the NY Legislature agreed to reform the state's Alcohol Beverage Control Law that reportedly dated back some 80 years.

So, soon, bars and restaurants in the city will be able to start serving drinks at 10 a.m. on Sundays instead of noon.

To the Post:

“Before I was in the [restaurant] industry, I would order a drink at 11:30 a.m. And I would say, ‘What do you mean you can’t serve me?’ ” said Danny Mena, 36, who co-owns Hecho En Dumbo in the East Village. “It was quite an archaic law.”

Nicolas Lorentz, 35, general manager of Lafayette in the same neighborhood, said the extra two hours would boost the bottom line.

“The brunch crowd is a drinking crowd. This is helpful to any brunch restaurant in New York City. We will get more people coming here early,” Lorentz predicted.

This may go into effect as early as this coming Sunday. Which means that you may have to avoid parts of Avenue B even earlier now.