Tag Archives: babies

NY Times on Babies in Bars, (co-written by Yelp)

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There must be some stat sent to all publications that says if you create a conflict between parents and non-parents, readership goes up. Because there can be no other reason for the New York Times piece “A Child-Friendly Beer Garden Doesn’t Seem So Friendly to Some Adults.” The premise is this, the new Park Slope beer garden, Greenwood Park, welcomes parents to bring their children to the open-air spacious garden bar, but the childless patrons think the children are running amok, and there is a deep tension between adult drinkers and the self-involved parents.

It’s an overused interesting meme story, expect that all the “complaints” about children in the bar come from Yelp. The Times does quote a couple of parents at the bar who are glad there is a place they can relax with their children, but all the vitriol comes from quoting a website whose main purpose is to vent and spew vitriol.

This storty had two reporters, yet the Gray Lady really couldn’t find one real person to go on record? I doubt even the snarky (yet often hilarious) Brooklyn blog Fucked in Park Slope, would call this “reporting.”

I’m sure I could find Yelp reviews on a bar that has too many “frat-boys” and an equal number who love the bar, but I would hardly consider a made up feud worthy enough to get over one thousand words in the New York Times.

But if they are using Yelp as a source, the the Times should definitely send over Frank Bruni to this place.

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Passengers Push for Child-Free Flights…Except the 80% That Don’t

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If you are to believe the headline of the The New York Times article this weekend, Passengers Push for Child-Free Flights, airline passengers are mad as hell at those snot-nose kids on flights, and they are not going to take it anymore.  But the article offers mostly just anecdotal accounts of some passengers bad experiences of flights with unruly children. The one “empirical” study, a survey of 2,000 travelers released by Skyscanner, seemed to contradict the title of the article, “early 20 percent said they would like to see airlines offer child-free flights.”  That means over 80 percent do not want child-free flights, but why let facts get in the way of a good anti-children story.

Rounding up a bunch of people complain about how their flight was ruined by a screaming baby is easier than getting people to complain about the fat-cat in Washington.  The only redeeming part of this article is that the airlines pretty much refused to even validate the premise.

This is just one article in what I am noticing as an alarming anti-child trend.  There seems to be more and more stories of people complaining about entitled kids/parents.  But the allegations always seem to be unfounded once you get to the second paragraph of the article.  Maybe I am just more attuned to these stories now, but I don’t recall there being such animosity towards parents and children in the past.