After LI Man's Death, Boston Bar Switches To Plastic Cups

After a Long Island man died when a shard of glass from a broken beer glass punctured his jugular vein, a Boston bar has stopped using glass vessels and is now serving its drinks in plastic cups. According to the Boston Globe, "The Lansdowne Street pub...will switch to plastic cups and nonglass bottles until a city licensing hearing next month, a practice Boston officials have used elsewhere to reduce injuries from bar fights."

After midnight on Saturday, Michael DiMaria, a Hicksville resident who just started a job on Wall Street, was hanging out with friends at the bar when a person in his group had some sort of run-in with another man, Hector Guardiola. Guardiola allegedly threw a beer glass towards DiMaria's group; the glass shattered when it hit a partition and one of the shards hit DiMaria in the neck. Two of DiMaria's friends were also injured in the incident. Guardiola pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and is being held on $75,000 bail.

Boston's director of consumer affairs and licensing, Patricia Malone, told the Globe, "It’s not a movement; it’s been on a case-by-case basis. If you’re constantly seeing beer bottles flying and people being injured, you have an issue to deal with. And I deal with it by saying, ‘You’re going to plastic, and that’s the way it’s going to be.’ No one has ever fought me on it." Malone added some establishments decided on their own to use plastic: "Slainte Bar & Bistro in South Boston voluntarily agreed to switch to plastic cups last year during a licensing hearing that was called following a number of glass-related assaults there, Malone said."

However, one bar owner said the switch would be difficult, expensive and "very time-consuming," especially if beers from glass bottles had to be poured into plastic cups: "They’re probably crazy busy during Red Sox games, and that would draw back from the speed they’d be able to serve a packed house."