Two Bars in Storyville

A friend lives in Storyville [a pseudonym], out on Staten Island. There are two bars in his town. (Here, "town" should be understood as in the context of London, which is a city through the aggregation of a multitude of little towns.) One of them is operated by an old-timer from the neighborhood. Another is owned by a woman who lives one town away, about a mile-and-a-half distant. Therefore, she is an "outsider," interfering in the natural order of the neighborhood. And, as a result, a couple of biker thugs hang out in her bar frequently, threatening people who come in, and telling them they should go drink at the bar down the street.

What dedication to xenophobia! Because a woman from a town less than 10,000 feet away opened a bar in "their" neighborhood, these guys are willing to hang out in the bar they don't like in order to drive people to the one they do.

Utopian schemes based on the "brotherhood of man" are surely doomed if living a couple of klicks apart on Staten Island marks people as being from alien cultures that can't get along!