The looks on the t0-be thieves faces were priceless. The hissy fits that they threw after realizing they couldn’t steal soda were pretty funny too.

Testimony obtained in sworn depositions of Cheba Hut employees indicate that the pressure to serve was couched in terms of a beverage-driven proto-version (this was back in 1987, believe it or not) of the politically correct “you can’t single people out” trope.

Internal BPD memos of the era obtained under the CFOIA reveal a more insidious basis for this early reach of Boulder’s Big Brother into the day to day operations of a nominally private commercial enterprise. Turns out the BPD chief had transferred from the NYPD a few years previously, where his first beat had been in lower Manhattan and had included
Max’s Kansas City. His time in the neighborhood had had the effect of turning the then rookie cop into a bit of a conceptual artist, so when he got wind of the straws and sweetener info, he decreed that the Dr.P-loving market would be catered to by any means necessary, hence the evolution of the BPD’s PC BS against “beverage profiling”. The Chief had something in mind and was channeling all of his extra-legal authority toward the goal of making his dream a reality.

The night before he was to retire, the Chief’s vision (or whatever a vision should be called if it involves 95% audio) finally came to pass when he was, as had become his wont, haunting the Cheba Hut parking lot.
He saw the Dr.P-wielding trio come out the front door, so obviously wasted that he got a little contact buzz from just watching.
This was what he had imagined, so ideally a Three Stooges of stonerdom that they might as well have been named Baked, Toasted, and Fried.
Huddled over the hood of their dilapidated 1972 Pinto, one unpocketed the filched goods with the sort of surreptitious flourish that only the herbally blissed seem to be capable of executing, tore open a blue packet and proceeded, albeit quite slowly, the bud in Boulder being quite beatific back in the late 80′s, to crush the white contents on the orange hood and fashion the resulting extra-fine dust into a sort of 3-spoked powdery peace sign, after which Baked and Toasted pulled out straws and the trio got down to hoovering up every last morsel of that aspartame goodness.
Watching from the shadows, but still able to see the whole tableau thanks to the glass layout in his recently introduced 1985 Jeep Cherokee,
the Chief kept his glass rolled up all around, knowing that any sound he heard from the Stooges would only spoil the moment, the interior, mental audio track of which was a tune he had heard for the first time on his first night on the first street of his first beat.

The tableau and the tune synchronized sweetly to show once again that sometimes life does imitate art, and as the Chief’s mind bounced rapidly (like a metaphorical golf ball in a tile shower) between the short-lived glam-rock scene of 1970′s NYC and what then, back in 1987, was “now”, what he heard on both time-walls was what he realized he simply had to use as background music for his answering machine, starting tomorrow when he was retired and would not have to explain it to thee, occasional citizen, politician, or journalist. http://bit.ly/rQ077R

It’s up to the restaurant to work that .00003¢ mouthful of soda into their overhead costs. I never buy a soda when all I need is a sip. Sometimes I just grab a swig off of the next guy’s drink while he’s getting napkins.

Here’s a tip for those chintzy places that charge you a quarter for the empty cup. First, I make sure everything’s clear; “So the water is free, but the CUP is a quarter??” When they agree, I pull out my Boy Scout canteen. Then I go fill it up with Mountain Dew.

Seriously, everybody’s saying “Soda costs nothing” but then “Don’t you dare steal a miniscule amount.” Yeah- while you’re at it, why don’t you try to make me give back the twenty napkins and dozen Catsup packets I already have in my pockets?

Gawd- I’d hate to hear what the collective agitators have to say about my handful of eat-n-runs I’ve pulled at the local Steak-n-Shake (same goofy waiter every time!)

UNCF – (United National Cola Foundation)

Coca-Cola people are much more trustworthy.