![]() ![]() Italian-American speakeasy owners sparked widespread interest in Italian food by serving it with wine. Restaurants offering booze targeted women, uncomfortable sitting at a bar, with table service. No longer segregated from drinking together, men and women reveled in speakeasies and another Prohibition-created venue, the house party. ![]() They ranged from fancy clubs with jazz bands and ballroom dance floors to dingy backrooms, basements and rooms inside apartments. The illicit bars, also referred to as “blind pigs” and “gin joints,” multiplied, especially in urban areas. The result of Prohibition was a major and permanent shift in American social life. Another option was to enter private, unlicensed barrooms, nicknamed “speakeasies” for how low you had to speak the “password” to gain entry so as not to be overheard by law enforcement. People wanting to drink had to buy liquor from licensed druggists for “medicinal” purposes, clergymen for “religious” reasons or illegal sellers known as bootleggers. When Prohibition took effect on January 17, 1920, many thousands of formerly legal saloons across the country catering only to men closed down. Speakeasies Were Prohibition’s Worst-Kept Secrets ![]()
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