How Drinking in New Orleans Debunks Assumptions about Public Behavior

"In New Orleans, Louisiana, there is this magical thing where you can put your alcoholic drink in a plastic cup of any kind and leave the establishment you are patronizing—or even your own very house—and go outside," writes Lisa Wade.

"The bars and restaurants have them for your convenience and many residents keep a supply on hand too."

Wade's recent trip to New Orleans presented Wade with an opportunity to reflect on public drinking laws as a "great example of how we internalize rules invented by humans to the point where they feel like laws of nature."

The example of go-cups could inform other assumptions about out our behavior in public places—if not the long-standing prohibition on public consumption of alcoholic beverages, there is, for instance, the many regulations that segregate and regulate the use of streets to transportation modes.