There are shipping containers parked in front of The Emerson on Chapel Street now. Not temporarily. Not for a renovation. To stop people shooting through the front door.

That’s where we are.

I’ve been watching the discussion around this online, and the thing that strikes me isn’t the debate about whether shipping containers are actually bulletproof (they’re not, particularly, though apparently two walls of corrugated steel do mess with ballistics in useful ways). It’s not even the broader conversation about organised crime and illegal tobacco rackets bleeding into standover tactics against ordinary hospo venues. All of that is genuinely serious and worth its own column.