BRICKBATS.

• Author: Oliver, Charles

Fire officials showed up at the UpperWest wine bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and told the owner the restaurant could no longer use candles at tables, citing a city ordinance. The ordinance turned out to be a new paragraph on the fire department's website that had been added without public comment or notice. "Some person put a sentence on the website," UpperWest owner Kim Courtney told a local news station. "That does not create a law." The city's licensing commission disagreed, suspending the bar's alcohol license for three days for the violation.

Health officials fined a Quebec theater $500 after an actor lit a fake prop cigarette during a performance of the play Conversations Avec Mon Penis. Marc Gourdeau, artistic director of the Premier Acte theater in Quebec City, said the offense occurred during a scene in which a man argues with a woman dressed as a giant penis. "The penis is OK, killing people is OK, all kind of things is OK--but smoking sage cigarettes is not OK," he complained.

An investigation by the South Florida Sun Sentinel concluded that the state's schools routinely fail to report crimes that take place on campus. The newspaper found that many schools have reported no crimes at all, even after major crimes were reported in the media. Florida law requires schools to report crimes to state officials but contains no penalties for those that don't.

The London Underground mass transit system pulled a Christmas-themed ad for Lumen, a dating app for those over 50. The ad features a shirtless "sexy Santa" with gray hair and a gray beard and features the tag line "Pull a cracker this Christmas," an apparent double entendre referring to the British tradition of Christmas...