RE: RARA-AVIS: Dialect: SROs and fifths

David A. Harvey (david@reportersink.com)
Tue, 18 Aug 1998 00:43:44 -0400 SROs are a particularly New York thing. Single Room Occupancy, is correct,
but they were far from a bachelor apartment. Most SROs were subsidised by
the state to take in convicts, the unemployed, the insane, etc. SROs were
nasty evil places filled with the insane, the drunk, convicts, etc...

d

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-rara-avis@icomm.ca [mailto:owner-rara-avis@icomm.ca]On
> Behalf Of William Denton
> Sent: Monday, August 17, 1998 2:25 PM
> To: rara-avis@icomm.ca
> Subject: RARA-AVIS: Dialect: SROs and fifths
>
>
> Hi,
>
> In Block's Scudder books, there are often mentions of "SROs," which
> are some kind of hotel or boarding house. I'd only known this to
> stand for Standing Room Only, but an acronym web site turns up Single
> Room Occupancy. Is this what I'd call a bachelor apartment? One
> room, probably fairly small, with a mini-kitchen at one side (or maybe
> just a tip to go get a hot-plate) and a bathroom in a small little
> separate room? (Is this what they call a bed-sitter in the U.K.?)
>
> Also, on the alcohol topic, Americans in books always seem to be
> picking up fifths of liquor. Just how many ounces is this? Bonus
> marks for converting to litres, because there are all those different
> kinds of ounces.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bill
> --
> William Denton | Toronto, Canada | http://www.vex.net/~buff/
> | Caveat lector.
> "Let's keep the party polite."
>
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