New York City bartenders keep baseball bat on menu should danger arise

Bartenders in New York City keep a baseball bat or in some cases golf clubs in handy, as an under-the-counter security measure.

Robbie G., a bartender at Red Hook's Bait and Tackle - a Brooklyn watering hole that has been robbed twice in the last six years - said that if you take out a bat it is to protect lives and own life, the New York Daily News reported.

Jef Klein, author of "The History and Stories of the Best Bars of New York" and a bartender for 14 years who found a bat at every pub that hired her, said that the baseball bat is the ubiquitous blunt instrument and is the lowest of the low-tech weapons, asserting it was the handgun of the Stone Age.