It's time to cast off the decades-old "Prohibition frenzy" and anti-Irish bigotry that's turning Boston into the staid preserve of large national and regional restaurant chains clustered in just one small part of the city, City Councilor Ayanna Pressley says.

The City Council tomorrow considers a request from the at-large councilor for a hearing on ways to convince the legislature to increase the number of liquor licenses that can be doled out in Boston.

In her formal hearing request, Pressley says it's time for Boston to stop paying for 1930s-era "Prohibition frenzy about alcohol and a power struggle between Yankee legislators and Irish-dominated local governments."

Pressley says the current high price of liquor licenses on the open market makes it next to impossible for budding dining entrepreneurs to "bring innovation to the cultural, arts, and culinary arenas."

She adds: "In certain communities in Boston, particularly in communities of color, the high cost of liquor licenses also makes it more difficult to develop the range of neighborhood entertainment and dining offerings necessary to attract and retain young professionals and families."

All of Blue Hill Avenue in Roxbury and Mattapan will soon be without a single bar as owners close up and sell their licenses to pricey waterfront and Back Bay establishments - with owners making up to $300,000 for their licenses. Once the Boston Licensing Board grants most of its licenses, holders are free to sell them - subject to board approval. A few licenses do have restrictions forbidding their resale.

Unfortunately for Pressley, the last person to make a similar case was state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, who is now serving a 3 1/2-year federal sentence for extortion for offering to sell one of the licenses she convinced the legislature to give Boston.

The Globe today uplifts us with a report on lax bros, those young Masters of the Universe in training in the leafy suburbs frequented by their Globe-reading parents, who are apparently now busy disposing their income on lacrosse sticks, gloves, helmets and, of course, flat-brim hats for their kids, whom they give names like Beau, Cameron and Zander:

"You check the way the kids carry themselves," said Tommy Lee, a father of two lax bros who coaches a Brookline Youth Lacrosse team of fifth- and sixth-grade boys. "It has become a really cool thing. It's like walking around with a little swagger."

More:
Is your child a lax bro?

Suffolk Downs has put up renderings and justifications for its proposed $1-billion resort hotel which, to the untrained eye, looks like something you'd expect to see at the airport, rather than as a destination.

Looks like the track and Mayor Menino will be fighting a proposal for Milford for the one eastern-Massachusetts gambling license. If successful, Suffolk Downs wants to install 4,000 to 5,000 slot machines, 200 table games and a poker room, along with "six fine dining concepts," food for those with less refined tastes (a buffet and food court) and 300 hotel rooms.

Promotional video - watch past the intro to be reassured that no, they're not planning to put it in Copley Square:

Also see: The opposing viewpoint.

Herb Reed, the last of the Platters, has died at 83. Although Reed was born in Kansas City, Mo., he had lived in the Boston area since the 1970s.

H/t Brad.