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Posted on 04/12/2004 2:39:03 PM PDT by sarcasm

You can bet they won't be serving Rheingold at Gracie Mansion anytime soon.

The brewery has declared war on City Hall with a series of in-your-face television ads attacking the smoking ban, cabaret laws and silly summonses.

"This is New York, and we can't sleep till we take it back," the narrator declares in the three commercials, which start airing Wednesday on cable.

Each 30-second spot tackles a different enforcement issue.

In "Cabaret," actors are seen break dancing all around town until a banner comes up on the screen announcing: "No Dancing. Fine: $3,000."

Another features a montage of people sitting on milk crates - a reference to Daily News stories about a man getting ticketed for turning a crate into a chair.

But it's the "Ashtray" spot that's sure to be the most controversial, depicting hipsters striding down city streets with ashtrays in their pockets.

They march into a bar, pound down their ashtrays and are served ice-cold Rheingold before the screen fades to this message: "No Smoking in Bars. Fines Issued: $200 up."

The message had anti-smoking activists fuming.

"It's as close to encouraging breaking the law as you can get," said Gene Borio, who runs the Web site www.tobacco.org and supports the city's ban on smoking in bars.

Mayor Bloomberg's office dismissed the ads as a cynical ploy by Rheingold, which closed its Brooklyn doors in 1976 and started brewing again in upstate Utica five years ago.

"When times were tough, Rheingold abandoned Brooklyn, laying off 4,000 New Yorkers," said Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for Bloomberg.

"Now that times are better, they want to exploit the city to sell their product. They have as much of a connection to New York as Heineken does."

Rheingold chief executive Tom Bendheim said he went after the smoking ban and other issues because they're important to the bars and consumers who buy his beer.

"We're trying to impress on people that the foundation of what the city was built on was Bohemia, and every one of these laws ... just begins to erode the foundation of what makes the city great," said Neil Powell, the ad's creator.

Powell put together a list of topics for future ads, including the restriction on feeding pigeons, a ban on bikers lifting both feet off the pedals, and a ticket given to a pregnant woman who stopped to rest on subway steps.

But what does any of it have to do with beer?

"It should appeal to the people that enjoy nightlife in New York City," Powell said. "And drinking beer is part of that."

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