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Posted on 04/05/2003 1:21:38 AM PST by sarcasm

ow that the cigarettes are, in theory, banished from the great indoors, the foodies can freely sniff the aroma of their truffled entrees. The air in the taverns is at least as clear as the air on a subway platform.

But out in the park, it is awfully hard to breathe. Walking down the sidewalk can seem dangerously precancerous. Gardens and enclosed patios are suddenly, just on the brink of balmy weather, impossible settings for the pure of lung. And it seems reasonable to ask if pregnant women will soon be seeking refuge in bars.

The little knots of smokers who have been huddled near the doors of office buildings for years have sprouted, as predicted, in front of the city's bars and restaurants. But the problem is not the noise, which was so direly predicted before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's smoking ban took effect early this week. It is the smoke.

Workplace hazard? Think of the doormen, bouncers and valet parkers, not to mention the gardeners. Think of the man outside Guernica on Avenue B on Thursday night, next to the velvet rope. (Velvet really absorbs that tobacco odor.) He had just quit smoking, but thick plumes danced, temptingly, around him. Give this man, who lives in the Bronx and said his name is St. Eyes, a nicotine patch. His resolve is being tested.

"When I see everybody smoking cigarettes out here, it's a little tempting to ask them for one, but I've been depending on my willpower," St. Eyes said.

Over in Greenwich Village, Jean West, 46, came out of the Blue Note marveling at how fresh her clothing still smelled and giving active consideration to the potential health benefits of the ban. But, invoking every New Yorker's right to a whole menagerie of pet peeves, she quickly shifted to disgust.

"On the other hand," she said, "the streets are definitely starting to stink more. I feel like I'm always ducking the cloud, you know?"

Ms. West, a stagehand, held her nose and staggered around an imaginary cloud of tobacco smoke. "And if you want to go into a bar now, you have to walk through a pile of old butts," she said.

To some, it seems as if the city's ashtrays have been taken outside and collectively dumped in the streets, lending them the perpetual appearance of a shag carpet the day after the party.

"If you're inside the club, you ash in an ashtray," Joel Santiago, 32, complained to his friend Julani Benjamin, 24, outside the West End Bar on 113th Street and Broadway. "But now smokers are outside, and they just ash all over the place. I mean, stale butts, you know how bad that smells?"

There are places where alfresco smokers may as well be indoors. Like the recessed entrance to 11 West 42nd Street, where Simon Rosen, who often passes through the building on his way to work at the New York Public Library, runs the tobacco gantlet.

"Anytime you have a bunch of them with the smoke wafting, it's very unpleasant," said Mr. Rosen, who added that he was particularly sensitive to tobacco smoke. Then he said, "My eyes are starting to burn," and departed.

Forest fires are not the only hazard of outdoor smoking, as Anne Mullen, an ad producer, is quick to point out. Ms. Mullen, who has a baby daughter named Charlotte, said she had found herself paying extra attention to sidewalk smokers who flicked butts into the street, often at just the height of a baby stroller. If she is wheeling her daughter past a group of smokers, she is likely to go just a bit faster to minimize the exposure, she said.

Danielle Ferrari, 24, also had stroller issues. She pushed her daughter, fast asleep under a woolly pink blanket, past the Eden Bar on the Upper West Side. "When it's 10 people out on the sidewalk, and everybody's smoking, that's a whole lot of smoke you're talking about," Ms. Ferrari pointed out.

Other stroller-pushers took a resigned approach. "There's so much pollution already that a cigarette probably doesn't make it any worse," said Maria Gonzalez, chauffeuring her 3-year-old through Midtown.

Some restaurants and bars have taken a firm stance. "We don't allow them to smoke right in front of the establishment," said Robert Paulling, 35, a bouncer at the West End. "They can go to the corner, or down the street, just not in front of the bar. We figure, if customers have to walk through a cloud of smoke to get into the bar, what's the point of having a smoke-free bar now?"

Those who opposed the smoking ban in the first place were quick to criticize its effect on the great outdoors. "This law is going to make the city dirtier than it's ever been," warned Juliette Miller, a hostess at Gage & Tollner in the Fulton Mall in Brooklyn. "Wait till it's 90 degrees outside; we're all going to suffocate."

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