Posted on 11/14/2004 2:24:29 AM PST by Eurotwit
Like a lot of New York's straight-off-the-boat Irish barmen, Brian ("no surname, thanks") has a problem with authority, one that means keeping a weather eye on the door of the unfashionable watering hole where he slings suds from 6pm until closing time. As an undocumented alien with a tourist visa that expired more than three years ago, Brian's chief concern has always been the immigration authorities. These days, though, there is another threat to his livelihood: the Big Apple's smoking police. "It's a fookin' crime," he said, "the way those bastards behave."
The regulars at Brian's bar agreed. The talk that night last week had been of the front-page picture on the New York Post. It was a close-cropped head-shot of a young GI in Fallujah, face smeared with fatigue and camouflage paint, and a daub of what on closer examination was revealed to be a splatter of dried blood down the bridge of his nose.
The face of battle - yes, but it wasn't the 10,000-yard stare of eyes fresh from combat that had the regulars' attention. It was the just-lit cigarette dangling from the soldier's lips.
"So that's how it works," quipped Brian. "Shoot a fookin' sand goblin, win a fookin' fag."
The regulars chuckled, as Americans always do at that imported word, which means gay, and only gay, on this side of the Atlantic. But they got his drift, and one of the patrons wondered if the soldier and his M-16 might not find fruitful employment on New York's home front.
"Mr Mayor, you son of a bitch," he began, making a gun with index finger and upraised thumb, "you're dead." Then, in defiance of the Big Apple's draconian smoking laws, he exhaled a plume of ostentatious rebellion towards the yellowed ceiling. "Fook you, Mr Michael Bloomberg," added Brian.
That's the way it works these days in allegedly smoke-free New York, where the city's two-year-old smoking ban has ushered in an entirely new social ecology. At the chic bars and eateries, the ones that depend on high-volume turnover, even an unlit cigarette raised to the lips will bring an immediate warning to get the hell outside and light up on the sidewalk. With fines running as high as $2000 per violation, no eatery will risk the penalties.
But in the little neighbourhood joints, the ones that depend on regulars and locals, well, that's a different matter altogether. At first, when the ban was fresh, the hole-in-the-wall joints tried to uphold it. Trouble was, it proved financially ruinous.
One bar, Fiddler's Green on West 48th Street, had survived for decades through blackouts, crime waves and even an armed hold-up. But the smoking ban did it in. "Drinkers smoke, and the people who complain about smoking don't drink - not a lot anyway," said Brian.
So, after weighing the risks, he followed the example of barmen in scores of other low-rent joints and began distributing saucers to his late-night regulars. They have to be saucers because the mere presence of an ashtray - even a clean one - is taken as proof positive that illegal activities have been going on. Then the fines are issued.
No one is safe these days. Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, a diehard smoker and one of New York's premier arbiters of the chic and the cool, was bailed up in his office and fined by two little men from the health department, not once but three times. In office buildings, the presence of a single squashed butt in a stairwell is taken as proof that law-breaking goes on, and the landlord is slapped with fines.
Now that muggings, rapes and murders are down by as much as three-quarters on the runaway figures of a dozen years ago, Bloomberg has adapted the zero-tolerance approach to "crimes" that never previously raised an eyebrow.
When Bloomberg, with a convert's loathing for his former vice, increased sin taxes in the five boroughs, tobacco sales soared in Long Island and New Jersey, and truckloads of cigarettes were shipped into town from Indian reservations.
Barman Brian doesn't give a fook, as he might put it, about politics. But he fully comprehends the way the world works. "I want to pay my rent, same as everyone," he said. "Here, let me give you a light."
GREAT POST
Shoot, half my Queens neighborhood would be deported then...of course rents would probably drop a bit.
Another bump to post #12
It's a fookin crime that he is still in this country. The INS couldn't find it's ass with both hands and a flashlight!
It will probably slack off after a couple of those "little men from the health dept" end up in the east river...
When the INS does find its ass (and extracts the flashlight), they should shine on Mideasterners first. The Irish aren't hurting anybody, and they're certainly not being brainwashed by priests to strap on bombs and go out and kill the rest of us. If immigration policies made any sense, Irish, Brits, even Frogs would be welcome.
Awesome!
Ping!
He should be deported to the Irish Republic where they have banned smoking all over the country.
But-----,but------,wouldn't that be profiling? Gasp!
I heard last night that a Pool Hall in Montgomery County, MD was closing because the smoking ban enacted by the County Council had taken away too much business.
Instead, though, the Pool Hall was going to expand in another location in the District of Columbia.
Interestingly, DC has not (yet) enacted a smoking ban.
There was a real popular bar/restaurant at the Beach in Delaware.............the owner saw the handwriting on the wall when the state enacted it's smoking ban. he closed up shop and moved across the state line and re-openned in Ocean City, MD.
Other bars in Delaware have not faired as well........particularly those near the MD/DE state lines.
It sounds like NY has regressed back to the era of prohibition,except with cigs.
This story is completely bogus...who ever heard of an Irishman going to a bar?!
I would like to send a couple of cartons of cigs to the Marines in Iraq,no particular Marine. My brother and son were Marines so I'd like a Marine to get them.
How would I go about this with no name?
I know I'm silly,but is it legal? There are so many ridiculous new rules out there I can't keep up.
Thanks!
A smoking ban was shot down this year in DC.
ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!
It's legal - but I don't know how to go about doing it - let me know if you find out!!!
I have no idea, Mears. Sorry.
Someone on another thread today ask the same question. Several post's later, he said "I can't believe no one in here knows how to send cigarettes to the troops!"
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