Ashes to ashes

El Globo ^ | May 15, 2005 | By A.S. Hamrah

[metesky]

Iconic smokers: From left, Mae West, the Rat Pack, James Dean, John Wayne, Jean Seberg, and Jessica Lange. ("No Smoking" (Assouline))

Ashes to ashes

Smoking bans have triumphed from Boston to Bhutan. But they're unlikely to snuff out the centuries-old culture of smoke.

By A.S. Hamrah  |  May 15, 2005

LAST MONTH researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health released a report claiming that despite the fears of restaurant and bar owners the state-wide smoking ban instituted last July had not put a damper on business. According to their review of state records, tax collections on meals at Massachusetts restaurants, bars, and nightclubs rose about 9 percent (adjusted for inflation) in the first six months after the ban went into effect.

But the researchers' findings weren't just economic. They also concluded, according to a Globe report, that at least one tavern had brightened up since the ban. ''It was much more like a restaurant and less like a dirty bar," chirped one of the Harvard researchers. The air was clear.

[metesky]

Sorry if this has been posted already.

[metesky]

The antis hate history and human nature...

[taxesareforever]

that at least one tavern had brightened up since the ban

WOW, am I impressed. NOT!!!

[Mears]

"Today's anti-smoking era has a few consolations, including the strange feeling of smoker's solidarity that develops as smokers begin more and more to see themselves as a beleaguered minority. ''... A certain dark anti-glamour lingers outside the restaurant doorway,"

---

One of my non-smoking daughters calls it Smoker Bonding and says that we all look like we're having a good time.

[Old Professer]

Eating out is a behavior pattern just as smoking becomes; such patterns can be modified, but, in the end, eating is a harder habit to break than smoking.

[Daveinyork]

I just got back from an international pipe and cigar exposition at a resort west of Chicago. There were thousands of people there from all over the world. Venders, carvers, collectors and smokers gathered for a weekend of fun, and the resort was so accomodating that there was nowhere in the resort that we were not permitted to indulge in our love of leaf and briar.

We also heard varying stories about how the world is closing in on us. The New York pipe show has been held in Newark, NJ for years because of smoking bans in NYC. The Washington, DC show has been cancelled because the hotel that hosted it has gone smoke-free. Others have had to curtail activities as the venues have restricted the areas in which we can smoke, often in response to complaints from other guests.

I find peace in the indulgence of a fine, aged tobacco, in a well crafted briar or meerschaum. I enjoy admiring the craftsmanship of the various pipes in my collection, and in the collections of my friends. Why can't the liberals just keep their hands to themselves and leave us alone?

My question is, if the Native Americans were so pure as driven snow, how can their most famous legacy be so bad?

[Graybeard58]

I enjoy admiring the craftsmanship of the various pipes in my collection,

Do you have a corn cob in the lot?

[facedown]

But the researchers' findings weren't just economic.

They were evangelical.

[metesky]

One of my nonsmoking daughters calls it Smoker Bonding and says that we all look like we're having a good time.

We are, aren't we?
:O)

Really, you can go to any bar that has an outdoor smoking area ( if spring ever comes this year) and that's where all the hootin' and hollering' is going on. Most anti-smokers have hushed, huddled private conversations where they're probably deriding the help and the other clientele, while the smokers are all wading in, engaging friends and strangers alike.

[Daveinyork]

"Do you have a corn cob in the lot?"

Actually, I do. Normally I don't like the taste of cobs, but an old family friend of my wife gave me a large MacArthur style cob. It's not bad.

[metesky]

Although I'm a cigarette and cigar (as cheap and rotten as I can find and I inhale 'em) smoker myself, the smell of pipe tobacco triggers a real sense of old times and a different America. Both my maternal great-grandfather and grandfather smoked pipes and the house was loaded with different humidors and pipe racks from around the world. TV came on in the middle of the afternoon in those days, mail was delivered twice a day and almost everybody minded their own damn business.

I wonder if the folks at the shop where I buy tubes and tobacco think I'm strange for doing a once-by the pipe tobacco section sniffing madly?

[metesky]

Dead on.

[July 4th]

He also has a button nose and two eyes made out of coal.

[itsamelman]

[Madame Dufarge]

chirped one of the Harvard researchers.

How very objective of the "researcher."

Where did I put my copy of How to Lie with Statistics?

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Why can't the liberals just keep their hands to themselves and leave us alone?

Because decent people who are harassed and reviled by those liberal lowlifes aren't prone to handing out a solid punch in the nose and boot to the arse when one of those idiots invades your space.

If there was more laying on of hands, there would be a GREAT deal less liberal activism. Being civil and trying to reason with a liberal only emboldens them. They need less words and more boot leather in reply to their foolishness.

[metesky]

Where, Sir, did you get a picture of my wife? I married her because she had a Sicilian stogey connection.

Re: your tag, we just got the first four episodes of this seasons Deadwood on VHS today from the BIL. Good Friday night: Deadwood, seafood, cocktails, Friday night posting a little bit stuned...
;O)

[Daveinyork]

"I wonder if the folks at the shop where I buy tubes and tobacco think I'm strange for doing a once-by the pipe tobacco section sniffing madly?"

While pipe smoking is not what it used to be, and most tobacco shops are surviving mostly on cigarettes and cigars, if they've worked there for any length of time, I'm sure they understand.

I love a good cigar, but it cannot match the combined pleasure that I get from a well aged leaf in a well crafted pipe.

[metesky]

If there was more laying on of hands, there would be a GREAT deal less liberal activism.

[Madame Dufarge]

I married her because she had a Sicilian stogey connection.

Your forgot the stiletto collection and the Irish temper.