Posted on 08/02/2005 10:24:13 AM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
APPLETON (AP) - At Jokers Bar, the staff of eight has been laid off. Owner Tony Schaefer said he's now working the bar with his brother.
Schaefer is among many business owners still fuming a month after a ban on smoking at all indoor workplaces was enacted in this city.
The ban was approved by 56 percent of voters in an April 5 referendum and went into effect on July 1. Madison's similar smoking ban went into effect on the same day, although there was no referendum preceding it.
"We'll be closing up" if business doesn't improve, Schaefer said. "The sad thing is we don't even know if anyone would buy it."
Some say they have reason to fume.
Nearly three-quarters of the 64 businesses that responded to a request from the Appleton Post-Crescent reported sluggish sales in the past month, most from 10 to 40 percent lower compared with last July. Some reported sales off as much as 70 percent.
Many tavern owners in Madison have made similar complaints, and sympathetic members of the City Council have already tried once, unsuccessfully, to repeal the ban.
More than 30 tavern owners in Appleton have filed a lawsuit to repeal the ban, and the Common Council this month is expected to review a proposal that would exempt taverns and bar areas of restaurants, similar to a measure proposed statewide.
For now, sales are down 35 percent at Shark's Club Billiards Bar and Grill, owner Mitchell Roepke said.
"We're a blue-collar, working-class establishment and they're the smokers. ... I'm losing $11,000 in sales in July," Roepke said.
But Connie Olson, executive director of Community Action for Tobacco Free Living, a group that pushed for the ban, said some of the negative talk becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"All customers hear are bartenders complaining. Who wants to hear that?" Olson said. "They have to get past this personal vendetta. Don't do that to customers. They need to promote their businesses as smoke-free."
Restaurants reported faring better than bars.
Family restaurants like Applebee's and Perkins, and upscale places like Black and Tan, where smoking had previously been allowed at the bar, saw no ill effect in their July revenues.
At The Bar in downtown Appleton, regular lunchtime diner Carl Schuh of Black Creek compared before and after.
"It's cleaner, fresher and airier," he said.
Several businesses said they were boosting advertising and offering specials to encourage customers to come back, while still lobbying officials for a reversal on the ban.
These people who enact these bans truly do not get it and end up running taverns and bars out of business. I could understand for restaurants (though it still should be at the owner's discretion whether or not to ban smoking) but taverns and nightclubs? Forget it.
BUMP
I love the smoking ban in Hennepin County (Minneapolis) here.
When I go out to the bar after work, I can do so without being in a cloud of smoke.
My clothes no longer smell like I've been sleeping in an ashtray.
My lungs feel better too.
These smokers can step outside and have a cancer stick if they want to. Many bars have set up a small area where smokers can go if they want to light up.
OPEN YOUR OWN BAR....................
Who are you to dictate who an owner serves? do you demand the menu and prices conform to your personal likes?
At the beginning of the year I was watching one of those prediction things about what was going to be "in" and "out" this year, and it predicted that home theater type stuff would be way in as people chose to stay home and party more, just stay closer to home in general. I thought that with the smoking bans, that was probably right. Sorry bar owners, that probably means a lot of you will be looking for other work. Bars aren't really quite moral anyway, with all the fights and everything. And the smoking and the drinking and the lose wimmin.
Eugene has the same ban. They gave all the bars a 6 months extension to build a smoking deck. Most did and it's been great. The smokers go into a ventilated, covered deck with a central gas heater and the smoke stays out there. It's been great for everyone.
If these guys in this Wisconsin town were smart, they'd start construction immediately on a smoking deck. It works.
"My clothes no longer smell like I've been sleeping in an ashtray."
There is the crux of these phoney laws.
Grats on your swell feeling lungs, hows your liver?
:p
If taverns and nightclubs would go smoke-free, according to the busybodies' logic, they'll gain more customers, right? So...why aren't business owners opening up smoke-free establishments then?
Let the free market decide, instead of special-interest busybodies who con local governments into banning smoking.
I also live in Minneapolis, and I admit that it is nice to be able to go out and not have to immediately take a shower and do laundry when I get home.
However, I am still against smoking bans in principle; bars and restauarants should be able to set their own policies, and customers can decide whether or not they want to patronize a business based on its smoking policy. Plenty of places banned smoking before they were required to by law.
Why don't the smoking nazis just out law smoking in the usa?
Surely they have the votes to do this. It's not like we have the right to do anything warmfull to ourself any more, cause after all government is responcible for everything so just out law smoking.
Two years ago Madison, Wisconsin told restaurants to build special ventilation systems or else they're going to enact a smoking ban.
The city lied to the business owners. They enacted a smoking ban anyway, and guess what? The business owners just wasted thousands of dollars on smoke-free ventilation systems.
Besides, patios and decks won't do smokers any good when it's 10 below zero. This is Wisconsin, not Cancun.
I suppose you were happy when that lying idiot Pawlenty got his tax increase passed as well.
The next smoke out day smokers all across the country need to light em up. Force the police to arrest them, they don't have enough jail space for everybody. This crap is getting out of hand.
"Let the free market decide, instead of special-interest busybodies who con local governments into banning smoking."
Problem is that I get taxed to fund Medicare, Medicaid, etc so that those who choose to smoke can then get treated for bronchitis, lung cancer, MI, TIA, stroke, etc.
If the patios and decks are nice enough that the antis might want to use them then soon enough they will be mandated non-smoking too.
So more people will stay home and drink and smoke, resulting in more people drinking underage and consuming larger quantities of alcohol (Those who die of alcohol poisoning rarely do so at a bar).
Am I posting on DU or something?
Yeah, there's nothing like inflicting your own personal tastes onto everyone else, at government gunpoint. I mean, you used to be able to start a non-smoking business before, or convince a business owner to cater to nonsmoking customers before the ban, but no, it's much easier to ban all smoking establishments, and then you can go wherever you wish, and enjoy the smoke-free air. Well, at least while they remain in business.
Next thing you know, government will mandate that you eat vegetables, exercise, and cut down on the sweets. It's good for you, just like quitting smoking is. You'll just love those intrusions into your life, it you like the smoking ban. And don't worry, next year we've got tooth-brushing and floss monitors scheduled as well. And even better things for the future!!
Comrade.
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