heh! I'm BAAAD!
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.
Connie Olsen needs her behind kicked up around her shoulders.
YUCK - talking about my ankle....
It and I am doing very much better, and I appreciate your concern.......BUT I'm going nuts and still have a minimum of 2 weeks before I can drive again.
I don't know which I hate more - being stranded or relying on everyone else - and I am facing both everyday.
Isn't Wisconsin a "Blue State"? Deal with it.
I ADORE your tagline!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello! We pay for Medicare, etc. too, even for the morbidly obese, the chronic alcoholic, meth users, and lots of other self-destructive behaviours. I find it amazing that in my employment history, with exposure to rock dust, creosote fumes, acid fumes, and aromatic hydrocarbons, among other pulmonary irritants, that cigarettes alone get all the credit for any lung problems I may have. A large number of smokers work in blue-collar environments where such occupational exposures are commonplace. While I will grant that smoking is not good for my lungs, this is more junk science.
Problem is that smokers already are paying for the enormous sums extracted by the tobacco lawsuits, ostensibly to offset the 'extra' we supposedly cost everyone. That money has been almost universally pissed away on anything and everything BUT the alleged greater health care costs for smokers which were used as an excuse to extract all that money from OUR pockets, not yours.
In the meantime, we pay extra for health, life, auto and homeowners insurance because we smoke.
So spare us the disingenous crap about YOU paying for all of us decrepit smokers.
AWWWW!
*hugs*
Things will get better.
WOW!!!!!!!!!!
YOU are my hero right now...........
You're fun!!!!
Why did I have to be klutzy at the beginning of the summer, why couldn't I have busted my ankle after Thanksgiving???????????
My garden is basically toast........hubby and little one are looking after it and watching harvest and weeds - BUT - it's just not the same.
Welll......
My Mom accidentally kicked over my tray where I was growing the tobacco and it sat there in the 100+ degree heat all day, spilled all over the outside stairs.
Does that include private property, as in someone's own home or property?
SIGH. There goes the automobile.....after all, they kill over 40,000 people a year.
Brain damage. I have even seen them start coughing BEFORE I light my cigarette.
Real simple, Steve. GET YOUR FACE OUTTA MY SMOKE!
Kickback arrangements are so much simpler and tidier, too!
You forgot the worst one of all:
Hydrogen Hydroxide
Or as it’s sometimes incorrectly known dihydrogen monoxide.
Many cities have tried banning this horrible chemical.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1098766/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1097449/posts
Excerpt from fact sheet
http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage to property and the environment. Some of the known perils of Dihydrogen Monoxide are:
Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
Contributes to soil erosion.
Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
Contamination of electrical systems often causes short circuits.
Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere.
Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.
This is the part I really cannot stand.
These people push for and enact a ban which affects places they wouldn't enter to seek shelter from a hurricane, and act like they are all good and wonderful for making these establishments conform to their standards.
What a crock.
When that falls on its butt, they invoke alleged health care expenses.
I wonder if they screen their insurance companies and eliminate the ones which insure people who drive fast, eat fattening foods, or live in a flood plain?
Otherwise, unless they are the one, they are paying for a host of other 'bad habits', but then that gives them just that many more opportunities to push for more laws..
"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.
Problem is, i get taxed to fund Medicare, Medicaid ect... so that those who choose to drink and drive can then cause choas in other people's lives.
You sure you want to head down that slippery slope? It's insanely selfish of you to pull an attitude like that, with the myriad abuses that we ALL pay for through government health care. Would you next suggest we ban anything with sugar, because, after all, my taxes fund dental care for those who abuse it.
Either make tobacco illegal, or let people have places where they can go and socialize and smoke. Don't like smelling like smoke? DON'T GO THERE. It's like going to a gay bar and complaining that there's too many gay men there!
(8^D)
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