Yes, 1984 - Newspeak - English Socialism
Pursuit is not needed anymore in America - there will be a department for it now - all set - move along....
Posted on 06/02/2009 11:35:55 AM PDT by swarthyguy
Hub bar and restaurant owners are burning up over the city’s sudden crackdown on puffing patrons on rooftop decks or in sidewalk cafes as part of the city’s tough new workplace smoking rules.
“We used to have a patio full of people, smokers and others who don’t smoke but are socializing with them,” said George Lewis, owner of The Foundation Lounge at the Hotel Commonwealth in Kenmore Square. “Now it’s empty.”
Lewis is among a group of tavern owners considering challenging the new smoking restriction in court. They fear the ban, coupled with an increased meals tax, will scare away customers at a time when profits are already suffering due to the economy.
“I’m afraid we’re going to lose business,” said Tony Castagnozzi of the Rattlesnake Bar and Grill on Bolyston Street. “People will say, ‘Screw it. We’ll go out of town to a place where we can have dinner and a cigar outside.’ It just makes it tougher and tougher to do business in the city.”
Last month, city inspectors began visiting the 250 or so bars and cafes with decks and patios, handing out warning letters and putting proprietors on notice that they face costly fines - $200 for a first offense, $700 for a second and $1,000 for a third - if customers are caught smoking in any “adjacent outdoor area” served by staff.
Boston Public Health Commission spokeswoman Ann Scales said after the educational outreach ends in the coming weeks, the city will begin enforcing the smoking ban in earnest by handing out violations. ‘We don’t pass regulations that we don’t enforce,” she said, adding that chronic violations could affect a bar’s liquor license.
Angry publicans say they were caught off guard by the measure, which got little attention in December when the city, which banned smoking inside restaurants and bars in 2003, enacted some of the toughest smoking restrictions in the country.
The outdoor-workplace smoking ban was tucked into the new regulations, which included a proposal to extinguish cigar bars that made national headlines. The issue sparked a fight from smoking bars that led to a 10-year reprieve.
But bar owners did little to protest the outdoor ban and are now scrambling to deal with what Castagnozzi calls “a manager and doorman’s nightmare.” On some nights, as many as 50 people stand in line waiting to get upstairs to the Rattlesnake’s popular roof deck. “Now anyone wanting to smoke will have to go back down the line and outside to smoke. When they come back, people will be like, ‘Who are you?’ ’ he said.
Listen, I’m being nice. I hope they pass the national no smoking in public places bill.
This will also ensure that people in cars, ie, on public roads are made to stop smoking.
Nothing worse than seeing second hand smoke from a car window in front of me drift into my precious space.
-NicoNaziFoxConservative.
Check your spelling.
It’s a shame we smokers brought down the WTC.
********************************
But of course smokers have - you saw this doosey-right?
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/125259.html
NO! Thanks. That’s brilliant. Smokers as “radical individualists”.
The Economist recently cited some “authorities” who consider a cigarette worse than smoking crack.
Hey, didja hear, even in NH now, you can marry a fag, you just can’t smoke one.
How come gays seem to get the biggest chuckle outta that one....
WHY? I mean if smoking is SO harmful ... ban it.
Nah, I've already spent enough time at the Registry of Motor Vehicles as it is.
Anyway, I think it would help Gaia more if the government concentrated on ideas with more merit, like recycling used toilet paper and publicly funding second-hand underwear outlets.
I'm working on a proposal right now. Wish me luck.
>Ban it
NOOOOOOO!
Apart from what that would do to children’s health and the coffers of the StateZillas and FedZilla, how else could Americans feel all self righteous and superior when contrasting themselves with the chimney heads?
Dammit, man, have some sympathy. Without smokers, Americans supercilious self esteem would take a battering.
The brazen audacity of this Dan Beauchamp fellow is breathtaking, but seems to have really caught on among the nomenklatura.
This Health Uber Alles SEIG HEALTH philosophy is undermining and destroying three centuries of Western, British and American concepts of liberty, individual freedom (including to be left alone with like minded individuals) and jurisprudence based on the ideas of Locke, Burke, Bacon, Marlowe, Franklin, Paine and many others.
Seeing how so many “conservatives” subscribe to the Health Nazi Nannyists Jihad on Tabak, it will be fun to watch the squirming, wailing and teethgnashing as the tenets of Nannyism are applied to ALL aspects of human existence, since putting health on a pedestal means every aspect of an individual’s (how quaint a word in this era of collectivity for the alleged greater good) is now under the purview of the Boards of Health.
A while ago I joked that we are now not the US, but the United Boards of Health of America.
I have to stop joking around, this stuff is too real!
Health Jacobins is a good description of this crowd.
No wonder you keep that piece handy! Wow!
Read my signature line lately?
I should know what Ingsoc is. Sounds familiar, is it from “1984”......
Yes, 1984 - Newspeak - English Socialism
Pursuit is not needed anymore in America - there will be a department for it now - all set - move along....
I don’t think it matters much what state you’re in anymore. They just banned smoking in restaurants and bars here in North Carolina. NORTH FRIKKIN’ CAROLINA!! Tobacco is still our number 1 industry!
What’s hilarious is that, here, the restaurant owners were all for it, just so long as private clubs were included. Now, the only places that are exempted are cigar bars and country clubs. It’s nice to know that if you’re rich enough to be a member of a country club or smoke cigars regularly, you can smoke all you want. The rest of us, on the other hand, need to be protected from ourselves.
Who knew Demolition Man would be so prophetic?
And to continue my rant, what’s really absurd about the NC ban (and probably most others) is that restaurants have already been going non-smoking on their own for years! If you want to work or patronize a bar without being around all those filthy smokers, you had plenty of options.
I wonder how many of the pantywaists who voted for this crap actually frequent bars anyway? I live in the state capital and am a regular at one of the more popular watering holes in town, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a General Assemblyman there. What the hell business is it of theirs?
>>The rest of us, on the other hand, need to be protected from ourselves.
Like in NYC, Bloomputz banning beer, but not wine in public parks.
What an elitist schmuck.
All your other points are bang on. There wasn’t a smoking restaurtant left around here in MA, but the ban was just a twisting of the knife....bars, niteclubs. livemusic joints etc.
It also took place during good economic times. We’ll see the ramifications as the economy continues its nosedive.
And Boston just banned cigar bars too; never went into one, found the idea kinda boring, since there’s no entertainment or music or nothing. You just sit and puff.
That’s why I find the owner of the Rattlesnake so pathetic. And the city ain’t gonna back down.
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