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Bar business sparks back up
The Lawrence Eagle Tribune ^ | Thursday, July 11, 2002 | By Jason Tait

Posted on 07/17/2002 1:37:49 PM PDT by metesky

 

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Thursday, July 11, 2002

Bar business sparks back up

By Jason Tait


Eagle-Tribune Writer

HAVERHILL -- A half-hour after the city suspended the smoking ban, an electronic sign in front of Mr. Mike's Restaurant beckoned passersby with the words "Smoking is Back."

It worked.

Inside the restaurant, owner Michael A. Difeo III watched something he has not seen for four months -- a bar packed with customers lighting up cigarettes, gambling on Keno, and enjoying sports on TV as they ate and drank.

"I've been closing an hour early every night for four months," Difeo said of the lack of customers since the smoking ban started March 1. Yesterday, "I had to ask (customers) to leave at 1 a.m.''

Mr. Mike's is on Route 125 on the Plaistow, N.H., line, and has lost 30 percent of its business to bars and restaurants across the border, Difeo said.

Until Aug. 13, when the Health Board will make a final decision on the smoking ban, restaurant owners can allow smoking in their businesses -- this following a four-month ban that owners said devastated their businesses. The smoking ban is still law, but it will not be enforced until at least the board's Aug. 13 meeting when the regulation may be changed.

Some restaurant owners like Difeo have decided to allow people to smoke for the next month in an effort to recoup some of their losses.

Leonard F. Caffrey, manager of the Ninety-Nine restaurant on River Street near Interstate 495, was relieved to hear of the smoking ban suspension.

"Hopefully we can recapture revenue we lost over the last 120 days" of the smoking ban, Caffrey said. "I think the customer base that we could not accommodate until now will be happy we can accommodate them again," he said of customers who smoke.

Caffrey said he lost between 7 percent and 18 percent of his weekly business during the past four months, and has cut his weekly staff hours by 100 -- the equivalent of 21/2 jobs -- because business is slow.

The Health Board decided to enforce the smoking ban to protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke, encouraging families into the smoke-free environments. Health officials were hoping restaurant owners would continue to keep their businesses smoke free, even after the ban was suspended.

It has worked at some restaurants, and not all eateries are jumping on the pro-smoking bandwagon.

Stavros A. Dimakis, owner of Mark's Deli in Railroad Square, will not switch back to smoking. He has placed sand buckets outside the diner's front door and his many smoking patrons simply step outside for a cigarette, he said. He has lost only one customer that he knows of since making the restaurant nonsmoking and has gained dozens of families who previously avoided the smoke-filled business.

"Smoking is a time of the past," Dimakis said. "Going smoke free is the best thing I ever did."

Dimakis feels sorry for the restaurant owners who serve liquor, however.

"They're in a different league," Dimakis said. "Haverhill's a blue-collar town, and people are going to smoke while having drinks -- whether they do it here or in Plaistow."

At the Corner Bistro on Washington Street downtown, owner Pauline M. Lowney will allow smoking after 9 p.m. when the kitchen closes.

"I don't want to jeopardize the people coming in here now because I'm smoke free," Lowney said. "I have had more children and elderly here since we've gone smoke free."

At Benny's Food and Spirits, also on Route 125 at the Plaistow line, owner Ben Brienza has had to lay off 12 of his 58 employees because business has been slow since the smoking ban. Yesterday, however, customers were at the bar sparking up.

"What they did to us was devastating," Brienza said. "All the city did with the ban was send them over the border and let New Hampshire get more money."

At Mr. Mike's Restaurant near Benny's, Difeo said he lost 30 percent of his restaurant business and 50 percent of his Keno gambling revenue.

"I had the best six months leading into March, so it's not like it was a recession issue," Difeo said of the loss of business. "People who drink and gamble smoke cigarettes."

Next Story: Budget forces cuts in nursing program next story



 


Copyright© 2002 Eagle-Tribune Publishing. All Rights Reserved. Contact Online editor



TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: pufflist; smokingisback
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To: metesky
Does that dang puff list thing work?

It does.

Some people has a change of getting back in business, whereas our Councillors still insist that nobody is loosing money........ an outright lie, one councillor has toured the bars and admits the law has been devastating, says in hindsight they should have opted for a compromise.

21 posted on 07/17/2002 4:16:34 PM PDT by Great Dane
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To: SheLion
Just another altruist, going into business not to make a profit, but to serve "the public."

It is to laugh.

22 posted on 07/17/2002 4:20:32 PM PDT by Madame Dufarge
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To: tm22721
All this reveals is that the losers who smoke also drink. Who woulda thunk it ?

Count me in with the losers, I mean lovers of liberty, freedom, and of course property rights

23 posted on 07/17/2002 4:24:06 PM PDT by NeoCaveman
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To: metesky; tm22721
Non-smokers like to use the loser-mantra, makes them feel superior, and who are we to deflate their ego.
24 posted on 07/17/2002 4:25:16 PM PDT by Great Dane
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To: tm22721
All this reveals is that the losers who smoke also drink. Who woulda thunk it ?

Present company excepted, of course, brain-dead collectivists?

25 posted on 07/17/2002 4:26:42 PM PDT by Madame Dufarge
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To: Madame Dufarge
And those are the ones that go out of business... LOL! Serves them right!
26 posted on 07/17/2002 4:27:26 PM PDT by Arioch7
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To: Arioch7
Ah, if you only knew just how bad it was in Mass.

Ah, but I do. I lived the first 53 years of my life in Eastern Massachusetts, with a couple of time outs for school and work in Cailifornistan.

Born in Boston City Hospital in '44, went to grammar school at the Thomas Gardener School in Alston, Mother was from Haverhill so I ended up going to Haverhill High, bought a house on the Cape in '69 and lived there until the Big Escape in '97, when the bride and I absconded to Maine.

Haverhill? I even know these guys in the article and still have people there. One of my cousins is the fire chief.

27 posted on 07/17/2002 4:31:04 PM PDT by metesky
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To: metesky
This happened in British Columbia and the bars across the border in the US did a boom business. Then BC relaxed the statute the same as in this story and business in BC returned to normal.
28 posted on 07/17/2002 4:32:05 PM PDT by RWG
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To: RWG
But...but how could it be? Accepted wisdom (propaganda) is that smoking bans help bars and restaurants.
29 posted on 07/17/2002 4:35:12 PM PDT by metesky
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To: metesky
I see that you do know. You know, I love my state but it is very diificult to live here. Sometimes, I just cant believe the amount of left wing nonsense.

It does provide me with amusement though.

"The Big Escape"? LOL!!! God bless you. If it were not for the massive commuting problems the massholes have brought to NH, I would live there now. My business is in the Boston area and I can not leave it or relocate it so I am stuck.

I call the libs moving up north the "Human Plague" and they move down to Florida to.

I can not move that far up and so far the MAssholes have been trying to turn NH into "Little Massachusetts," it makes me mad. As my sister said "Why do THEY have to go up there, I wanted to go to a Republican state!

NH is not lost yet, but in the last ten years, I am sure you can notice the difference as well.

What the heck is it with Mass, this is the birthplace of the revolution for gods sake!!!

Oh well, sorry for the rant, sometimes I just can not help it. :D

30 posted on 07/17/2002 4:40:35 PM PDT by Arioch7
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To: Arioch7
People from the Merrimack Valley (Newburyport, Amesbury, Merrimack, Groveland, Haverhill, Lawrence, Andover, Methuen and Lowell) are "born Democrat" if you know what I mean (Marty Meehan, for cryin' out loud!) and have been moving to southern NH since the late fifties.

They moved to get away from the regulations and high taxes, yet started beating the drum for municipal services as soon as they got there.

In the late fifties and early sixties Salem, NH was the race track, a bowling alley and a Mom and Pop convenience store that was overjoyed to see three carloads of high school football players pull up and order ten cases of Black Label.

Look at Rt. 28 in Salem now. Ugh!

Oh well...

The mantra of Eastern Massachusetts DemocRats: "One hand washes the other."

31 posted on 07/17/2002 4:55:36 PM PDT by metesky
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To: metesky
I hear you. I ask my liberal friends WHY they want to move up north and they say "It costs less," and then I ask them why they seek to recreate the same situation up there.

They dont know how to respond. My answer is if you love all of the services in Mass, then you should not move to an area which has none and then demand them. They unknowingly recreate the SAME thing.

It kind of shows you how deluded some people actually are.

As far as "One hand wahes the other," I could not agree with you more. I dont believe I ever will see a state that is corrupt as Massachusetts. It is my belief that the city of Boston CAN NOT be suatain itself economically without state and federal funds. In my mind, this means it is a failure, yet they LOVE the funds rolling in. Look at the Big Dig... third world countries have a lower rate of cost inflation for gods sake!

32 posted on 07/17/2002 5:12:49 PM PDT by Arioch7
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To: Arioch7
Look at the Big Dig...

The Tip O'Neil Memorial Goodbye Kiss, $14 billion and counting.

33 posted on 07/17/2002 5:27:41 PM PDT by metesky
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To: dubyaismypresident
You made the following statement, as general principles:

"...I mean lovers of liberty, freedom, and of course property rights."

But let us be more precise and cite the constitutional basis for the correctness of those general principles.

"...liberty, freedom..."

The constitutional basis:

Amendment IX:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to DENY OR DISPARAGE others, (the right to smoke) retained by the people."

"...and of course property rights."

The constitutional basis:

Amendment V:

"...nor shall private property be taken (bar/restaurant profits) for public use (for the supposed health concerns) without just compensation."

And if anyone is questioning the jurisdiction of the U.S. Constitution within municipal boundaries, then see Gilleo v City of Ladue, 1992.

34 posted on 07/17/2002 6:11:57 PM PDT by tahiti
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