'New Yorkers should be able to choose how they go to hell'

In Vincent Autuori's spit and sawdust Brooklyn bar, the air is spring-fresh and the ashtrays have been removed. New beer mats advertise nicotine substitutes. Hank's Saloon has never previously provided such a healthy environment to its punters. But towards the end of what would once have been a lively midweek session, there are no customers to serve.

"Who does this mayor think we are - West Coast health nuts?" says Mr Autuori, who can be seen at regular intervals, smoking a lonely cigarette in the street outside his bar. "Let me tell you, my father died from lung cancer at the age of 58 and I was still giving him cigarettes in hospital on his deathbed. New Yorkers should be able to choose to go to hell their own way. This is about a city's rights."

A few miles away, in downtown Manhattan, the waitresses at McCann's restaurant pub have given up waiting for a lunchtime diner. "No one's coming to eat here from work," says the bartender, Luke Sullivan. "There's a deli downstairs. They get their sandwiches from there and eat them outside, where they can have a smoke as well. Waitresses pay their rent with tips. Now they're not getting any."

Across New York City, similar laments can be heard. On March 30, the city's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, an ex-smoker, followed the example of California and outlawed cigarettes in the city's bars, restaurants and hotel lobbies. As in other workplaces, employees who work where others socialise are now to be protected from the dangers of passive smoking.

In the words of Gifford Miller, the New York City Council Speaker: "It was decided that people should not have to choose between their health and their jobs."

At a stroke, thousands of seasoned bar-room habitués have become reluctant exiles from their favourite corner seat. New York smokers now have the option of a street huddle or a solitary evening spent at home. Smoking sections are still permitted in rare cases, but will be banned by New York State in July. The adjustment to pariah status, for some, is proving a little traumatic.

Familiar landmarks of New York social life are subtly altered. In the Algonquin hotel, where Dorothy Parker held court in the years after the First World War, artists, writers and bohemians have been coming to smoke, drink and talk for generations. But now the cloud of cigar smoke has gone. Ashtrays line the fringe of the lobby. "People know they can smoke outside the building," says the hotel's unapologetic director of sales and marketing, Christina Zeniou.

"Fine, but the smell and the feel of the place has changed," says one frequent visitor. "It's very odd."

Coan Nichols, a film-maker sitting at the Old Town Bar, says: "Now New York is, like, nerdy. When you're in a bar, it's going to be like California. All the action is outside."

In some venues, desperate measures have already been taken. Jerry's Restaurant in SoHo is plying its customers with free pieces of nicorette chewing gum. Telephone booths throughout the city are filled with adverts for anti-smoking patches, as Nicorette and other competitors seek to attract the attention of wandering smokers with no place to go.

In Delaware and California, the only other American states to enforce a total ban, a flurry of protests took place and quickly died down. But this is New York. Mayor Bloomberg has a fight on his hands.

An addiction has become a cause. For almost a month, smokers have sought to outwit the draconian paternalism of their mayor. For a while, impromptu street cafés sprang up, as drinks and cigarettes were taken outside, to be enjoyed in the spring sunshine.

The city council acted quickly to snuff out the rebellion. Fines for unlicensed drinking outdoors were raised from $25 to $150 and there is now the prospect of a jail sentence for repeat offenders.

Other recidivists have sought concessions on the grounds of long service on the paying side of the bar. Bitter arguments and the occasional fight have been reported, as regulars plead with owners to turn a blind eye. One bouncer at the Guernica bar in Manhattan's East Village was fatally stabbed during an argument with two customers who refused to leave cigarettes outside.

Rumours of "smokeasies" abound, and private smoking clubs are beginning to flourish. Meanwhile, a steady stream of evening traffic has found its way across the Hudson river to New Jersey, where Mr Bloomberg's restrictions do not apply.

During Prohibition, Hoboken, New Jersey, became notorious for the illegal breweries and speakeasies that supplied the New York "mob" with alcohol. Refugee smokers are now resurrecting the district's former glory days.

Frankie and Johnnie's Steakhouse, famous for an appearance in a scene of On the Waterfront, has already become a focal point for anti-Bloomberg protests over a whisky and a cigar. On the first day of the ban, a "Bye Bye Bloomberg" party sent the message across the river to the mayor's smoke-free offices.

In New York City, as Mr Bloomberg shows he means business, the crackdown is intensifying. A new corps of smoke inspectors has been hired. From Thursday they will be empowered to issue fines beginning at $250 to establishments choosing to ignore the rules.

Yet in the heart of Manhattan, ways and means are still being found to flout at least the spirit of the ban. At the Serafina Sandro restaurant, the chef, Sandro Fioriti, has resorted to cooking with tobacco.

Mr Fioriti is described by the restaurant's owner, Fabio Granato, as "an eccentric genius; a man who rolls his own cigars in the skin of green apples". He told The Telegraph: "As soon as I knew of Bloomberg's plans, I began to plot ways of thwarting him."

A special menu advertises homemade gnocchi with Empire English special blend tobacco, a filet mignon with Golden Virginia, and Tobacco Panna Cotta. A tobacco Grappa, designed to leave a lasting burning sensation in the middle of the throat, rounds the meal off. Mr Fioriti's kitchen is covered in tobacco dust.

"A lot of people are frustrated with the idea that Mr Bloomberg is ruining their nights out," said Mr Fioriti. "This was a way to allow them to express that frustration and it's proved so popular we're going to keep it on. And tobacco dishes leave a very interesting aftertaste. It gives the food a kick."

Harrie Lowe, an investment banker, has tried the tobacco gnocchi, but not as an act of defiance. "I approve of this ban," she says. "Why should people have their food ruined by a heavy pall of smoke that gets into everything, including clothes? I was in a restaurant recently where two women simply refused to stop lighting up, even though every other table in the restaurant had made a complaint. That is just rude behaviour."

Back at Hank's Saloon, Mr Autuori despairs. "This is not a polite town. We have hard drinkers and hard smokers here. Bloomberg might think it's a good idea to give up smoking, but you take away the soul of this place if you start ordering people to think and act the same as you."

The real argument, though, for many traders, is about New York's economy rather than its soul. In the past two years, the city has shed 223,000 jobs. Unemployment stands at a five-year high of 8.6 per cent. Earnings on Wall Street have crashed by almost one-third, and the war in Iraq has led to a further slump in numbers at restaurants, bars and cinemas.

"Why now?" says Mr Sullivan as he chews a piece of gum to ease his cigarette craving. "Maybe it is a good idea to have a no-smoking ban, although as a smoker I don't think so. But the way Bloomberg, comfortably a billionaire himself through his eponymous financial information service, has timed it is a disaster, another kick in the teeth for this city's earnings. People won't come in the same numbers. Takings are down and jobs will be lost. Do we really want that now?"

Deaf to the complaints from Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx, Mr Bloomberg is confident that by the summer, the controversy will be forgotten. "A few years ago," said the mayor, "you could smoke in movie theatres, you could smoke in Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium, and you could smoke in Madison Square Garden. We stopped that. After a week, the stories went away and so did the smoking. In the end, people will look back and say, 'You mean they did allow smoking back then? How archaic.' "

Why hasn't this ever been challenged legally? ...Where are the lawyers on this?

Politicians, bureaucrats and lawyers feed of the same chaos.

The top portion of the below is from another thread but the answer to his question is the same as the answer to yours.

One of the things that has always bothered me the most about DC is the railing against each other by day and then going out for a drink together in the evening.
How can you really believe in something for hours during the day and then put those strong beliefs away in the evening? I have had a few try to explain this to me and condescendingly at that, that this is “politics” and I’m just some dumb skirt, pat me on the head and I’ll go to my sewing. 2 -- WHAT A DIFFERENCE CHARACTER MAKES Black Tie Black Eye

Here's how and why. President Bush is aware of it and leads a rational class act from the top down.

Issue 101 -- Chaos House of Cards

How is it that people and society in general have prospered and increased their well being for decades yet the politicians and bureaucrats say we must have another 3,000 laws and regulations each year on top of the 100,000+ laws already on the books... That without them people and society face "disaster". People and society have done quite well without next year's 3,000 new federal laws and regulations. Why all of a sudden can people and society not continue to do quite well without them? The fact is, they'd be better off without 99% of them.

So who really benefits from 3,000 new laws and regulations each year? -- not to mention state laws and regulations. Politicians and bureaucrats. They create boogieman problems and with a complicit media towing their boogieman problems cast a net of false fear and unwarranted despair in people.

Quite literally, they create problems where none exist. They're sick in that they chose to frighten people and foist false despair on them and do that to collect their unearned paychecks. Their job security is predicated on deceiving as many people as possible.

It cost more than just two trillion dollars a year to fund government abuse. That abuse hinders people's development, especially children being indoctrinated rather than educated, harms the economy and is largely responsible for causing false booms and reality-adjusting bust cycles in markets.

Flushing that money down the toilet -- save for military defense spending -- would be better for individuals, their families and society. That's a different way of saying, can't we just pay congress to stay home and not leave their houses. Surely we'd be better off. Politicians and bureaucrats are sick and need your help.

Fully integrated honesty is key. That we have the government we have -- delivered by both Democrats and Republicans -- that has gone so far off course from the government the founders created, is a product of irrationality and dishonesty. Changing the laws via the system is almost completely useless. Politicians create dozens of unconstitutional laws before even considering repealing just one unconstitutional law.

That is not a system -- it's a quagmire of deception, irrationality, fraud and abuse.

Politics is not the solution -- politics is the problem.

Who are the parasites?
Who are the producers?
Ostracizing the parasitical value destroyers
Praise the value producers

Step one for helping politicians and bureaucrats:
Get your head out of their sandbox.

Step two: Demand that they address Issue 101. Do the same with the media.

Step three: Ostracize government officials that fail to honestly address Issue 101. Do the same with the media.

Step four: Champion science and business communities -- often under relentless attack by the government. For they create jobs, necessities, luxuries and ever greater advancements that support human life, family and society -- natural order.

How can you really believe in something for hours during the day and then put those strong beliefs away in the evening?

Their job security is predicated on making it appear that they are solving problems. Since they can't or don't dare touch on the root cause of 99% of the problems it demonstrates that they don't really believe their jobs are to actually solve real problems. Whether either side of the aisle or individual is right or wrong on any given issue is mostly inconsequential.

The plain fact is, at the root of the problem, with a very few exceptions, they're all wrong.

Continued in part two:

The New-era Trend and
How Much Does Character Count?

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