Mean-spirited, petty busybodies put bar owner behind eight-ball

He's an affable, congenial man, who for 18 years ran a top-notch Volkswagen/Audi/Porsche dealership on Macleod Tr.

Then, at the age of 56, Charlie got up one day and decided he wanted to do something different in life. So he sold his dealership and opened up The Garage Billiards Bar and Restaurant at Eau Claire Market.

"I'm a people-type person," he says. "I like to meet people and chat with them. That's why I went into the automobile business, and it's why I went into the hospitality business."

If you've been to The Garage, you'll know it's a big, spacious place -- 8,000 sq. ft. with high ceilings -- and with 18 pool tables neatly placed throughout. The younger jean-clad crowd go to Charlie's place to play pool, and business executives and lawyers come in their three-piece suits to talk about the market, the latest ramifications of some case, or politics.

It's a family business. Charlie's there just about every hour of the day and his always-cheerful daughter Melissa happily works behind the bar.

But these days, when you catch a glimpse of Charlie unawares, you see the occasional expression of strain on his face. It's as if there's a touch of worry behind his affable manner.

There is -- because as vivacious as his business is today -- he fears it won't last.

This past Jan. 1, our puritanical aldermen forced Charlie to put a dividing line down the centre of his enterprise. One side is for smokers, the other for customers under the age of 18.

Next July 1, Mendelman will be forced to erect a solid wall reaching up to the ceiling, dividing his bar and restaurant into two. On one side, smokers, on the other non-smokers and those under 18.

Come 2005 -- and this is really crazy considering Mendelman will have had to spend about $50,000 to build that wall -- the city's anti-smoking committee has recommended smoking be banned entirely from city bars and restaurants.

Charlie wonders what will happen to his business when these draconian moves are forced on him, and at the age when he is about to start collecting his OAP and CPP, he's too old to start another venture in another field.

In Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver where similar authoritarian laws have been enacted, customers have left in droves. True, the bars and restaurants now do have "clean air" -- they just don't have many customers to breathe it.

In Calgary, the city aldermen and mandarins -- who are planning to wreck everyone's fun -- claim smoking is going out of style in any case, and they are just giving it a little push.

They may be right in declaring in Calgary only about 25% of residents smoke, but other statistics show 80% of people who go to bars and pool halls smoke.

Add to that, even non-smokers who go to bars and pool halls don't object to other customers who do smoke. It's part of the ambience, so to speak.

In reality, once anti-smoking zealots force Charlie to slam a wall down the middle of his room, there won't be much ambience left. Everything Charlie has tried to accomplish in his huge, spacious bar will be slashed in half.

One of the many aspects of all of this that frustrates Mendelman is that even as all parties were actually agreeing on the 50/50% split on smoking and non-smoking space -- with owners believing that was it -- the city was already surreptitiously forming another committee to draw up and impose the other measures.

That was dishonest. The owners thought they had a mutual long term deal, but the city knifed them in the back.

Now, Mendelman is just one of hundreds of bar and restaurant owners in our city facing these drastic measures and facing huge losses on their investments.

Says Charlie: "If you don't want to go to a place where people smoke, you surely have a right to go elsewhere. But surely it should be freedom of choice for everyone. Isn't that fair? Doesn't that make sense?"

But this is Calgary --- governed by mean-spirited, petty busybodies who want to regiment society to their Orwellian dreams.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jackson, associate editor of the Sun, can be reached at paul.jackson@calgarysun.com.
Letters to the editor should be sent to
callet@sunpub.com.

Maybe then I could go out to a bar or a pool hall without being assaulted by unwanted and unhealthy tobacco smoke and made ill.

According to your logic, if I take my ten-year-old to the multiplex, and sit with her in a theater showing a film with an "R" rating, I should be able to have the movie stopped because it may be harming her.

According to your logic, someone with a severe peanut allergy should be able to stop you and your friends from eating peanuts in a bar or restaurant because it threatens his life.

when it endangers someone else's health - and smoking in public or in the presence of nonsmokers does exactly that

Enacting law based on allegation is the sneakiest form of tyranny. Either PROVE second hand smoke endangers your health, or shut up. You and your commrades over at global warming will not be happy until liberty is defeated. You make a good soldier in the service of the tyrannt.

I'm a conservative Republican who would outlaw smoking in publicly-accessed places in a heartbeat. And if you really think that your right to the pursuit of happiness includes that of inflicting unhappiness and bad health onto unwilling others then there is really no point in our even discussing matters because we have no common ground at all.

Well, you and I have no common ground as long as you don't understand the difference between public and private property. Guess you've never owned a business or that line would be very clear.

You need to realize that tobacco smoke is the number one cause of preventable illness and premature death,

You need to realize that you have been brainwashed into believing something that, even if it is true, has no bearing on the people's right to choose risky lifestyles.

and that no one has the right to injure another person's health by polluting the air in places open to the public. Hiding behind the concept of "property rights" just won't cut it; by smoking in publicly accessed places, smokers make those places unusable at worst and unhealthy at best to nonsmokers in general and to those with cardipulmonary problems in particular. It's a form of denial of access.

(Hey, Gabz, this sounds like a Sweda line, don't it?) It's far more accurate to look at it as a "contractual" matter. If the owner of a business wants to cater to smokers and allow smoking in his establishment, his staff agrees to work in that establishment under that policy, and his customers agree to enter that establishment under that policy, who are YOU to say they cannot enter into such a mutually beneficial contract?

But smoking in private or in the open away from nonsmokers doesn't hurt anyone who doesn't choose to be hurt and it doesn't keep anyone away from anything; have at it.

Guess you're not up to speed on the anti-smoker agenda. They/you want a smokefree world, which includes outdoors AND private homes and cars. These prohibitions are already in place in some areas and in the works in others.

As for the local "smoking lobby" coming after me, well, it's only natural that some smokers, particularly the hardcore nicotine addicts, will be extremely defensive about their smoking and in denial about the negative health impacts that their smoking has on nonsmokers.

I keep asking for proof of those "negative health impacts" but no one wants to provide them. Only thing we ever get from the nico-Nazi tight hairnet crowd here are press releases and junk science from bought-and-paid-for anti-smoker operatives. I note that you are at least up to date on the latest anti-smoker drive: "the hardcore" smoker/addict.

It's understandable that they feel threatened by recent changes and by anti-smoking laws designed to protect the health of other people at their expense.

ROFLMAO

Nor will some of the more extreme ones ever be willing to accept the legitimacy of anything involving them ever not being able to smoke anywhere they please and in the presence of anyone they please;

(I've gotta look up that fallacious logic text we used in college...)

I have seen some of these people try to smoke amid the sick in doctor's offices, in hospital rooms, and in emergency rooms and a number of them became furious when told that they were not allowed to smoke there. (On the other hand, it should be pointed out that there exists a significant percentage of smokers who actually are considerate of the rights and the health of others.)

You may not realize it--you talk like a youngster--but it hasn't been that long ago that smoking was permitted in those places. Well, I don't know about emergency rooms...never been in one. It's been less than ten years since smoking was commonplace in hospital rooms, at least those without oxygen.

Smoking is, thank God, on its way out. The ashtray is going the way of the spittoon. You may as well get used to it. And there's really no point getting angry about it.

First said by King James in 1604 or thereabouts (no, I don't remember it personally), and again in 1897 by Lucy Page Gaston when she set up the Anti-Cigarette League (14 states did prohit the sale and use of tobacco in any form), and again by Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s. It's the same belief held by Carry Nation as she swung her little hatchet against the evils of demon rum. I guess we'll see who "may as well get used to it," but since smoking is on the rise by the young, my money is on our side.

Whether you believe it or not, this isn't about smoking, it's about freedom, a concept you seem to have trouble understanding. Stick around, maybe we can help change that.

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