mr. anaconda is setting his priorities straight this week and is hopefully frolicking on a beach with his family as we speak. he’s allowed me to take over his show today. so now without further a-do…”ladies and germs”….
now, i don’t know much about these much maligned hipsters i keep hearing about but if you ask me you should look in the mirror. do you take pleasure in seeing great live shows, with only a few people in attendance? do you like to look like you don’t still dress like you did ten years ago? do you like the finer things in life like digital downloads, wifi, and highspeed internet? most of all, do you have a disdain for the studded-denim-vest wearing meat heads who attend turbonegro-themed nights at a bar? does the sight of a bar full of betty page look-alikes with their brill-cream smelling boyfriends make you want to run screaming for the exit? is drinking budweiser not ironic enough to make you swallow? well reach for a pbr and listen up…
you know those drunken obnoxious fools at live shows that interrupt your listening pleasure? those smokers who stink up the bar and hardly make it worth breathing? the horny little devils looking for love in all the wrong places? i like those people. those are MY people. i like every beer-soaked shoe their feet squish around in. all the fist-pumping, sing-along, beer-waving dudes, arm-in-arm on the first row tumbling onto the stage – THOSE guys. my people.
these are called fans. and they do matter. we matter. we spend lots of money on records, on beer, and on our friends’ beers. we know the words to your songs. and if I sport short black bangs and wear bright red lipstick i can GUARANTEE you I have a better record collection than you. (no I don’t care if you care). we are often not young enough to claim to not know better. sometimes we accidentally pee on our own feet. i don’t know about at 2am, but when we walked out the door earlier that night we looked and smelled good. i’m sorry if you require a certain amount of detachment to give your musical performance relevancy, but you listene(d) to rock and roll just like i do and i will make judgments on your musical performance based on unfair subjective – even aesthetic – reasons. i like the bands i like so much i want to tell the world. and if you like the same things i do, i like you and i want you to be my friend. why do you think i wear all that silly regalia?
i mean haven’t you done enough with your smoking bans? so do you think that a smoke-free environment will make it more likely that you go out and see a show every once in a while? i doubt it. in fact, non-smokers have never been less popular. y’all went from praise worthy rock and roll soldiers to real squares thanks to a little ordinance banning smoking in bars that went into effect this past saturday.
i was at a popular montrose bar, sitting outside on the first night of the ban, smoking with the owner of another popular montrose bar. we talked about the impact of the ban would have on revenue and on renovations that bars would need to make to compete. but, i speculated aloud, didn’t you look a LITTLE forward to cutting back? it’s healthier for us, i reasoned, we need to take care of ourselves. “speak for yourself, sister.” well so much for that notion.
back inside i joined the dj and three brave souls upstairs. the dj i might add, is a regular on the turbojungen circuit. he recognized me and waved hello. he played ‘whole lotta rosie’ by ac/dc and i’d like to think for me. beside me sat an alcohol- hardened beautiful warrior. her candor and spirit remind me of the great dorothy dean, except without the organizational skills. in any case, right about 1am, having achieved the correct level of enlightenment via $2.50 wells, she looked around at the empty tables, that overlooked the throngs of non-smoking patrons downstairs, who looked out the window at the hoardes of smokers packing the sidewalk outiside, she pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and became the coolest girl in the world. she made cigarettes contraband in a single, rebellious act.
fast forward two nights. another montrose bar. my best friend the hungarian and i co-host the bi-weekly trainwreck of an event called “open turntable night with suzi puke and mamabrigade”. when i get there everyone including most of the staff are smoking outside, grousing about the ban. attendance is slow as usual for a monday night. inside the club the mixer quits working and we’re waiting on a replacement. we wander in and out smoking but mostly we just slump on our bar stools and wished aloud how we wished we could toke up.
but then once again, this time a little earlier in the night, through the magic of truth elixir, one woman reaches enlightenment. this time it’s ms. k, who invites me to the unisex/handicap bathroom to do “smokaine”. me and her smoking in the stinky bathroom shared with boys, leaning against the slimy, grafitti-covered walls – well that might have been the best cigarette i ever smoked. my apologies to the staff, we did it without your knowledge, door locked hoping you wouldn’t bust us, because we like you, but the ban is so fresh that it just wouldn’t be right to NOT break the rules just this once…
Yoo So Punk!
Nice post Rosa. Wish I hadn’t read this at lunch time though. Now I don’t want to go back to work. I want to go out and be a real fucker somewhere
Rebel without a lung.
For the record, I oppose smoking bans despite being a non-smoker. It has much less to do with liking smelly hipsters and much more to do with not wanting to live in a nanny state where the government is constantly telling private individuals and private businesses how to do things. Let individual businesses decide whether they want to ban smoking on their premises. And if non-smokers don’t like it, they can either complain to the management of that business, go to a fern bar, or shut the fuck up.
But of course when I say things like this to my leftie friends, they all call me a reactionary. The irony of Naderite government-nannyism backfiring on the leftie counterculture is not lost on me.
a couple of comments about the pictures.
the bare-butt pic: i have no idea who’s crack that is. i didn’t take it. someone took my camera off the bar and nicely returned it (minus one frame).
my screen is kinda dark but that dj is wearing a scratch acid tee and holding a rush record. there is a minor threat record in the background.
the bottom pic: on the wall behind her it says “gimme my money bitch” and her button says “i’m so stupid” when, in fact, she was the smartest person in the room EASY…
ok so in order to counter my big-dumb-rock post, does this mean my next one has to be about music with no words? isn’t that what smert people listen to?
Mr. Scratch Acid shirt looks just like Conor, one of my old roommates. I wonder.
Hey SoH, I didn’t realize you were so libertarian. Or maybe I did and just forgot. Damn. Carry on.
I personally wouldn’t miss all the smoke, but I wouldn’t ban ciggies either. That’s just fucking gay.
I don’t see anyone banning cars or Big Macs. Those aren’t any good for us either. I’m with SoH on this one.
Three consecutive comments, yay!
Sorry.
that IS connor!
That fucker, he should give me that shirt.
why do you think i wear all that silly regalia? Uh, you’re a social semiologist?
Sparrows, for the sake of this being the comments section of a blog (i.e. a stage for pointless arguments) what if I said that smoke interferes with my freedom to breathe clean air. And that, likewise, I think we ought to do something about idling traffic because it’s far worse than a little nicotine? Smoke doesn’t really bother me but having two grandparents die in their early 70s because they each smoked two packs per day was sort of a bummer.
I always love your photos, Rosa. Trails of smoke did made people in black and white photos from the 40s-50s-60s-70s look cool & detached too. How’s that for a contradiction?
i know what you mean about the lung cancer. bravado is the only defense smokers have against that fear. obviously parts my post are swaddled in hyperbole. if you ask me i wished i’d never started smoking again. there were many years that i did not.
beyond that my meta point was that we all throw stones at *some* unknown group of people no matter how tolerant we like to think we are. and that’s ok, tolerance though healthier, can be a bit annoying. kind of like vegetarians.
Bluebird: I would argue that every individual must choose whether they want to expose themselves to smoke or not. If the smoke exists in a private home or business, tough darts — it’s not a public space. I would never argue against banning smoking in publicly owned places (i.e., subsidized sports arenas, city hall, parks, the DPS office, etc.) for the very reason you gave. But privately owned property – even privately owned property which is open to the public – should never, ever be subject to these kinds of restrictions. As much as we’d all like to believe that clubs are public places, they aren’t — you pay to get in, and some private entity is footing the rent and the business risk of running that club. They deserve, at minimum, to run their business in a manner which they feel is most suitable to their customers.
And yes, John, for all intents and purposes I am a libertarian. Or at least I start at libertarian and listen to arguments from there. If state intervention in private affairs is really justified for some reason, then you have to convince me. Every case has to be evaluated, but the inviolate starting position is that the private individual’s rights are a given, and the state must make a compelling case that those rights should be compromised in favor of an overwhelming public good — with emphasis on the word “public”.
Thus I might be willing to support Bluebird’s argument that emissions standards for autos are worth legislating, while simultaneously being opposed to legislation against smoking on private property, which individuals have a choice to visit or not visit.
hi rosa-never smoked cigs, but good god i used to drink. i don’t anymore, and generally avoid bars and nightclubs. IF i should happen to go to a show, i don’t expect everyone else to be sober because of my issues. same with cigs. please don’t blow smoke right in my face, but if you’re at a club, one should expect smoke, loud drunks, sweaty moshers, spontanious insanity, willful stupidity, and a general sense that the whole scene does not revolve around an individual persons comfort level. i don’t really care for any of these things, but my point is if i’m not up for it, i stay home for the evening. what comes after cigs? music above a certain decible level? maybe close the clubs earlier ’cause people shouldn’t be out so late? i stopped a lot of my bad habits ’cause they stopped working for me. but i’m 41, and i don’t need the state to be my parents. question: if i take up smoking as a rebellious act, what brand do you recommend? rock on!
hey brian! dude i’m rockin’ ur logic.
now you’re onto something. starting to smoke after 40. brilliant! wished i’d thought of that.
ok well there’s levels: there’s CVS level of variety – these are cigarettes that can be found ALMOST anywhere. i’d recommend parliament lights, parliament light menthol, or marlboro shorts (blue and silver box). maybe austin CVS’s are fancier than houston ones and you might score a box of dunhills or triple 3s (the cigarette preferred by crusty old vietamese men). do yourself a favor and never EVER buy camels. they taste like they’ve been already been smoked.
also available everywhere is drum tobacco in a can. i have a friend who looks so charming rolling his own. not real convenient if you don’t tote a man-purse though.
moving on…boutique cigarettes. y’all have Hollywood convenience stores don’t you? if you do try a box of du maurier lights. from canada. they come in a nifty side dispensing box. i think malcolm gave a box to dom as a gift and i got a couple and they were divine… for a VERY different taste, try nat shermans. they don’t have any additives and they have umpteen varieties and it’ll take you months to get through them all. which can be fun in and of itself. and if you want to attract girls smoke a djarum every once in a while. whoa that is such a great smell.
finally, do yourself a favor and go to mexico and pick up some delicados. that’s the best damned cigarette in the world. just not available anywhere but south of the border.
I remember when I used to be a hard-core libertarian. Then I was driving cross-country one day and said to myself, “You know, I really like the National Highway System.”
I’m so a) rabidly anti-smoking and b) over the illusion that the free market provides unlimited, wonderful choices and works things out for everybody that it’s really for the best for me not to enter this discussion further. Although I should see if I can find the posters of NZ musicians against smoking. (None that you’ve heard of, of course.) They’re pretty touched.
dd, the free market most emphatically does NOT provide everyone with unlimited, wonderful choices nor does it work things out for everybody. But neither do statism, fascism, totalitarianism, communism or socialism. Smoking bans are a slippery slope into destruction of private property rights and individual liberties brought about by the same smiling leftie-greenies that want you to believe that *their* brand of statism is different from the others that preceded them. They smile today, but give them enough ground and tomorrow they’ll be lining people up.
Private property rights and individual liberties are more smoke screen than battle cries. Easy enough to fall behind in the vast wasteland that is America now.
But the best thing this country has ever done politically is setting aside vast amounts of land for wilderness and public use. And of course this foresight is tested at least every time a Republican hits the oval office.
Private property is a house. A pub is a public place.
Smoking bans are a slippery slope into destruction of private property rights and individual liberties brought about by the same smiling leftie-greenies that want you to believe that *their* brand of statism is different from the others that preceded them.
Actually, the slippery slope started when those leftie-greenies forced race-mixing in private property. All a cunning ploy on their part to completely dismantle property rights.
Smoking bans are a slippery slope into destruction of private property rights and individual liberties
Yes, because once there’s a smoking ban we’re all going to turn off our brains and hand over our freedom to the big bad government, which wants nothing more than to turn us all into mindless drones who exist to serve the state.
Except that, believe it or not, the government is us. This wasn’t some law that the city concocted on its own in a vacuum. It came from people and these people aren’t out to take away your private property rights because many of them have property too.
Private property is a house. A pub is a public place
Indeed. A public place with employees who should expect workplace standards.
Er- here’s a Columbia urban design grad school question for you: what constitutes public space?
If you try to map public versus private space, is it a black and white map? Or are there shades of gray representing semi-public and semi-private? Tax policy turns out to be a fairly limited way of defining public space.
I think the general rule is that it’s “private space” if it’s socially acceptable to masturbate there. That’s the rule I’ve heard anyway. Everything else is public space.
I’m not so sure this is a case of a gray public space. Employees are entitled to a smoke free workplace. Period. Even if that workplace is a bar, the employer can’t just arbitrarily decide to override the worker’s rights, because, hey “it’s a bar and he knew what he was getting into when he applied for a job here.” That argument doesn’t cut it because the smoke is a barrier to employment for some. One of my first jobs was as a telemarketer before smoke-free workplace laws. It was just about the only job I could get as a kid with no experience and it was miserable because most of the employees would sit in this small room and chain smoke while they made their calls. So my options were to be broke or smell like smoke all the time. More often than not, I chose the former.
If you want to smoke in a bar, open a bar in your living room. Keith Reynolds has a regular piano bar in his living room in Houston. The smoke is stifling, but nobody has to be there. More power to him.
you’re right, Justin, bar people have to work there. There are no other options.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one. I just don’t care for the government telling me what to do. If you want to get into public/private semantics, then what we need are private clubs where people can smoke if they want to…WHATEVER they want to, I might add.
I agree with Justin about workplace rights, but not his definition of public space. Workers still have rights in private spaces.
The bar in question is a privately owned public space. An airport is a publicly owned public space- with advertising from private companies bombarding our eyesight. A mega-church is full of [ ]with enough combined power to influence our public political sphere from within a semi-public space owned by a tax-exempt enterprise. You don’t have full 1st amendment rights to protest within a shopping mall (semi-public). The publicly accessible internet provides more of a public forum than standing on a soapbox in Washington Square Park, a public space. The courtyard of a multi-family building would be semi private. Sig. Naked gets private space about right except for I know some men make exceptions in the restrooms of large office buildings when forced to work late at night.
They also make exceptions on the Chicago “L” trains unfortunately Bluebird. Great run down on the space quandry btw.
But Sparrow, your private club idea intrigues me. Care to enter a joint venture? Yuk yuk.
For a few months anyway you guys are welcome to come up to Chicago and smoke in bars legally. If it would really get your jollies off.
I agree with Justin about workplace rights, but not his definition of public space.
I wasn’t saying that a pub was actually a public space. I was agreeing with Kilian’s assertion which I took to mean something along the lines of: A pub is a private space, but for the purposes of this discussion about smoke, it is equivalent to a public space. Let me know if I’m wrong there, Kilian.
you’re right, Justin, bar people have to work there. There are no other options.
And while I’m checking arguments, I want to make sure I have this one right, because it sounds an awful lot like: They are just bar people; they don’t have the same rights that regular workers do.
Pub is short for public house. When you meet friends at a pub it is to meet out, in public. Of course I realize that pubs have private owners. Obviously the legality of this arrangement is what gets tricky (always has) and what we are discussing.
thanks for filling in Rosa! I cant praise you enough for such an outstanding post. I wish i could comment further, but i’m still on vacation. I mainly wanted to thank you.
One thing i will say is that we can still smoke indoors in bars in NC, but there are some bars that have chosen to be non smoking and i tell you there is a real pleasure in staying after hours and lighting up as the bartenders pull out the old ashtrays.
Umm, Justin, are you kidding? I’m not even sure how you arrived at that idea. If you knowingly start working for an asshole, must the local gov’t enforce a no asshole policy to protect me from their scourge, or should I just have the sense not to work there? Seriously, how many bartenders have told you they would love their job even more if it wasn’t for all that pesky smoke? They absolutely can work someplace else. If the potential employee knows the risks, why is that not enough? Should we reinstate prohibition because alcohol is bad for us too?
I was simply making fun of your concept that poor bar folk have no other choice than to work at bars, and that we should pity them and therefore support the smoking ban. I found that concept a little goofy. I have no axe to grind when it comes to bar people. They can enjoy the same rights I have. Me, the regular worker.
I misread you John. I thought you were agreeing with Justin.
I misread Justin too I guess. I had no idea he had a soft spot for bartenders especially since he doesn’t even drink. I thought maybe he meant that once the ball was rolling for work places in general, that the ban would hit bars.
I wonder what the ratio of bartenders who will quit because of the smoking ban is to people who will now be interested in bartending because of the smoking ban.
And I wonder (for the pius’ sake) what can do for alcohol what second hand smoke did for cigarettes.
hmmmm. talk about slippery slopes. john, it sounds like you could even be challenging the legitimacy of OSHA, the minimum wage and shit like that. where does one draw the line?
the thing about alcohol that is different from smoke… is that obviously only the person who has made the choice to consume it is consuming it.
uhhhew. before this goes off in an unintended direction let me just state that i’m generally confused by politics in the south.
it gets reported to us in the north that a large segment of ‘blue collar’ (a term with which i have difficulties not worth explaining here) workers like less government because they equate that with freedom. i kind of think people deserve more in the way of health care, education, and public services than they are getting. supposedly we are the richest country in the world, but i would say we have a shit standard of living even compared to eastern european countries. i wonder if less government is really doing the regular joe on the street a lot of good.
ok, i definitely just fired a cannonball in the wrong direction. have lots of work to do today. have no rights or benefits in my own workplace. see you later.
upton sinclair.
I’ll put it like this. I don’t think the government should ban cigarettes in bars, as much as I won’t miss the smoke. I would, however, love to see bars have the balls to ban cigarettes themselves based on what we all know about cigarette smoke.
I’m not tackling OSHA. And yes, I do think that bar workers deserve rights as much as anyone else.
Hey Godwin, I just read this little gem on Wiki:
“the first modern, nationwide tobacco ban was imposed by the Nazi Party in every German university, post office, military hospital and Nazi Party office, under the auspices of Karl Astel’s Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research, created in 1941 under direct orders from Adolf Hitler himself.”
So there you go. Only a Nazi would ban cigarettes. Geez Justin. What a bastard.
Yeah, Hitler was also a vegetarian. So, killing animals? Nein. But Jews? Oh, ja!
john just pulled out a quirk’s exception.
the first modern, nationwide tobacco ban was imposed by the Nazi Party…under the auspices of Karl Astel’s Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research, created in 1941 under direct orders from Adolf Hitler himself
That’s actually really interesting. I wonder what sorts of smoking hazards the science community had already discovered by 1941.
All heil German engineering.
It’s worth pointing out that Hitler was democratically elected… at least at first.
It’s worth pointing out that Hitler was democratically elected… at least at first.
It turns out that’s not exactly true.
You beat me to it, Justin. The most Hitler ever got was 37% of the vote. Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor.
John effectively surrendered when he invoked the Godwin rule, by the way.
The reason one automatically loses by introducing the word Nazi or Fascist into the argument is that it leaves your fellow commenter in the position of having to defend the Nazis or Fascists, an unfair tactic in any debate.
I am so late for this one.
And I should point out that the Blow Dried Idiot, aka Rick Perry, was elected governor with only 39%. It all depends on how you define “democracy”. Hitler brokered a power position out of a strong electoral showing, forming a coalition with other elements. That’s standard operating procedure in most modern European countries, which many of us might consider democratic.
So we’ve now established the following:
If you are Rick Perry, you were elected with less than a majority of the vote
Hitler was elected with less than a majority of the vote
Rick Perry is therefore a Nazi
Rick Perry supports smoking bans
So that, as clear as the summer sun, if you support smoking bans you are clearly a Nazi.
Case closed.
Who can argue with that logic?
Who the fuck is Rick Perry? Is that the guy who sang for Journey?!
AAAaaaah! Ja. Er ist zehr Nazi.
Dude, why don’t you just call it a secondhand smoking ban, ’cause that’s what it is. If you only knew that I vote for the Marijuana Reform Party every chance I get, you might understand my politics a little better.