COME HERE, LITTLE GIRL, WOULD YOU LIKE SOME TOBACCO?

This is mostly in response to my friend Treppenwitz, who in a recent posting was wrong.
Horribly and completely wrong.
So very wrong indeed.
Utterly.
Wrong.


In a non-smoking sort of way.


Treppenwitz's blog here:http://bogieworks.blogs.com/treppenwitz/
His offending post here:http://bogieworks.blogs.com/treppenwitz/2007/10/a-workable-solu.html
Preamble to the horrid offense here:http://bogieworks.blogs.com/treppenwitz/2007/10/continuing-the-.html
First inkling of offensiveness here:http://bogieworks.blogs.com/treppenwitz/2007/10/waste-my-time-s.html


Treppenwitz writes:
"Therefore, I have to respectfully disagree with those who try to make a case for exclusively adult gathering places being appropriate venues to allow smoking simply because children won't be there. The problem is not exposing kids to passive smoke... it is exposing anyone to passive smoke against their will when the law clearly states that it shouldn't happen!"

This was in response to my arguing that smoking should be permitted in bars and some coffee shops - specifically advocating that there should be a class of coffee shop with smoking permitted on the premises. I actually do not disagree with him - the key point being the idea of not exposing anyone against their will.
The problem is that there are so few venues where one can still smoke.
I suggested non-children (and non-food) environments because it is obvious that one should not permit smoking in such places. Bars are more of a grey zone, as are some coffee shops.

In California, bars which are owner-operated can still permit smoking. Some bars have made their staff co-owners precisely for that purpose. Just not enough of them.


"A waiter/bartender who wants to work should not have to risk lung cancer and skin damage in order to scrape out a living."

Agreed. I promise not to set foot in the place where she works. Her personality is azoy snotty and unpleasant that I do not wish to go there ever again. She may scrape, for all I care.


"Likewise, going out to enjoy one adult vice (drinking) should not mean being forced to endure another (inhaling smoke). Smoking and drinking are two separate pleasures/vices."

I love smoke-filled dives. Sorry.

But the rest of you should feel free to frequent the smokeless dives, and express your health nut tendencies there freely while drinking wheat-grass.

There are far too many smokeless dives, unfortunately.

That is because the California laws about smoking in the workplace are written to protect employees, irrespective of said employees' own favourite vice. Which means that even if the bar-owner and all of his staff are reckless chainsmokers who enjoy nothing so much as a smoggy reeking tobacco-drenched work-and-drink environment, they're still screwed (but, thankfully, shooting smack in the bathroom or snorting a line is still okay - those substances may be illegal, but they aren't offending anyone).

Yes, one solution is making the employees also co-owners. Which means both giving away a share in the business, and, unfortunately, making employees co-responsible for debts and liabilities. It is risky for all involved.

For tax and liability purposes, however, many bars have incorporated, and legally even the owner-operator is an employee. No matter that on some evenings he might be the only one there - in order to protect himself from himself he has to step outside to smoke or risk a fine. If he is smoking inside and the first customer of the evening steps in, even if that customer is also a smoker, the cigarette must be extinguished because he (the employee) has started work.

[After closing he can light up - because business hours have come to an end, and he is off the clock. He might smoke half a pack while cleaning up, but it doesn't matter, because he is no longer legally required to protect himself from himself.]



THE BAR DOWN THE BLOCK

It is because of such nonsense that the three elderly gentlemen who ran my favourite dive on Polk Street, half a block away from my apartment, sold their business. All three smoked. Until the law passed, all three smoked inside their bar. After the law passed, all three continued smoking inside their bar. Until they were fined for smoking in their own bar.
They had years before followed the advice of their lawyer and their accountant, and incorporated. As shareholder-owners of the corporation that employed them they became legally obliged to maintain a smoke-free working environment for the employees..... And as employees of the corporation of which they were owners, the laws of the state of California guaranteed them a smoke-free working environment, irrespective of their own wishes as smokers, and despite there being no other employees.

When the rainy season began they started looking for a buyer. They sold the place by the end of December. Between receiving the fines and the day they sold, they smoked outside, in the rain and fog, with all their patrons.

[The new owners of that bar went bankrupt within a year. Their successors failed also, and the place was empty for nearly four years after that. Since then it has reopened as a hip cocktail establishment catering to the younger crowd, whose smoking clientele blocks the sidewalk from six in the evening till two in the morning most nights.]


Perhaps a few other examples of Californian anti-smoking insanity might be illustrative here.

Example one: A bar on Polk Street has an enclosed and sheltered back-patio exclusively for smokers. The bartenders and bar-backs are also smokers, but are not allowed to enter the patio, because they are employees - they have to smoke out front during working hours. The patio is often jampacked, and except for the billiards players there are hardly any patrons inside the bar.

Example two: Two Arab-run coffee shops on Polk street have tables out front, except during the rainy season. The owners and their employees are frequently out front smoking. Except during the rainy season. Business plummets during the rainy season.

Example three: Both tobacconists in the business district are non-smoking establishments, despite the exception to the smoking laws for retailers who deal primarily in tobacco products. Neither business employs non-smokers, and it would be absurd if they did. The reason why one of them is non-smoking (except for employees) till five-thirty in the afternoon, and the other one is non-smoking at all hours, are the tenants in the office buildings in which they are located. Apparently tenants were hideously offended that there was smoking going on nearby, and forced the landlord to step in.

[I smoke my pipe at one of those stores every morning. We maintain a half-assed pretence that I am not a patron but a consultant. In case some idiot asks.]

Example four: A recently opened North-African coffee shop in my neighborhood has been fined for having narghiles in use inside. This was the direct result of the owner (a smoker) hiring an employee (a close relative and also a smoker) to tend to the narghiles......

[None of his patrons are non-smokers, by the way, because now all the narghiles are on the tables outside, the smoke blows in through the open windows and the open door, and the owner and his staff are outside chatting with the patrons. Inside, it reeks of molasses flavoured shisha and strong black tobacco and the staff is nowhere to be seen, and outside the sidewalk is scarce passable and in any case filled with middle-aged Arabs blowing smoke. Which demoralizes any potential non-smoking clientele.]

Example five: One city down the peninsula has ruled that hanging out in front of businesses is illegal - vagrancy, loitering, or some such rule. In consequence, one will often see a line of people in front of bars, restaurants, and coffee shops in the evening, walking in orderly fashion in a perpetual loop around the parked vehicles at the curb, so as to not break the law. You have to stay in motion, you see, in order not to be a vagrant or a loiterer. And you may not block the sidewalk.

Example six: One Bay Area suburb has ruled that smoking in your own backyard is a punishable offense. Barbecuing and having the mother of all compost heaps are fine, however. In the same city it is now also illegal to smoke in your own home if you live in an apartment building or condominium. Other California municipalities also ban smoking in public in commercial districts, near cash machines or movie theatres, or within a certain distance of commercial entry ways. Or all of the above, plus trails, parking lots, and golf courses.

Example seven: In San Francisco it is illegal to smoke in parks, squares and open spaces, public gardens, and a number of other places such as playgrounds or bus and cablecar stops (and many other California municipalities have similar or even more stringent laws).
You may smoke on the sidewalks alongside parks, squares and open spaces, and public gardens, as well as fifty feet away from playgrounds and bus and cablecar stops irrespective of wind direction.


Amidst the gloom of all these obstacles there are a few semi-bright spots - there are three actual smoking bars that I know of in the city. But none of them are ideal from my point of view.

The cigar bar in the financial district is too far away from where I live to make it convenient, and is often far too crowded besides.
The smoking bar on Geary Street caters to young cigarette smokers, is very loud, and often far too crowded, besides being far away from where I live and too close to the Tenderloin.
The bar on Union Street is very small, and thus too crowded and noisy almost by definition. Besides being not really in my neighborhood.

And, as you can imagine, I would rather have a cup of coffee or tea while smoking my pipe instead of being pressured into booze. I need a coffee shop.


In conclusion, tayere Trepp, I realize that non-smokers do indeed have a point. But if there are no coffee-shops where people like me can settle in for a good long smoke without being harassed by the health nuts, we will kvetch, and commit sabotage, and disrespect oppressive laws. We will block the sidewalk, and we will tell non-smokers to go do nasty things to themselves, with vigour. We will puff furiously and feign deafness. We will fume.

We will sit on our front-door steps in the rainy season, smoking our pipes or cigars and spitting disagreeably at whichever sodden health nut seeks shelter in our doorway.


And some of us will probably go down to the sidewalk next to the girls playground and try to tempt the little dears with some fine aged Virginia flake, or a nice bit of Balkan mixture. Some of those sweeties might even like a dark-stoved Danish ribbon, or spicy navy cut rounds. And the littlest ones will certainly appreciate the delicate perfume of a pressed blond or a toasted Cavendish.

Oh, I can just imagine some sweet little pigtailed miss squealing with delight once she discovers the zesty pleasure of Louisiana Perique - especially in a rich fully rubbed blend!


Burley. Flue-cured. Toasted Cavendish. Black Virginia. Xanthi. Yenidje. Latakia. Tanzanian yellow. Dark Carolina. Red Cake. Green River. Maryland Ribbon. Caporal. Smyrna. Semois. Samsoun. Yakka. 1792 Flake.


I myself am thinking of manufacturing a brand of ciggies named "Happy Kittens" just to lure an attractive segment of the next generation into my vice, so that when I have become a dirty old man, and gout hampers my mobility, they will not wrinkle their cute little button noses at my smell and run away.


"Enjoy a Happy Kitten - it's small and sassy!"


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AFTERTHOUGHT

One morning four years ago I was walking to work on Battery Street, which has a long stretch with a reeky sewer, and, at that time of day, three lanes bumper to bumper. I was smoking a cigar. A woman coming towards me screamed at full volume "thank you SOOO much for destroying my lungs by smoking, you asshole!".
Boruch Hashem I had the quickness of mind to respond "you're very welcome, ma'am, it's a pleasure".

I hope I have indeed succeeded in destroying her lungs. People like her make the world less pleasant.


Note: This post would have been much longer, but I felt the urge to step outside and light up. Mmmmmmmm!

TOBACCO INDEX


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