March 31, 2008 – Five years on from the smoking ban, welcome to New York, says Ken Macmillan. No smoking, no drinking, no dancing, no fun.
I used to like living in New York. There was diversity, excitement, opportunity, tolerance and freedom. However, in the 18 years I've been a New Yorker, I've watched the city change into a city of over-policing, prohibition, persecution and sterilisation that neither makes sense nor appeals to me anymore.
I have survived and tolerated so much in this city - crime, evil landlords, high rents, a crash in the local economy, 9/11 - but the smoking ban, introduced in 2003, was the final straw.
It was during Mayor Giuliani's term, in 1995, that the first move was made to prohibit smoking. Ludicrously, smoking was banned in restaurants large enough to comfortably accommodate smokers and non-smokers, while smoking was only permitted in small establishments and bar areas.
During his tenure Giuliani also aggressively pursued a war on art, street vendors, noise, topless-bars, petty-drugs, nightclubs, drinking outside and dancing in small venues. Giuliani was trying to clean up New York. Mayor Bloomberg cast the final volley, with little resistance.
Bloomberg had started a war on smokers by doubling tobacco taxes. We were at war in the Middle East, in constant fear of terrorism, the economy was frightening, and now you could no longer have a drink and a smoke in a bar. It seemed to me that everyone had lost their sense of reason. Welcome to New York: No Drinking. No Dancing. No Smoking. No Fun.
I had never heard anyone complain about smoking in bars and restaurants in New York. There was plenty of choice. Bars, restaurants, clubs and cafés either permitted smoking or didn't. They catered to the demands of their customers and the preference of the owner.
I was disappointed at how readily New Yorkers bent over for Bloomberg, but in their defence the media had been saturated with anti-smoking propaganda for years prior to the ban, and smokers were a minority. The Mayor was rich and very influential. Bloomberg promised that 1,000 lives would be saved every year. Much as with WMD and Saddam's link to 9/11, everyone now believed that ‘secondhand’ smoke killed.
Some bar and restaurant owners tried to absorb the fines but the law was such that the fine would double each time, and after the third violation the licence to operate would be revoked. No-one could afford to lose their business.
Aside from the fact that I no longer had anywhere to go to smoke, friends of mine who owned or worked in premises that had permitted smoking prior to the ban claimed an average loss of 20 per cent, contrary to figures released by the Bloomberg administration. The ban hurt the owner's profits and the staff who lived off their tips. Many old venues closed down. I would walk past bars that were empty at Happy Hour.
I dine out much less than I used to and don't stay long, reluctantly stepping outside for a smoke, although now I am usually accompanied by much less self-conscious smoking accomplices. I usually decline a drink or dinner, if I am to be made to feel uncomfortable for being a smoker, or if it is too cold or wet to enjoy a cigarette on the street.
Many restaurants and bars permit smoking ‘after hours’, when Bloomberg's ‘Gestapo’ are known to be done for the night, and the premises are clear of any potential ‘informers’ who might dial 311 (the City's complaint hotline). A saucer appears for use as an ashtray and the staff and the faces of customers light-up as cigarettes are smoked with illicit pleasure inside.
I used to frequent an incredible French restaurant in the East Village, smoking at the bar with a colourful crowd of jazz musicians, writers, singers, designers, and photographers. Much like the bar in Cheers, everyone knew my name. It was my ‘local’. And not long after the smoking ban, regardless of our efforts to keep coming back, the crowd at the bar eventually ceased to exist.
I still drop in from time to time, stepping out for a smoke (with the staff), but the sparse clientele is not half as interesting as the crowd of regulars who once filled the bar with energy and intelligent conversation. The ban segregated us and broke up social groups that had existed for decades. There are some characters that I haven't seen since.
Remarkably the ban doesn't seem to have reduced the numbers of smokers as crowds gather now outside bars and clubs, creating a new complaint in dense downtown residential neighbourhoods.
I've always enjoyed smoking, particularly with a coffee, drink or dinner, and stubbornly refuse to quit, not just because a self-righteous mayor dictates it, but because I'm an adult who is aware of the risks to my own health, and the lack of risk to those around me.
Ironically, prior to any implementation of a ban, I had noticed a trend to quit smoking. Now however, as with most things that are banned, I see that smoking has again become cool and sexy, an act of anti-establishment defiance, an attractive vice. A few years after the initial Gestapo-like crackdown on bars and restaurants, I now regularly hear word of underground ‘smoke-easies’ where smoking is secretly permitted.
I have found ways to survive the ban here, as have my friends and colleagues. Although not as free as before, we gather in particular places where we can still enjoy drinks, food, conversation and smokes, in defiance of the ban, although winters here are hard.
Unfairly, the affluent and well connected, are still at liberty to enjoy a smoke in certain bars, clubs, parties and restaurants, it is the common man who is struck hardest, no longer able to go to his local for a drink and a smoke.
I still struggle to believe how or why they banned smoking in a city like New York that is, and always has been a stressful, dirty, noisy, smoky place to live and work.
When I walk out onto my street in the Lower East Side, strewn with refuse, dog and human faeces, broken bottles, the air full of deafening sirens and exhaust fumes from trucks, buses and bikers, past closed down graffiti-covered store fronts, past the homeless, alcoholics, mentally ill, crack-heads, heroin-addicts, and bums begging for small change, it is beyond me that I cannot have a smoke in a bar.
This article was first published on Forest's Free Society website in 2008.