From Da Gambit…
The Frenchmen Street bar and music venue d.b.a. is going smoke free as of Jan. 3, 2011. It’s not the first local venue to do so. Tipitina’s does not allow smoking, and other Frenchmen venues that kicked the habit include Snug Harbor, Three Muses and The Maison.
I’ve developed a libertarian streak in recent years as it relates to vice laws (still a pinko economically). I don’t think everybody should be out banging hookers and doing blow but I believe people should police themselves in that regard. Even though hookers and blow certainly sounds tempting, I have never done it essentially because it is bad for your health. I bet some of yall thought I was morally opposed to it huh? Yeah right!
But smoking sucks indoors. Particularly at music shows. Up by the stage, it’s cramped. There are people everywhere. You have to push your way in. And then there are those who think that would be a great time to light one up. So you start grooving because, you know, the band is good, and then you feel a burning. Yes, the girl next to you grooved her ciggie into your arm.
By the third song or so, everybody is lit up. The people at the bar are all smoking, the people in the crowd are all smoking. The “social smokers” join in and then there is a cloud of carcinogens in the air.
There may be some smokers who look out for this sort of thing but too many of them don’t.
The bars on Frenchmen are setting a great example. If more people took a role in governing vices for themselves, we wouldn’t need as much popo governing it for us with nightsticks, tasers and new jails.
Smoking laws and stupid images of diseased lungs on ciggie packs are dreadful and childish. Bars respecting all their customers is very nice. There will always be other places that will take them I’m sure. I will eat my shoe is a bar on Bourbon Street follows the lead.
I’d like to say I’m of mixed minds about this but I’m not. I am against all places being smoke-free but I am not against certain venues being so. I don’t think it has to be all or nothing. I just moved from Boston where there is no smoking anywhere and pharmacies cannot sell tobacco. That’s too extreme. I’m not against a smoky bar, in fact I gravitate toward them. I am against packed places like you cite where smoking gets in the way and causes a hazard, or at least an inconvenience. While I have a libertarian streak myself, I am not against a proprietor stepping on smokers’ “rights” in their establishment.
As for Bourbon Street, part of its appeal is flouting the norms of propriety within the letter of the law. For people from elsewhere, smoking in public is exotic and other vices are tolerated. I don’t think it will disappear soon. It is part of the brand and something many people remark about when they return to colder climes.
As a lifelong non-smoker, I love that some bars are doing this on their own, not by government force. I’d rather inhale the noxious bar clouds and get burned by clumsy drunks than give big brother more power over our individual freedom. Anyway, as long as the law allows they’ll always be bars that want to keep their ‘gritty’ smoker image. I, however, will be happily smoke-free at d.b.a.
I have never smoked but I have always gone to smoke filled bars because they were more interesting, as are the smoking section in restaurants. But I am not displeased to see this trend happening: I like to see tobacco sold as a prescription drug.