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Waiting to Exhale The place is not unusual for New York City. It's small, about 500 square feet. When you walk in, it feels like you've entered an old high school friend's basement that he's transformed into a party room. To the left there's a worn wooden bar. To the right, old couches and love seats line the wall and tiny tables surrounded by mix-matched Salvation Army-bought chairs fill the space between. Ashtrays rest on every surface. Bar staples are crammed in corners: a pinball machine, Mega Touch video game, and a jukebox. It's not too crowded, even though it's Saturday night at 9 p.m. You can smell smoke, but you don't choke, the ventilation seems okay. It's the kind of place where regular Joes go to relax, escape the pressures of the city, throw back a drink and suck down a cigarette. "It's like Cheers, y'know," said Julia Burke, an area resident and software test engineer. She said the Raven is like an extension of her living room-- she's goes there to unwind and see the staff who she has become friends with. To get a full perspective on what the bar goers, workers and owners feel about life before and after the smoking ban goes into effect, we took a camera crew down to interview them. Up on the right you can click to see the video, or scroll below to read excepts from what they said. Julia Burke: unemployed software test engineer: smoker: "I just moved back from Vienna Austria after living there for a year and heard this ban was taking affect, it really upset me quite a bit. I have a theory on what I think is gonna happen. There's a no smoking ban in California, but California has the space for outdoor smoking and patios, and places for people to go but this is Manhattan and there's no space for it. So instead, people are going to stand on the street, they're going to smoke, they're going to make noise, they're going to be drunk, and of course the residents, people live around here and they are going to call the police for noise complaints-- rightly so, they have every right to do that. I might do that if I live in the area. And then the police are going to come and hand out fines and it's going to make more money for the City, but it's going to affect people standing on the streets and I think the bar is going to get into a lot of trouble for that and fined... ...I'm probably a pack-o-day girl but now that I'm back in New York City and they are seven dollars a pack, it's quite horrific so it's sort of like do I eat or do I smoke, okay, I eat... ...I think this will affect the way I smoke and what happens to the bars and how they are fined. Pretty much I've already decided and told everyone at the Raven that when I go outside for a smoke I'm not standing in front of these doors, I'm going to walk around the corner. I don't want to stand out in front with crowds of people. And I think one thing that the people that really pushed for this non smoking ban don't understand is that now when they walk home, they are going to walk through crowds of people, smoke hitting them in the face, cigarette butts flying, burning, almost hitting them burning them. How is that better than people being confined in a situation? And the Raven is very well-ventilated, it's not a place where there coughing and stuff... ...What would have worked much better would have been to give 12 months to 24 months, some sort of act or law or something where every bar or club has to update their ventilation system and put in air filters and put in things that make it safe for the people that work there and the patrons, then everyone is happy all the way around. Now the Raven already has ventilation systems on the walls, but some bars don't and you do walk into a big smoke wall, but I think that would have worked, give the establishments time to meet the new safety regulations and time to get the money to do that, instead of okay great, now we're all outside on the street pissing people off..." Alexia Henke: event manager: smoker: "I'm about a half-pack a day smoker, but on the weekends I can smoke two packs a night... ...I've signed petitions, been talking to Harold here at the bar to try to get City Council to vote against it, but unfortunately, y'know, they screwed us... ...I was really disappointed, because although I understand the idea of protecting the health of the bar workers, really you know what you are getting into when you work there. I don't think that was truly the point of it, the point of it really was the legislation of behavior and I don't think the government has a right to tell us what to do when it comes to smoking... ...I'm not quite sure if I'll still want to go out to bars in the City because I know a lot of places with patios in Park Slope and there's also Hoboken... I don't want to hurt Harold's business, I'll probably still show up here. But I can't imagine coming out to smoke in this weather and leave my drink on the bar and leave my seat, someone else can sit in my seat and steal my drink, that's not going to happen... ...I'm not a psychic I don't really know if it will negatively impact a bar's business but I think it will be repealed, I don't think it will last. The problem of smokers outside, underneath people's houses, this isn't L.A. bars are underneath people's houses and if you get 20 people outside smoking cigarettes, making noise all night, drunk, that's going to ruin their quality of life... ...To Bloomberg, he should really think about who his constituents are, this is New York, not Utah." Sean Tate: social smoker: "...I have been following it to some extent but I've spent the past year living in San Francisco so I got a little bit used to the idea of standing outside a bar to smoke however the bars in San Francisco are only open till two in the morning and you don't have the number of smokers in San Francisco as you do in New York so I think that uh the problem will be caused by noise violations, people congregating outside. It's going to be worse, really than people smoking inside the bar... ...I'll have to wait and see how the ban affects how much I go out... until then I'll be chain smoking inside as much as can while I can." Erin Solowitz: office manager: smoker: "Have been following this since I moved here, March of last year. I'm a full out smoker but plan on quitting when I have kids. ...I noticed [the bachelorette party] I was with, most of the girls didn't smoke, so I decided to come outside to smoke. But don't feel that process should be forced upon me by law. Look, okay, it's raining, it's cool, and I'm outside smoking a cigarette, yes I'm an idiot, but the fact of the matter is I should be in there... but I'm courteous to other people, if they don't smoke, I'm not going to blow it in their face... ...It will affect the bar because even those people that don't smoke all the time, they smoke when they drink. Drinking and smoking tends to go together and if you make them go outside, the bars will lose business... It won't affect how much I go out though... ...It's stupid...look, I understand that it's for the workers, and that's fine, but make bars where the employees smoke and the patrons smoke and make bars where people don't smoke at all." Cathy Hilbert: attorney: recovered smoker: "I guess the government can do whatever they want... whether it's lawful or not, they will try to get away with it... ...I'm so used to smoke in bars that it doesn't really offend me. I think it would be nice if some bars were non smoking or you had areas in the bars that are non smoking just like you do in restaurants, it seems to work perfectly well in that environment and think it could work well in the bar environment too... ...I think they've had this bar in California or some other warmer state where people can have outside environments but an environment like New York in the winter, I think it's going to cause a lot of outrage..." Jessica Osborne: master's student at Temple: non smoker: "We have a similar ban in Philadelphia, not as strict but it's happening. What I understand is that all restaurants you cannot smoke in and um, I think it is optional for bars, the owners decide if they want their patrons to smoke or not. It's going over very well, there are a lot of bar that are smoke free and some have stayed smoke friendly... most of the bars that allow it are geared toward the younger crowds, the kids, and the bars that don't are geared toward the older professional crowd... ...I think that in any public arena it's very inconsiderate for people to be smoking around non smokers because they are affecting other people's health. Y'know, for myself, the next morning if I'm in a smoky bar like this one, I wake up, my lungs hurt, it hurts to breathe, and I think that's a really unnecessary health problem that I have to suffer through... ...I do not go to the bars that are smoke friendly in Philadelphia. In New York, if all the bars are smoke free, I'll go out more. I think that because New York is much larger there are probably more smokers, so I don't know if it will help business after the ban. If most of the people that a bar attracts are smokers then it won't help them... I think it should be up to the bar owners but they should make it clear on the door and in the entertainment guides that they are a smoking bar..." Eric Pagan: bouncer: smoker: "I guess I got mixed feelings about it, if it's healthy, why not. But then again, you're in a bar, you drink, y'know, cigarettes and beer go hand and hand. I don't know, I'm really interested to see how it's going to happen once it all goes into affect. It's going to be weird, it will be interesting to see... ...Not really worried about business that will be coming into the bar. If you really want to come and hang out and have a good time, I don't think a cigarette is going to stop you from doing that, you could always go outside and smoke... ...Sometimes business does get a little smoky inside and it f*cks up your eyes and sh*t, but, what'cha gonna do... ...For me, like I said, I don't care. If I gotta come to work and not smoke then so be it... ...I will be relieved, as an employee when this goes in. Sometimes it's hard as an employee to always have to breathe everyone else's smoke, I can see why this is going to happen. Like I said, I'm all for it. It's all good. I really think that's it's healthier for everyone anyway. If someone is going to stop smoking, this is the way to do it, no? ...I can understand Harold's point of view though, he's a bar owner. If a cigarette is going to stop the business then sure, people still have to pay rent. I don't think it will affect business. I think the hype is a lot more. There's big hype about people not coming in because they can't smoke, people are still going to come in. There's over 35 bars on Avenue A itself. Y'know what are they going to do, not go in because they can't smoke? ...Out of every 10 people that come in now, over eight of them smoke. Like I said, you start drinking and people want to smoke a cigarette. It calms you down. And I think beer and cigarettes go hand and hand." Harlold Kramer: bar owner: non smoker: "...Apparently those claims medical claims are based on a report put out by the E.P.A. in 1993 and that report was thrown out of court by a court of appeals saying it was not good science and all these health organizations have based their positions on that report. And there are similar reports that have come out since then but they are all still based on that same junk science... ...No body is too sure about the hearing coming up. Something about repealing the Smoke Free Air Act, but apparently it has more to do with repealing the old law so they can put the new law in place. I have no idea. I'd like to go down there, I registered to speak but I haven't heard from them yet. But uh, if there's any chance of getting this law repealed, I'm sure interested in going to that hearing and speaking on it... ...At the end of the month we're having a smoke out party, on the 29th, the very last day before the ban goes into affect. And we'll be giving away ash trays and cigarette lighters all kinds of goodies, smoking goodies... and we'll just invite all the smokers to come in and smoke until their hearts content because they won't be able to do it much longer after that, that is until they repeal this ridiculous law... ...I gotta comply with the law. Until they repeal it at least. I heard that it would be enforced through some hotline, some quality of life hotline or a snitchline is what they call it. A customer can call in and say there's smoking on the premesis and they'll bring in the board of health inspectors. They might also be doing spot checks. I have a feeling that, especially in the first days of this rule, they'll be doing spot checking. They'll just be going from bar to bar to see what they can find... ...There's 40,000 bars in all the boroughs of New York City, the inspectors won't be covering everything, but I can guarantee you the first bar, I will bet you the City will have cameras following these people because they want to make and example out of them. And they will be making examples the first two weeks to a month maybe more, just so the Mayor can show you, uh, y'know, we're tough on the second hand smokers, on the smoking in bars, we're not kidding around. It will probably die down after things blow over though.... ...Of course I'm worried about how it will affect my business. You're asking me to impose a restriction on 80 percent to 90 percent of my customers who come in here to just have a smoke and a drink and uh I don't know what kind of affect it will have but I can tell you just from my point of view there are a lot of downsides to this. And uh, yeah I'm afraid that I might suffer, my business may suffer... ...Anybody that's watching this, the thing to do is if you are a smoker and you want this repealed... keep the heat on City Hall, email your representative, your City Council rep, keep on doing it and if you want to smoke in bars and if you don't like what the City is doing you have to keep on emailing these people. And get on their ass and call their offices and say I'm a smoker, I'm a New York tax payer and I don't like it. You gotta keep doing that, that's the only thing around this thing." -30- |
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Photo essay... coming soon