2002 or 2003
MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG, scourge of the smoking class, has journeyed to the heart of enemy territory. The mayor was in Athens yesterday. After spending more time there today, he heads for Istanbul.
In no way is this meant to slight Greeks or Turks. But if you're looking for cities where people smoke more than wet branches set on fire, you can hardly beat Athens or, even better, Istanbul. Take it from one who spent a good deal of time in Turkey. Entering almost any public building there is like stepping into a pack of Gauloises.
As New Yorkers know, Mr. Bloomberg is a reformed smoker who approaches the subject of evil tobacco with the fervor of a religious convert determined that everyone share his enlightenment. But he sat unflinchingly among smokers in Athens yesterday, and he is unlikely to rebuke the people of Istanbul for their wicked ways. They want to smoke? Well, as the old song goes, that's nobody's business but the Turks'.
Back home, some wish that the mayor would treat New Yorkers the same way. He has become, for smokers and even many nonsmokers, equivalent to Hickey, the preachy salesman in "The Iceman Cometh" who takes the life out of the booze at Harry Hope's saloon.
Mr. Bloomberg's campaign to outlaw smoking in all bars and restaurants drew a band of dissenters the other day to Gallagher's Steak House, on West 52nd Street. Call it the Charge of the Light 'Em Up Brigade. Two dozen people, mainly cigar-smoking men, puffed while they huffed about a crusade that they consider unnecessary, given existing smoking laws that seem to work fine. To them, the proposed ban is zealotry run amok.
"What's to say against them?" the boxing commentator Bert Sugar said of cigars. "They killed George Burns at 100. If he hadn't smoked them, he'd have died at 75." For himself, Mr. Sugar said, he favors a good cigar because "it gives me something to hold onto in case I fall down."
No question, the smoky gathering at Gallagher's was a publicity stunt. But then, like any elected official, the mayor has his own publicity stunts. They are called news conferences.
There is nothing like a politically incorrect event to draw a herd of notebooks and microphones, and the anti-Bloomberg protest was no exception. It was, in the main, a witty group, reaffirming this nonsmoking columnist's conviction that people in a restaurant's smoking section tend to be more interesting, pound for pound, than those at the goody-goody tables.
O.K., some at Gallagher's were uncomfortably gung-ho in defending secondhand smoke. But they were pro-choice in the strictest sense, defending one's right to engage in legal behavior no matter how Neanderthal most people may find it.
"I'm in the business of taking care of customers, and some of them like to smoke," said Bryan Reidy, the restaurant's general manager. "We have a whole section for smokers, and so far we have no complaints from the nonsmokers. We're just concerned about the government making the decision for us."
AS for Mr. Bloomberg's contention that restaurants and bars should be treated as workplaces rather than social establishments, thus requiring government protection for employees, Nick Mellas shrugged. Mr. Mellas has tended bar at Gallagher's since 1966. Somehow, he said, he has made it to 84 with "no respiratory illnesses whatsoever."
Besides, said Francis Facciolo, a cigar-smoking lawyer, "people who work in bars choose that kind of work. If in fact there's a correlation to health problems, which I doubt, it's a choice they've made."
Cigar types far outnumbered cigarette smokers at this protest, and they happily trumpeted the virtues of their vice. "Cigarette smoking can be an isolating activity, something you do by yourself all day" said Gus Waite, who runs a school for actors in Manhattan. "But cigar smoking is primarily a social event with other like-minded people."
The point, Mr. Waite said, is that "there are 10,000 restaurants in this city." Nonsmokers have endless choices. Why, he asked, must every place be tobacco-free, effectively erasing the rights of a minority wishing to engage in an activity that is both legal and perfectly acceptable to many restaurant owners, their employees and their nonsmoking patrons?
The City Council plans a hearing on the issue next month, and there is no guarantee that Mr. Bloomberg's proposal will sail through unscathed. Mr. Waite doubted that the smoke-in would change many minds. But it was important, he said, to at least make a last-gasp stand.
