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March 22, 2006

Words Mean Things

As Fayette-nam is discovering. Its lovely little smoking ordinance is, once again, being re-interpreted to, no surprise, further limit the businesses in which one can smoke. First, a little background.

The smoking ordinance permits smoking in bars, which it defines as

An establishment, whether termed a private club or public establishment, that is devoted primarily to the sale and service of alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption and where the service of food, if any, is incidental to the consumption of such beverages. [emp. added]

'Incidental' is such an interesting word, isn't it? All kinds of wiggle room in that word. There'd already been a minor fuss when the ordinance was first implemented over exactly what it meant. When is a bar a bar and not a restaurant? Not as easy to define as you'd think, as most of the eating establishments on Dickson St. are varying amalgams of both.

But they'd settled on the solution of 70/30....in other words, if more than 30% of your sales were from food, you were a restaurant, not a bar. Sounds sensible enough, though it put the local police force in the unenviable position of determining which businesses sold too much food to allow smoking.

Enter Alligator Ray's, a Dickson St. restaurant/bar which recently announced its intentions to eliminate most of its food sales in order to qualify as a bar and allow its patrons to smoke. Now you would think this wouldn't be a big deal, but you'd be wrong.

The city went into hysterics and re-defined its definition of 'incidental'.

Police Deputy Chief Greg Tabor said letters were sent last week alerting 40 bar and restaurant owners of the changes, which will begin May 1.

"If you serve any more food than something poured out of a bag, you will not be allowed to smoke there. If any food served has to be prepared, warmed or cooked, it will not be considered customary bar food."

As a former denizen of Fayette-nam, I can just sit back and laugh & laugh. You can see where this is going, can't you? Banning smoking entirely in the city.....which was the true agenda all along.

They're going to tweak and nudge that ordinance into something so restrictive that smoking will effectively be banned. Period. This 'adjustment' isn't going to work either. Someone's already brought up a potential problem.

What about oysters?

Hehe. Indeed.

Posted by Rita at March 22, 2006 07:43 AM

Comments

You have to be kidding me. So much for hanging at Brewskis. Being able to allow smoking is probably the only thing that kept them open this long. So what, the only two places where it will be allowed is Roger's Rec and the White Star? Blech.

I didn't know if you'd heard, but Neal Crawford from Jose's has been planning to wall off the bar area and incorporate it as a separate business, a bar that would be able to allow smoking. They'd serve food from Jose's as "takeout".

Posted by: Matt at March 22, 2006 09:36 AM

I hadn't heard. It'll be interesting to see if they're allowed to do that. Though under the present ordinance, I don't see why they couldn't.

Ah yes, Roger's Rec. Such a lovely place to hang out and have intellectually stimulating conversations, isn't it? You know, the ones that start with 'Hey Bubba hold m'beer 'n watch this' and end with the appearance of police.

Posted by: Rita [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 22, 2006 09:45 AM

Well, as a sometimes social smoker, I certainly enjoy going places where one can light up, but I always hate coming home smelling like an ashtray. Why not just stick to the 70/30 rule and leave it at that. I like going to Club Frisco in Rogers, and they made a decision to not allow smoking inside. They just wanted it to smell nice inside and be a classy place.

I'm sure that banning smoking entirely was the idea all along. After all, if NYC did it, why couldn't everyone else.

There's just something wrong to me about a college town where you can't smoke at a bona-fide bar.

In Athens, Ga, where I went to school, most of our bars were straight up bars. There were restaurants WITH bars, but we had tonz and tonz of bars that only served that which intoxicates. I think those kinds of places should certainly always be permitted to allow smoking at their leisure. I'm just a big fan of quality ventilation systems, which some seem to be better at than others

Posted by: Bill McNeal at March 22, 2006 09:51 AM

That was my biggest problem with it, businesses should be allowed to choose. We generally don't frequent non-smoking restaurants, but that is our choice. We don't go to smoke-filled places with inadequate ventilation either.

I'm a smoker, but I try to be polite & considerate of others. I just wish non-smokers would return the courtesy.

Posted by: Rita [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 22, 2006 01:51 PM