Got a Light?
In came a woman, who sat down next to him and signaled the bartender. “There were only three people there,” says Line, “and she was talking to her buddy, and I could see her out of the corner of my eye making a choking sign to her buddy and going ‘hack hack.’ “
Line ignored her, not because he doesn’t know the Heimlich — he does — but because he knew she was just making fun of his habit. “It’s gotten ridiculous,” he says. “People think you’re stupid now, like, ‘Oh, my God, you must be an idiot, you know what it does to you.’ She had to sit next to me just so she could fake choke. I hate that shit.”
This scenario replays itself every night. The actors and the setting might change, but the message is the same: Smokers are pariahs. People turn their noses up and away from them. It’s become PC to diss a smoker in public.
Ask any waiter which customers are the most laid-back, and odds are he’ll say the smokers. Go to any event and follow the laughter; it’s probably coming from the smokers out back.
Todd and Lisa Line never would’ve met if they hadn’t both been into butts. “You tend to get on the same smoking schedule as someone you think is hot,” he says, referring to when they used to work in the same building.
“I really didn’t realize at first that he was checking me out,” she says. He sneaked right up on her, and now they’ve been married for six years.
If antismokers had had their way, Todd never would’ve met the love of his life. How’s that for family values? Oh, and he’s also helping her take care of her kid. That’s right: one less single-parent family, thanks to smoking.
Frank makes up to $200 a night manning the smoking section, although that’ll all end come September, when the ban goes into effect.
Two University of North Texas economists studied the effects of the smoking ban in restaurants, and the results were released in October 2004: Dallas lost $11.8 million (or 3.6 percent) in alcoholic beverage sales in 2003 compared with 2002. You could blame it on a sliding economy, but business was booming in the smoke-friendly suburbs, where hooch sales increased from 3.2 percent (Richardson) to 7.9 percent (Plano) to 12.2 percent (Frisco). The only other city showing a loss was Irving, down 0.8 percent.
The study also claims four longtime Dallas restaurants were forced to close on account of the ban.
Source: Huston Press. Link
