There are so many reasons to oppose Nurse Bloomberg’s highhanded attempt to ban smoking in NYC bars that it is difficult to know where to begin. The philosophical and financial arguments ought by now to be familiar, but the author of this piece in the New York Observer takes a different approach. He objects on aesthetic grounds:
“To abolish the smoke is to abolish the neon, the grime, the melancholy, the stories, the dirty jokes, the dark, the leers, the brawls, the boors, the spilled drinks, the buybacks, the too-loud laughter, all the nuisances and toxins and charms that get mixed into that cocktail we proudly, even lovingly, call a New York saloon. ”
Beautifully put.