Restaurant Related News

Mayor Optimistic About Ban

Will ashtrays go way of spittoons?

By Matt Murphy and Karen Freifeld
Published: March 31, 2003

NEW YORK, New York -- Mayor Michael Bloomberg predicted yesterday that all the hullabaloo over the city's just-instituted smoking ban would soon blow over, and New Yorkers would quickly forget that they were ever allowed to puff with the impunity in bars and restaurants.

"Remember, a number of years ago you could smoke in movie theaters, you could smoke in Yankee Stadium and in Shea Stadium, you can smoke in Madison Square Garden," said Bloomberg, speaking on the first full day of the ban.

"We stopped that," he went on. "After a week, the stories went away and so did the smoking. ... In the end, people will look back and say, 'You mean they did allow smoking back then? How archaic.'"

Indeed, late last week, just as the city's tough anti-smoking measures were about to go into effect, New York State passed its own law, which goes even further, closing some loopholes in the city's legislation.

While the city's law allows restaurant and bars to set up separate ventilated smoking rooms until 2006, and permits smoking in bars where the owners are the only workers, the state law allows neither when it takes effect in July.

Bloomberg said that the statewide ban would help businesses. "That's good for restaurants and for bars because smokers can't just go to the next county, whatever," he said.

Arthur Gregory, owner of the A&M Roadhouse, a bar and grill in TriBeCa, said he didn't mind the ban.

In fact, he said he took the ashtrays in his establishment away as soon as the clock stroked midnight Saturday.

"We played it up because I'm really for the law," said Gregory, who quit smoking 2 1/2 years ago. "I was really nervous about the law but I called my friends in California and they said it didn't change anything in terms of business."

At the bar yesterday afternoon, Keith Bean, 39, of San Diego, which also is smoke-free, was surprised to learn that he wouldn't be able to enjoy the cigar he brought to smoke during that NASCAR race.

"I like to smoke at a bar," Bean said. "I look forward to going to another state and indulging."

But other patrons were thrilled.

"Someday children will see these things in museums and wonder what they were for," said Assemb. Richard Gottfried (D-Manhattan), holding an ashtray in the air at the Roadhouse, where public policy officials met to hail the new law.

"Workers have a right to breathe clean, smoke-free air," said Joanne Koldare, director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, who was there along with the New York City coalition for a smoke-free city. "We all have that right. This is a movement that no one can stop now. Congratulations to New York City."

Staff writer Herbert Lowe and freelance writer Wil Cruz contributed to the story.