Shoe by Gary Brookins and Susie MacNelly for September 19, 2009

Smoke free works! Look what it has done for his jacket.

It’s a smoking jacket.

Yup, the desk even looks clean

From beer to Starbucks, too!

I thinkk I’d rather go back to then.

BC13… you are correct.

Go ahead. I did a pack-a-day for 22 years, and now after about 20 years clean, I no longer miss it. Wouldn’t stop you from “enjoying” your addiction, but please excuse me if I don’t stay in the room.

I’m all for smoke free. I almost died from smoking. On the other hand, if I had to choose between being socially correct and smoking I think I’d rather take my chances with smoking. At least then I wouldn’t die disgusted with what people have become.

Much nicer to go to a bar and not come out smelling like an ashtray!

The jacket’s nice, the desk looks clean, and the colors are a nice touch.

yeah, but the old jacket had “character”, the new one, just color

To some, the city dump probably has character!

I still smoke, and I spend time in bars. It took a lot of getting used to, but I have to agree that the bars are nicer when they aren’t filled with smoke. And when I visit a state where they still have Smoking Sections in restaurants, I sit in the Non-Smoking Section.

Of course, I think the ideal would be to provide Smoking Rooms in public buildings, so that people DON’T have to stand outside in the rain just to get a nicotine fix. We had them here in San Francisco for a while, but they took them away. And it’s indefensible that they don’t have anyplace in airports where you can smoke anymore! Flying for five hours, then having to wait two hours for a connecting flight and not being able to have a cigarette unless you leave the building and have to go through Security again? Unconscienable.

I like the idea of smoking rooms. They would especially be helpful in the airport (as per fritzoid). To just have a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a p-ing section in a pool.

The rule in San Francisco used to be that you could have a smoking room if it was enclosed, had separate ventilation, and wasn’t immediately adjacent to anyone’s workspace. Since the building manager where I work was a smoker, he made sure we had a room which complied. But then the State-wide law was enacted, which removed that local loophole. sigh

Last time I flew through Phoenix you could smoke once you were past security, but they had a large open-air space between the terminal and the gates. I don’t know whether that’s still the case.

fritzoid, I agree with you. I grew up in the pre-ban era, and it seemed like every public place I went to was smoke-filled; it made me physically ill. But just as I wished that people would not feel the need to poison my air, I’ve never felt that I have the right to tell people what they could or could not do to themselves. While it is nice now to be able to go just about anywhere and have it be smoke-free, I do agree that there should be places set aside indoors for smoking. Logistically, not every establishment could do that, but it shouldn’t be banned even for those that CAN do it.

jrbj, I concur with you - again! It is a real problem for my family though because I have asthmatic children and we’ve had a lot of smokers move into the neighborhood. Because of the geographic dynamics of living on the slope of the hill we live on, it creates a vortex that draws everyone else’s smoke to our house! We have to leave our windows open in summer or pay extreme extortion payments to So. Cal. Edison to run the A/C even briefly. It’s a REAL irritation to be denied fresh air by our inconsiderate neighbors and have to lock ourselves up in our tiny, little, hot home to suffer through the summer.

No one has thought to mention that maybe the room was smokey because the COOK WAS BURNING THEIR DINNER!! :-D

Fresh air should be one of our un-alienable rights.