"Smoking will be allowed in free-standing bars and taverns and within 15 feet of a restaurant bar until July 1, 2008. Establishments that have installed air cleaning equipment that significantly improves air quality by venting smoke will be able to apply for an exemption to the smoking ban."

A NEW PLAN OF ACTION FOR ILLINOIS - 2006

Illinois Smokers Rights Meeting
February 18, 2006 at 2:00 p.m.
Marshall McGearty Tobacco Lounge, Chicago, Illinois
Click here to read details and agenda...

Recap - Illinois Smokers Rights Meeting - February 18, 2006
Marshall McGearty Tobacco Lounge - Chicago, IL

Illinois Smokers Rights held a very successful meeting last Saturday, February 18, at the Marshall McGearty Tobacco Lounge in Chicago. Our turnout was excellent and Bill Walker, McGearty's General Manager, was a gracious host. While attendees enjoyed sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes during a very productive first meeting, which lasted almost three hours, we had additional McGearty patrons join our gathering.

Every individual present joined in a spirited discussion of our planned agenda to begin forming Illinois Smokers into a physically productive group. Included among those present were both smokers and non-smokers with the common purpose of defending and promoting individual life-style choices.

We will be meeting again in four weeks to review our progress and further discuss our goals for involving a wider circle of members. In this way, we will be better able to contact our legislative representatives, individual restaurant and bar owners, college pro-choice advocates and others with similar Libertarian viewpoints. We will also be reviewing our committee formation progress and creation of ways to fight tax discrimination against the consumers of a legal product in Illinois.

Regards,
Garnet Dawn
The Smoker's Club, Inc.
Midwest Regional Director
The United Pro Choice Smokers Rights Newsletter - http://www.smokersclubinc.com
Illinois Smokers Rights - http://www.illinoissmokersrights.com/
Illinois Smokers Forum - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/illinoissmokers/
mailto:garnetdawn@comcast.net - Respect Freedom of Choice!
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Smokers become alley rats
Last month's city ordinance banning smoking near building entrances has forced some to the fringes

By Barbara Rose
Tribune staff reporter
Published February 21, 2006

John Dalton takes a long drag on his Parliament Light, his eyes fixed in a glassy stare on a spot of pavement in front of his feet.

Lost in thought, he is hardly alone. All along the dark alley behind his West Washington Street office, smokers are lighting up. Chatting amicably in twos and threes, they take up posts at delivery entrances that resemble softly lighted alcoves at an intimate party.

A truck's rumbling approach causes a stir: Three smokers dart for safety next to a row of garbage bins.

This smokers' haunt has become more crowded since Chicago's clean indoor air ordinance went into effect Jan. 16, Dalton and others say. The new law, which bans smoking within 15 feet of any entrance to a building where smoking is prohibited, makes it harder on some downtown blocks for workers to find legal places to light up.

"It's consolidated the smokers in certain areas," said Dalton, 51, a project manager. "You find more people in alleys now."

You also find resignation, or indignation. The 15-foot requirement is another incremental shove in smokers' long forced march away from comfort and social acceptance. In Illinois, nearly one in four adults is a smoker, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The law, while clearing entryways of smoke, has disrupted sidewalk routines, spawned a new generation of "no smoking" signs and added to the duties of lobby attendants who must shoo smokers away from vestibules. It's also hatched a new batch of urban legends.

On Randolph Street near Michigan Avenue, a worker paced during her smoking break. "You have to walk up and down or you'll get a $50 ticket," she said, flicking her butt expertly down a manhole.

In a nearby alley, smokers warned one another to stand out of view of a security camera.

A little paranoia is understandable, but Chicago's ordinance makes no mention of smoking in alleys or while standing still.

City officials have yet to issue a citation to a building or restaurant owner, said Department of Business Affairs spokeswoman Rosa Escareno.

As for the police, who are authorized to ticket individuals, "Their first role is safety and fighting crime," she said. "If it leads to an issue of safety, then it becomes a police matter rather than a smoking matter."

The city's 311 line has received 223 smoking complaints so far, Escareno said. A complaint is followed up with an explanatory letter to the establishment where the alleged offense occurred. A second call prompts a warning letter; a third an investigation.

"It really has not been a big problem for the buildings or the city," said Ron Vukos, executive vice president of BOMA Chicago, which represents building owners and managers.

"Some buildings have posted small signs that are fairly inexpensive," he said. "They literally measure off 15 feet and move the ashtrays away from the entrance. It's been very uneventful."

Tell that to smokers.

"I think it's ridiculous," said Mike Walker, 26, an office clerk who meets his girlfriend on smoking breaks outside the Smurfitt-Stone building at 150 N. Michigan Ave.

They used to meet under the building's comfortable corner portico, where smokers congregated around an ashtray near a Metra entrance at Michigan and Randolph. But smoking was banned on building property last month, and the ashtray was removed.

Now they stand on the sidewalk along Randolph, exposed to the elements. "It's a lot messier" without an ashtray, Walker said. "And we're closer to pedestrians."

Legal secretary Bonnie Cipar found a new spot in an alcove at a nearby vacant building. "I don't think we were bothering anyone where we were," she said. "There was an ashtray and we kept it neat. It was always immaculate.

"How do they think they're going to raise $70 million (in new taxes) if you're not allowed to smoke anywhere?" she added, referring to the $1 per pack tax hike in Cook County starting March 1.

Further east, at Aon Center's pristine plaza, smokers are herded under two white canopies ringed with ashtrays. Two smoke-free canopies stand empty all winter.

"They used to turn a blind eye if it was raining or snowing and you smoked underneath the entrance" instead of a canopy, said a smoker who declined to give his name because "according to my wife, I don't smoke anymore. I quit every Friday and start up again on Monday."

Aon Center's property managers take a stern tone.

"Last spring, several brush fires occurred around the center complex as the result of discarded cigarettes," states a recent memo to tenants. "In addition, discarded cigarette butts caused an unsightly scene."

Violators "may be subject to the loss of building access privileges and penalties under the city ordinance," the memo warned.

"It reminds me of high school, the smoking areas," said data entry operator Robert Cruz, 42, puffing on a Camel Lite at a legal distance from the doors at 225 N. Michigan. "A lot of the appeal is getting up, moving away from your desk, taking a chance to daydream a little bit."

Or chat with a fellow smoker. Two Chicago Board of Education workers conferred over cigarettes and root beer while standing beside a sidewalk planter near the curb on West Adams Street.

"See, I'm 15 feet from each entrance," said John Sheridan, 25, throwing his arms out wide. He used to smoke at a planter closer to one of the doors.

"I can respect the `no smoking in a vestibule' rule, but I still find it difficult to understand how you can ban a legal activity," he said.

Jim Garramone, 42, is thankful for restrictions. The pack-a-day smoker recalls lighting up during his 1981 job interview at the Federal Reserve Bank, before indoor smoking was banned. "I'm glad we can't smoke at our desks because I'd smoke a lot more," he said.

The receiving clerk has smoking breaks down to a science.

"There's a certain spot, you can stand right there and you don't get wet," he said, pointing to an overhang on the bank's classical facade, above where he and two others were gathered around a sidewalk ashtray.

Across LaSalle Street, another group smoked alongside Bank of America's sheltering columns. But at the Chicago Board of Trade, ashtrays were moved from the front entrance on Jackson Boulevard to a breezeway around the corner.

"I'm waiting for somebody to come along with little plastic huts and rent them out," accountant Chris Flor, 61, said cheerfully on a smoking break at 111 W. Jackson. "Not every street has a friendly location."

At the north end of the Loop, building maintenance worker Fred Rivers, 37, twirled his short red-handled broom while sweeping butts into a dustpan outside the Chicago Title & Trust Center on Clark Street.

"It used to be packed, they were scattered all over" before smokers moved closer to the curb, he said. Now they toss them into the street, which makes his job easier.

"Five or 10 minutes at the most," he said. "It's real quick."

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2,151 bars ban smoking early -- or have they?
February 15, 2006
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter
Only 849 of 3,000 eligible restaurant bars and taverns -- 28 percent -- declared themselves smoking establishments by a Tuesday deadline, taking advantage of an exemption under Chicago's tough smoking ban.
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Letter From Chicago: Smoker's Lament
January 30, 2006
By Ginger Danto

FOR MANY Chicagoans, a cigarette, a beer and a Bears game consumed before a wide-screen TV amid the solidarity of fellow fans, represents the apex of some simple, endurable happiness without which life might not be quite as worth living.

Well, not so enduring it turns out. By 2008, that brand of happiness will cease to exist, as Chicago enforces its smoking ban in the far reaches of the smoker's ritual: the sports bar (as well as in taverns and nightclubs). For now, however, ardent puffers have time to get used to the no smoke rule just about everywhere else in town.

Yes, it's official: As of Jan. 16, when Chicago's historic indoor smoking ban took effect (perhaps to give one tough New Year's resolution time to sink in), one could no longer light up in innumerable public places. Restaurants without bars, outdoor train platforms, convention centers, shopping malls and sports arenas have all been deemed off limits in favor of the common health. Even the streets turned prohibitive: smokers must steer a good 15 feet from the entrance of a building where smoking is not allowed or face a citation with a $100 fine.

Indeed, the city of Al Capone, once famous for lawlessness that reigned in its gritty streets, is ceding to the purer touches of civilization. (The ban happened to coincide with the apprehension of one-time mob boss, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo.) To that end the Chicago Tribune, in its commiserating editorial, "A Good Day to Quit Smoking," hoped for Jan. 16 to be "one of those bruising Chicago winter days, with a wallop of arctic cold and a blustery snowstorm for good measure. All in the interest of shock therapy." Actually, citizens had a long time to acclimate to the idea from the endless, often contentious debate that echoed far beyond the City Council chambers and news programs to the homes of folks busy getting in their last precious puffs before heading out into an incrementally smokeless city.

Opponents of the ban argued the measure would be devastating to the hospitality business. After all, what is that beer and a Bears game without smoke wafting up for atmospheric haze? What is watching a good play without a celebratory smoke or a losing one without smashing a butt emphatically into the ashtray? In this sports-hungry town, these are serious questions only time, and perhaps dwindling liquor sales, will answer. As Steve Riedle, executive director of the Illinois Licensed Beverage Association, noted in a letter to the Chicago Sun-Times, "Liquor-pouring establishments are more than twice as likely to experience revenue declines that non-liquor-pouring" ones, such as the over 1,000 alcohol-serving venues that closed in the first year of California's smoke ban (according to the American Beverage Institute) and the 7,000 outfits eliminated in the first 6 months of NYC's (according to the Empire Restaurant and Tavern Association).

Meanwhile, non-smokers everywhere are breathing a collective sigh of relief, joining the ranks of citizens in such cities as Birmingham, Corpus Christi, Detroit, Indianapolis, Louisville and Minneapolis, not to mention New York whose 2003 crackdown on smoking in public places led almost 200,000 citizens to quit, per the city's Health Department. That and the ever-escalating price of a pack.

Just 23% of people in the U.S. now smoke, and as smoking declines, a new industry is dawning, judging by the record number of calls the American Lung Association is getting from smokers seeking guidance. This cottage industry for hopeful quitters, whether they opt for a stick of gum, a patch, a "quit-time watch," among other gadgets for nicotine replacement therapy (or just plain therapy) has become a big business as would-be tobacco-free individuals still need their fix.

And this leads to the issue of personal freedom, surely a shrinking notion in an ever-more-vigilant America as Washington makes cases to erode individuals' rights in the name of the "war on terror." Is this growing ban one more incursion into our privacy in the name of citizenship? Wiretaps. Warrantless searches. Surveillance. Some criminals carry chips so authorities can keep track of them. What's next? The patch. The chip . . . Let us ensure one remains a choice, not a condemnation. --Ginger Danto
Email: feedback@brandweek.com
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NEWS QUIZ

By Erica C. Harrington
Published January 29, 2006
 
9. Some Chicago aldermen have proposed that city businesses be required to install:

A. Guard dogs

B. Alarm systems

C. Security cameras

D. Security guards

The answers

Photo: C. Police officers in Chongqing in southwest China will patrol the streets on inline skates, and they demonstrated their skills Thursday.

1. D. Russian officials said communications equipment was found in a fake rock. 2. B. Norris was born in Baton Rouge, La., on Aug. 15, 1900. 3. A. Hatch was convicted in federal court for not paying taxes on the $1 million he won on the reality show and other earnings. 4. C. Rev. John Jenkins says such controversial events may be inconsistent with the mission and values of the Catholic university. 5. B. The outcome of the votes will not have the force of law, but will be a measure of public sentiment before the November elections. 6. B. Chamberlain scored 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors in a game against the New York Knicks in 1962. 7. D. The former subsidiary of McDonald's made an initial public offering, and its stock price doubled Thursday. 8. A. Wilson wants to stop phony acts who she says cut into the profits of the real performers. The House voted 110-0 to approve a bill that defines who is a "real" performer. 9. C. The aldermen and public safety officials say the cameras will reduce crime.

- - -

WHO SAID IT?

1. `Selling what you have rather than what consumers want doesn't make sense.'

2. `It's fair to say that if his squadron goes to Iraq, he will probably go with it.'

3. `You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?'

4. `The independence of rural America's rugged individuals just won't put up with this.'

5. `You don't wake up in the morning and think, "Today we will find the smallest fish in the world."'

6. `I feel duped. But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers.'

7. `I see the Olympics commercials and I can't believe I'm actually going there.'

The answers

1. Ford Chairman Bill Ford Jr. on the company's decision to close 14 factories and eliminate up to 30,000 jobs. 2. A spokesman from Britain's Ministry of Defense on the possibility that Prince Harry, 21, could serve in Iraq with his army unit. 3. Rap star Kanye West, answering critics of his brash style in a Rolling Stone interview. 4. Garnet Dawn, Midwest director for the Smokers Club Inc., a smokers' rights group, on anti-smoking efforts in Downstate Illinois. 5. Swiss fish expert Maurice Kottelat, who helped discover the world's smallest known fish in a swamp in Indonesia. The Paedocypris progenetica, a member of the carp family, grows to less than a third of an inch long. 6. Oprah Winfrey to James Frey, whose book "A Million Little Pieces" was proven to be fabricated. The book was part of Winfrey's book club. 7. Maggie Crowley, a member of the U.S. Olympic speed-skating team and a Northwestern University sophomore.
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Smoking ban sniffs out license problems
By Gary Washburn
Tribune staff reporter
January 24, 2006

The city's new smoking ban apparently is smoking out some establishments that are improperly licensed as restaurants.

The ban gives bars within restaurants a reprieve until 2008. In order to qualify, owners must sign a statement saying they get less than 65 percent of their gross revenues from the sale of alcohol.

But according to Ald. Brian Doherty (41st), some owners who obtained food licenses with "incidental" liquor licenses have seen alcohol sales outstrip food over the years.

And if the owners make false statements on the new smoking declaration forms, they could lose their licenses altogether-a situation that at least a dozen businesses in his ward could face, Doherty said.

Free-standing taverns also get a reprieve until 2008. But some of the owners Doherty is talking about cannot get tavern licenses because local zoning does not permit it.

In some cases, Doherty said, "You have a four-star restaurant where their liquor receipts are higher than food receipts, but nobody is going to [contend] they are not a restaurant."

Some business owners have gotten conflicting information from City Hall about what to do, the alderman said.

But Rosa Escareno, an official in the city's Department of Business Affairs and Licensing, insisted the law is clear when it comes to smoking.

"We want folks to understand that if whatever they report to us [on the smoking] declaration needs to be consistent with the existing license," she said. "If we do a review and come across anything that is not consistent, it would jeopardize their license."

Businesses reapply annually and are supposed to report changes that would require issuance of different types of licenses, Escareno said.

Those that should have tavern licenses, but can't because of zoning restrictions, would have to go out of business unless they changed their mix of food and beverage sales, she said.
gwashburn@tribune.com 
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City "butts" into smokers? habits

January 24, 2006
By Melissa Allen - Editor in Chief

As Chicago settles in to a smoking ban, smokers in Elmhurst may soon be also prohibited from lighting up in public spaces.
         Elmhurst College became ?smoke free in 2003,? prohibiting smoking in any residence hall and college building.
         According to EC Campus Security, there are no regulations as to how far smokers must be from the entrances to buildings.
        In November, the DuPage County Board of Health discussed the possibility of moving to amend the Illinois Clean Indoor Air Act, which is defined by the Illinois Department of Public Health as ?an act to restrict smoking in public places and providing penalties for violations thereof,? to allow counties to prohibit smoking in public places.
         On Jan. 12, the DuPage County Board of Health approved a resolution supporting stage legislation that would provide counties with the authority to adopt smoking bans.
         According to The Fox Valley Villages Sun, Brien Sheahan, R-Elmhurst, said that he would like to see the board lobby for stage legislation to instill this act in public places in DuPage County.
        The Chicago City Council approved the Chicago ban in early December. And went into effect on Jan. 16. Smoking is now prohibited in most public places in the city, as well as requiring smokers to stand no less than 15 feet away from entrances to non-smoking establishments.
        The ban will include restaurants with bars as well as taverns on July 1, 2008.
         Annually, exposure to secondhand smoke causes an estimated 3,000 deaths from lung cancer among American adults according to The Center for Disease Control.
        Cigarette smoking is the single most preventable cause of premature death in the country, with more than 400,000 Americans dying each year from smoking.
         A pro-choice smokers rights organization, The Smoker?s Club, Inc., is opposed to the bans.
         It?s website says, ?The city of Chicago has just become another Anti-occupied prohibition casualty, banning smoking from restaurants and train platforms. If you can?t smoke, don?t go! Keep your wallet shut!?
         Sheahan explained that studies have shown businesses in communities with smoking bans have not suffered.
        Aside from a ban, measures are being taken to cut down on the number of smokers in DuPage via a higher cigarette tax.
         The DuPage County Board of Health also approved a resolution that would allow DuPage to enact an increase on cigarette tax
        The Smoker?s Club Inc. Midwest Regional Director, Garnet Dawn wrote, ?Smokers have been forced to endure systematic and repeated attacks upon their lifestyles for months.?
        According to Linda Kurzawa, board president, ?Statistics show that a 10 percent increase in cigarette taxes will result in a 12 percent decrease in smoking among young people.?
        "Higher cigarette taxes will mean fewer smokers," she said.
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Burning Challenges
1/23/06  Rick Remaley
If Ms. Stayner is so certain that going smoke free is good for business, I'd like to challenge her and her fellow do-gooders to open their own smoke-free bar. If she's correct, they'll be so busy making money that they won't have the time to try to force the rest of us into lifestyles that meet with their approval.
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Looks Like Chicago Smoke Ban Means Shorter Wait For A Table
23 January 2006
Steve Miller Reporting
 
CHICAGO (WBBM Newsradio 780)  -- It's been a week since Chicago's smoking ban went into effect in restaurants.

Restaurants say some customers are doing a lot more eating and running.

Hector Rivera, the manager of the White Palace Grill at Roosevelt and Canal says smokers haven't been lingering in the smoke-free air.

"I notice that a lot of the smokers that sit at the bar and drink coffee, they're not staying as long as they usually stay.  They're coming in, drinking their coffee, and they're running for the door right away."

Sometimes that means more turnover.  And more customers.  But sometimes, a restaurant that's not busy can look suspect to potential customers on the street.

"It looks a lot emptier, you know what I mean?"

Rivera says business over the past week has been about like normal.  Maybe down a little.

Not that the smoking ban has kept so many customers away.  He says business is about the same. 

A table of college students are all regulars at the White Palace, and the smokers among them had one thing on their minds: the next cigarette.

"When I'm done and we get the check, I'm going to pay it and we're going to go smoke.  That's all it boils down to, you know."

The Cambridge House, in the Streeterville neighborhood, says its smoking customers are also leaving sooner.

The bottom line: some tables are freeing up faster.
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Smoke-Free Air Means Higher Table Turnover
Jan 23, 2006
Restaurant Customers Are Doing More Eating And Running
(CBS) CHICAGO One week into Chicago's smoking ban and restaurants are seeing one benefit - quicker table turnover for restaurants, reports WBBM Newsradio 780.
Restaurants say some customers are doing a lot more eating and running.
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IN THE LOOP FOR THE RECORD
SMOKE & MIRRORS
Reporting: Jeff Lyon
January 22, 2006
That rat-a-tat you just heard isn't a foreigner teasing Chicago about Al Capone. It's the city shooting itself in the foot by banning smoking almost everywhere, a classic case of working at cross-purposes. The '06 budget reflects the 325% hike in the cigarette tax enacted since 2004 and projects reaping $43 million in revenue -- not likely if people stop smoking. On the other hand, similar laws in New York have mostly fed the cigarette black market, enriching the mob and upping the cost of law enforcement by a lot.
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Smoking ban goes into affect
1/21/06  By Chase Castle
The second phase of the ban, beginning July 1, 2008, will eliminate smoking in taverns and restaurants in bars entirely.
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Anti-smoking advocates, media misrepresent the issue

January 20, 2006 

I would like to take issue with the last line of the Dec. 29, AWN article "City Smokers kicked in the butts." Specifically, part of the quote by Alderman Ed Smith: "...This is about saving lives. Second-hand smoke is a killer. That's a fact."

While anti tobacco lobbyists can theorize that second hand smoke is a killer, it is hardly a proven theory and never seems to materialize in the real world.

New York State has had a smoking ban in effect for over 2 years. Despite various reports that address the impact on businesses affected by the ban, there have been no reports to indicate an improvement in public health.

According to the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, there has been no decrease in the adult asthma hospitalization rate. The childhood asthma hospitalization rate has actually risen. Similarly there has been no decrease in emergency room heart attack admissions, a reduction in the states mortality rate or any improvement in public health or the health of non-smokers, which was and still is the stated reason for enacting a smoking ban.

I am surprised that the press has given a free ride to anti smoking lobbyists, who are still unable to show an improvement in health as a result of a statewide smoking ban and I am amazed that anything negative said about tobacco, its users or second hand smoke, can be published regardless of its merit or accuracy.

Thank you,
Jonathan Pinard
Executive director
New York Coalition of Social Smokers 
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Smoking ban notice takes R-rated turn on Metra run

By Virginia Groark
Tribune staff reporter
Published January 14, 2006

A conductor paid a high price Friday for a moment of unvarnished candor on a morning rush-hour train when he expressed his thoughts about a new city ordinance that will ban smoking on downtown train platforms starting Monday.

Veering from his script notifying riders about the ban, the conductor used a vulgar sexual epithet over the Metra train's public address system to describe the city officials who enacted the ordinance.

Passengers on the Union Pacific Northwest Line train No. 630 from Harvard let out a collective gasp. One rider said he thought he was dreaming until other passengers said they couldn't believe the conductor had just used off-color language.

The conductor confessed his misdeed to Union Pacific Railroad managers after he finished the run, which arrived at Ogilvie Transportation Center at 8:41 a.m., railroad spokesman Mark Davis said. The conductor was suspended without pay, pending a disciplinary hearing, Davis said.

On behalf of Union Pacific, which operates Metra trains on that line, Davis apologized to anyone who was offended by the conductor's language and said the man will be disciplined.

Ogilvie is one of five downtown stations where smoking will be banned on platforms. Concerned that riders aren't aware of the ban, Metra distributed information about the ordinance to crews this week and asked them to make onboard announcements, starting Friday.
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Train riders nearing last days to light up
Lesser-known part of city's smoking ban starts Monday
January 13, 2006  By Virginia Groark, Tribune staff reporter
Every morning when he gets off the Metra train at Union Station, Neil Eisenberg pauses on the platform, lights a Benson & Hedges menthol cigarette and sneaks a few puffs before facing the workday.
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Smoking Snuffed Out In Chicago
Bars Have Until Mid-2008 To Comply With Ban
January 16, 2006  CHICAGO -- If you are a smoker, Sunday was the last day to enjoy that habit in many public places in the city of Chicago.
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Where you can (and can't) smoke
January 13, 2006  Smoking will be prohibited in the following places starting Monday:
* Restaurants (serving food only)
* Convention facilities, schools, colleges and universities
* Polling places, public meetings
* Buses, trains, taxis, limousines and waiting areas for public transit
* Retail stores, shopping malls and sports arenas
* Restrooms, lobbies, reception areas, hallways and other enclosed common-use areas
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A few smoky tales of cigarettes past
January 12, 2006  Glenn Jeffers
Days before Chicago's new ban kicks in, the chain-smoking regulars of a few cigarette-friendly diners talk about the end of their dining ritual
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Chicago hopes smokers comply
January 11, 2006  By Jonathan Lipman
Restaurants and other businesses will get three strikes to comply with the city's smoking ban when it takes effect Monday, and city officials promise "common sense" enforcement that would not be as extreme as other cities' bans.
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Anti-smoking ordinance takes effect Monday
January 11, 2006 BY FRAN SPIELMAN
Chicago's tough anti-smoking ordinance takes effect Monday, but don't expect City Hall to bring the hammer down right away.
Read


Smoking ban takes effect next week
January 10, 2006   By Theresa Gutierrez
Starting next week smoking is banned in all Chicago bars, restaurants and businesses. Tuesday, the city warned people that the ban is about to begin.
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Smoking ban may be law of unintended consequences
January 3, 2006   BY MARK J. KONKOL STAFF REPORTER
In just 13 days, smokers -- those sinners with stinky breath -- will be outlawed from lighting up just about everywhere in Chicago, except for some joints where the drinkers are doing their drinking. Tavern owners have until 2008 to stop the smoking in their establishments, a little extra time that came as a gift from aldermen -- some of whom rather enjoy smoking and drinking in those places.
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City smokers kicked in the butts
Ald. Smith: Ban will have small impact in Austin
By Terry Dean   12/28/05
The Chicago City Council's ordinance to ban smoking in all public places by January and completely in bars and restaurants by 2008 will have minimal impact on Austin and other West Side taverns, 28th Ward Ald. Ed Smith insists.
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No joke: no smoke
City council votes Chicago to be smoke-free by 2008
12/12/05  By James Ewert, Assistant City Beat Editor
For months, aldermen have debated and put off deciding whether smoking should be banned in the city, and they have finally reached a conclusion: Chicago will be smoke-free- eventually.
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Smoking ban clears the air and bar stools

December 11, 2005
By Mary Schmich

It was a dark and stormy and smoke-free night when Matt Wilson, the bartender at the Charleston tavern in Bucktown, picked up the phone Thursday.

How's that smoking ban going? I asked.

"Right now," Wilson said, looking around the 19th Century room with its carved cherubs, tin ceiling and massive oak back bar, "it's just me and two other people in the place."

Maybe it was the snow, he said, but more likely it was the smoke, or lack of it, that on this winter night caused the stools in the movie-esque old bar to sit empty while the pool table in the rear stood as lonesome as the hero of a country song.

This certainly wasn't the Charleston of yesteryear, yesteryear having ended this fall when the bar's owner, Wendy Pick, decided she couldn't wait for the Chicago City Council to do what it finally did last week, which was to ban smoking--eventually--in the city's bars and restaurants.

When I wrote about Pick in August, she was wrestling with her conscience. Should she continue to run a bar that abetted her customers in smoking themselves sick? Or should she forbid cigarettes, which might be as financially unhealthy as banning beer?

She feared that without a citywide smoking ban to "level the playing field," her smoking clients would take their money, as well as their Marlboros, elsewhere.

After that column, some readers criticized Pick for buckling to financial pressure instead of doing what she thought was morally right. One of those critics was Pick herself.

As a result, in September, she instituted smoke-free Thursdays. She so enjoyed being able to come to work without sneezing and wheezing that in October she banned smoking altogether.

Since then, with clear lungs and a clean conscience, she's watched profits drop.

"We're not getting as many of the `smoking's-not-going-to-hurt-me-I'm-youn g' crowd," she says. Some of the old-timers are gone, too, like the ardent pool player who complained about being forced outside to smoke in winter.

"I'm going to get pneumonia," he protested.

She thought he should be more worried about emphysema.

Still, Pick loves her customers. She also worries about her bartenders, like Matt Wilson, a mucisian who's worked there for eight years. Like most of her staff, he relies on tips to subsidize his more creative endeavors.

"There have been some sleepless nights," she says, "and they were justified. But I still feel like it's the right choice."

Pick has run the Charleston for two decades, and it remains one of the coolest bars in town. Great music, good conversation. No video games, no juke box. Pool is played on the honor system; coins go in the can.

While Bucktown changed from seedy to trendy, Pick's bar managed to retain the flavor of the old working-class neighborhood while accommodating the young gentrifiers who came in the late morning to sip coffee and read the newspaper. On the Charleston's bar stools, you can still find lawyers sitting next to truck drivers.

Pick has ridden through so much change that she figures she can ride a little longer.

November's business was better than October's, and though the weeknights are slow, weekend business is thriving.

Now if she can just keep the Charleston going until July 2008. That's when the ban kicks in for all Chicago bars. She'd rather close than go back to choking on smoke.

"After 20 years in the business, that's a big statement," she says. "But this bar has never been based on the bottom line. I drive an 8-year-old car. I don't need all the newest things."

The only novelty she wants is clean bar air.

Meanwhile, her bartenders are looking for extra work and trying to appreciate the bright side of fewer tips.

"When you go home, your clothes don't stink, and your eyes don't burn," Wilson said Thursday night. Then he amiably excused himself.

"We just got a rush."

A rush?

"Well," he said, "one person just came in."

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