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| These bars like big butts. |
The Philadelphia smoking ban, officially tagged as the Clean Indoor Air Worker Protection Law, marked its two-year anniversary on September 25. The moaning of dedicated smokers and fearful restaurant owners has largely died away as predictions of drastically reduced business proved groundless. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has followed in our municipal wake with the state-wide Clean Indoor Air Act, which was signed into law by Gov. Ed Rendell June 13, 2008 and went into effect (with exemptions) on Sept. 11, 2008.
The exemptions are virtually twin to Philadelphia's: bars where food represents less than 20 percent of total sales can apply for an exemption. That loophole was created to protect neighborhood shot-and-beer joints where the clientele's interest in sucking down cigs with their PBRs would not bother people trying to eat dinner.
All is well and good: hospitality workers are protected from second-hand smoke, pub-goers can session beers without going home stinking like an ashtray and those with sensitive respiratory systems have returned to their favorite resto-bars. The lonely lament: the best dives in the city, the truly lowbrow booze dens where the whiskey is cheap and the company cheaper, are now all but impenetrable for the fug of smoke.
The cloud that hangs over McGlinchey's is enough to suffocate the staunchest drinker; Oscar's, The Dive, Ray's Happy Birthday Bar, RUBA, Locust Bar and The Pen & Pencil are owned by chain-smoking, lager-swilling nicotine fiends. These are their places, and they puff fast and furiously, intent on asserting their Rights, driving out the eye-reddened, lung-inflamed non-smokers who attempt to colonize their smoky shores.
The Glinch, Ray's and Oscar's were always gritty dives where Bukowski and Nancy Spungen would have felt at home. They were always hazy and a little melancholy, at least until the jukebox really got going and the booze-fueled conviviality picked up momentum. Barred from every other pub in the city (and now the state), diehard tavern smokers, those turgid souls who will NEVER go outside to smoke, have congregated in leprous colonies in the last remaining smoking bars.
That leaves the non-smoking dive bar patron just two options. Build a bar in your damp and gloomy basement, stock up on John Powers whiskey and mourn at home; or, pick up a stylishly apocalyptic gas mask and reclaim your old stool at The Dive.
Two years ago Philadelphia Magazine printed The Daily Examiner’s long directory of smoking-permitted bars. Check it out here.
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