You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy?™
Going to a bar for a beer and ending up smoking a pack of cigarettes through your skin.
I don’t smoke. Never have smoked. But I sure do enjoy a Corona with a lime in an adult drinking establishment. That presents a paradox of likes and dislikes. I want to imbibe in the company of other engaging adults. But I don’t want to inhale their carbon monoxide laced, black lung saturated, emphysema ridden exhale.
And there in lies the paradox.
2nd hand smoke, bars, and economics. It is a trilogy of elements that play high nnewscasts across the country.
The problem is, the only place you don’t have to wash down 2nd hand smoke is California and perhaps your local nunnery.
I was in a bar called Dan McGinness Saturday night. It was 29 degrees outside, so the doors were glued shut tighter than a nuclear submarine.
When a new patron came in, a frosty draft washed in behind them. It was momentarily refreshing but it also stirred up a funk of cigarette smoke curdling along the roof line.
Like toxic algae washing onto the shore, the smoke would spread across the bar and envelope us in a blanket of disgust. It was like taking a bong hit off a VW Bus.
In Tennessee you can’t smoke in a bar if people under 21 years of age can enter the bar. So Appleby’s and Chiles and family restaurants that serve kids can also serve alcohol but don’t allow smoking inside. It’s the law.
The Volunteer state is Crazy. You can bring a loaded handgun into these same family restaurants in Tennessee, but you can’t smoke.
The economics of smoking is a powerful force. Bar owners had to sit down with their accountants and their family priests and weigh the options.
Will we make more money serving families and kicking out smokers? Will we make more money alienating families and inviting smokers in?
Many establishments decided the cash cow was in the tobacco product and they kicked out families and kids in favor of 21 and up. That means only adults can enter. If only adults can enter then pass me an ashtray and a pack of Camel Lights.
Stick a Marlboro in my blow hole and take a deep drag.
So it is with this knowledge that I enter Dan McGinnis.
The veil of smoke slapped me in the face like walking into the bathroom at Clarkstown Jr. High.
I winced and wiped my eyes. I wondered if Nashville Fire Fighters were in the back putting out a grease fire in the hagas pit?
So I sit down to order my Corona. A pretty blond waitress approaches me. Like a slow motion scene out of Top Gun, with smoke swirling from jet engines on an air craft carrier, she arrives.
Cigarette smoke is so thick in the air, you can actually see people breathing it in.
“What can I get you sir?,” she says, her voice dripping in southern honey.
“How bout a body condom,” I reply with a smile.
She laughs and cocks her head to the side.
“The smoke is crazy thick in here,” I quickly say, filling in her silent question.
“Oh, I know. It’s really bad when it’s cold because they keep the doors shut,” she says.
As she talks I can almost see smoke bellowing from her nostrils as if her spleen has suddenly been set on fire.
“It’s crazy in here,” I grimace, knowing that I am going to smell like a human ash tray in about five minutes.
She smiles again. “Corona with a lime?”
“Yes mam.”
She moves to the bar, followed by smoke. She looks like a stumpier Lauren Bacall walking through a San Francisco fog bank along the pier.
I look around the room and people are smoking like it’s 1895 and this is a coal plant in England. Don’t they read the Surgeon General’s warning on their cigarette box I think to myself.
A few minutes later, she arrives with my Corona.
Smoke seems to be escaping from her scalp.
I quickly grab the icy cold bottle and push the lime deep into the neck. I love the citrus explosion as it dribbles its way down into the gasoline gut taste of this Mexican skank beer.
As Pirates have always said: “Lime keeps away the scurvey!”
I let the golden pirates brew dance down my gullet. But there is an intruder taste here. I try and perceive the tiny nuance of Mexican skank and something that reminds me of a jail house mattress fire.
That’s when it hits me. Not only am I bathing in 2nd hand smoke, I am quaffing my adult beverage with a chaser of RJ Reynolds.
This sucks I think to myself.
I look at some attractive women talking. then I watch them put a cigarette to their lips and inhale. The tip of their cancer stick illuminates red like Satan’s eyes. They suck the demon into their faces and then exhale through their noses like Puff the Nasty Dragon.
The women must think they look elegant like a 1930’s Betty Davis film. To me, they look like nauseous refuse. I know their breath stinks, and I know their clothes stink. I imagine their eyes smell and their tongues taste like fire place ash.
If Elle McPherson was in this bar smoking, it would diminish her super model powers to a 7. Cigarettes are just that heinous.
So the morale of this story is…
next time you want a Corona and to look at a pretty girl, go to Applebys.
Kids eat for free and cigarettes are smoked outside in the cold.
And that is crazy.