Arkansas Blog

Mid town Billiards?

Or that bar/grill in Riverdale? I am having a senior moment and can't think of the name. Not Buffalo Grill, though.

Razorback Pizza on Stagecoach just south of Otter Creek has a separate bar for smokers... and every time the door opens I can tell how popular it is.

It's the Town Pump.
They also have a sign reminding patrons that you must be 21 to play pool!

There are a couple of places in town that serve food and still allow people to smoke . . . West End did last time I was there, and so did Pizza D'Action.

ARK. BLOG: YOu may serve food and allow smoking, so long as you do not allow anyone younger than 21 to enter.

Town Pump! My memory returned for the moment.

I heard the same piece, Max. I hope your efforts to reveal the scofflaw are successful. If he doesn't like having to obey laws about smoking, perhaps he is equally defiant of laws pertaining to the preparation and delivery of food.

In this same piece, Gary Wheeler said there are continuing efforts to make smoking illegal in all public places. I really hope this includes outside venues. The level of smoke at this year's Riverfest was terrible. If we can't get a law passed about smoking in outside venues, perhaps the Riverfest officials could be convinced to ban smoking at their family-oriented event.

We should use some of the stimulus money to build smoker's prisons and just be done with them.

I, also, heard the same piece, and think it's only fair to explain the owner's rationale. He has signs up that say patrons age 18-20 enter at their own risk, and those under 18 must be accompanied by a parent. His reasoning was that you can legally buy and smoke cigarettes at age 18 in Arkansas; and that customers said they smoke at home around their kids and felt there was no difference if they did at a restaurant, too.

Frankly, I think the so-called Clean Indoor Air law is stupid, starting with the fact it makes criminals out of someone doing something legal on the other side of the door (smokers age 18-20). It should be up to businesses to decide whether or not to allow smoking, and up to customers to decide whether or not to go into such businesses, and up to workers to decide whether or not to work for such businesses. After all, no one is being forced to patronize or work at smoking businesses.

I'm a nonsmoker. I believe smoking causes cancer and second-hand smoke is hazardous. But from time to time I hang out with friends at a restaurant that allows smoking. Why? Because it's my decision. If our legislature is so dead-set on making work places safe for everyone, there are many other rules and laws they can impose that would be far more effective (starting with improving workers' comp laws). This law is a red herring to divert attention from bigger issues that business and industry lobbyists oppose and our legislators are afraid to touch.

ARK. BLOG: The law is the law. It says no one under 21 may be admitted to, or work in, a place where smoking is allowed. His rationale is irrelevant. That he kindly tries to enforce the law on legal smoking because he happens to agree with it is hardly defense of his flouting of other laws.

Oh noes! Someone might allow smoking in their business where they pay all the bills and are ultimately responsible for such things. If a business owner wants to allow smoking on his property he should be able to. It is a bad law.

Further the requirement that only 21 and up are allowed in to a bar that allows smoking is just asinine. It's no wonder we have such horrible binge drinking problems with this country's youth considering we give them absolutely no other outlets for exploring such things in life and relegate them to underground and criminal status for exploring their desires. Prohibition does not work whether it is cigarettes, alcohol, or any other vice you or anybody else doesn't like. It is the job of the government to protect us from each other, at most, and not from ourselves.

I had something to say, but Squirrelhenge and arlibertylover took the wind out of my sails. Thanks guys for standing up for liberty--it gets lonely around here sometimes with the Statists.

(The law, regrettably, still allows smoking in places where no one under 21 is admitted.)

People smoke, especially at "taverns" and especially while out drinking. Get over it and go to Jason's Deli or Starbucks.

So I guess it'd be cool if I opened the Ganja bar in LR. Put a sign up that recognizes the illegality of marijuana, but since we are all adults behind those doors, what the hell? Enter at your own peril.

Don't bogart that joint, my friend...

This debate has shifted into whether or not we agree with the law. Good discussion, but folks need to obey the law until Libertus, et al get it changed. Also, I appreciate Max's attempt to uncover the scofflaw, but don't guess. Listing the wrong business on here is unfair and irresponsible.

I understand the point you're trying to make, calmwriter, but your analogy doesn't hold water. Tobacco use is legal; MJ use is not. What's being regulated here is the where and when, not the if ... if that makes any sense at all.

Now, if recreational marijuana got the OK and the same restrictions were put on it as on smoking today, I'd be making the same arguments even though I'm not a toker. (You can have my share, duuuuuuude.)

This might be a good time to remind some people that the laws against smoking in public places target secondhand smoke. For the general public, it's the smoke that smokers exhale and the smoke they allow to drift from their burning cigarettes that is the problem.

I see max borrowed Brummett's manly vapor and pearl clutching recipe today. You people are no better than a rabid fundie like Sara Palin out trying to ban books she never read. /semi s

Maybe AR Times should do a Best place to have a beer and a smoke edition? I would like to know since I don't get out much these days... who wants to spend their time driving around in search of the increasingly rare freedom spot.

calmwriter-

Let me know when you open up that bar, I've got cancer and maybe I'll get me one of them medical marijuana cards

Lulav serves food, does not restrict customers to those 21 and over and allows people to smoke especially on weekends, late night.

Word on the street is the City's Parks and Recreation Commission recommended a tobacco free policy to the City manager last month. No tobacco use of any kind in our City parks.

Yeah, speak up for liberty! In addition to the state trampling the liberties of business owners who wish to impose carcinogens on their employers and patrons, I personally think it's ridiculous that the state nefariously restricts the liberty of restaurant owners who wish to exercise their freedom to keep their kitchens filthy, disgusting, and vermin-ridden by having these fascist "health inspectors" harass them. It should be up to businesses to decide whether or not to allow rats to defecate in food, and up to customers to decide whether or not to go into such businesses, and up to workers to decide whether or not to work for such businesses. After all, no one is being forced to patronize or work at vermin-infested businesses.

While I despise cigarette smoke, I can't help but cheer on the smokers given that they are funding the state trauma system and several health and health research initiatives.

Smoking is forbidden, but drinking is required at my mobile church/target range/pawnshop/dry county beverage emporium located somewhere near the entrance to our swell new electric power plant at McNab.

If OSHA can come in and regulate solvents, glues, paints, cleaners in my place of business why not other proven carcinogens?

This was a clean work place law to protect workers. The legislature caved in to pressure and exempted 21 and over only bars and restaurants.

I vehemintally disagree with Squirelhinge about no safety and health requirements for workplaces. An employer has a legal but also a moral duty to provide a safe workplace whether it be dangerous equipment, fire or explosion hazards, or electrocution.

OSHA looks for the big three. Amputation, electricution, and poisoning.

If squirrelhinge wants to return to the days of expendable workers he is nuts. We saw workers being regularly maimed and killed because safety equipment and machine guards were too expensive.

Squirrelhinge would probably acknowledge that the poor and powerless woud be stuck with only unsafe jobs available and would be disproportionately maimed and killed so that their families would be trapped in a downward spiral of poverty and exploitation.

That to me doesn't sound like the "Greatest Country on Earth" does it?

Ain't the same thing Gaddis, not even close. One doesn't know what's in their food or going on inside a hidden kitchen until it's to late. If one can't read a sign at the door or smell smoke the minute they enter (and decide on their own whether to stay or go)... well that's just stupid... and we can't have freedom if we are going to fear stupid above all else.

"This might be a good time to remind some people that the laws against smoking in public places target secondhand smoke."

For some reason I think that the air we breath kills more folks then secondhand smoke ever did. But by all means lets find this business owner and bring them to swift judgement....

stupid laws deserve to be broken.

I see Max is with the prohibitionists wanting to ban outdoor smoking. Max, cars run outside. The secondhand product of internal combustion of gasoline is really bad for you. For anybody who thinks outdoor smoking is hurting non smokers, I have a challenge for you:

You sit in a closed garage with the car running and I'll sit in a closed garage and chain smoke cigarettes. It shouldn't take more than an hour for me to prove that car exhaust is much more deadly than 1st and 2nd hand cigarette smoke combined.

Max, I love you, so please send another zealot to sit in the garage with the car running. Maybe one of your Republikkklan comrades in anti-smoking arms who wants everything made illegal so we can fill more prisons.

Whoscrumdown writes: "You sit in a closed garage with the car running and I'll sit in a closed garage and chain smoke cigarettes. It shouldn't take more than an hour for me to prove that car exhaust is much more deadly than 1st and 2nd hand cigarette smoke combined."

Max, don't do it! It's a trick!!!!!!!!!

MICHAEL JACKSON IS DEAD! How can you people chit chat about minor stuff like protecting 18 year olds from legal products 18 year olds can legally purchase and use? Think about Michael's family!

How can the topic be smoking when we should be figuring out how to get more 18 year olds off to Iraq & Afghanistan! And isn't it about time for a law banning our troops from smoking altogether? There must be a study somewhere showing that nicotine pushed into the body by a roadside bomb causes 19% more death to the dead soldier? Outrageous!

I hope this business flaunting our laws is identified and closed. We don't want such people contributing to our tax base in these times of easy money. Looking at an April issue of Arkansas Business I was shocked to see how expensive other Trauma Centers are and how many have closed across the nation! It's clear to see if Arkansas plans on changing all the signs at local ERs, we're going to have to go after the fatties next. The dwindling smokers won't make a dent in what Trauma Centers will cost the state.

But first of all, we need to track down every business that's allowing their customers to do what they want and drive them from our tax rolls! What country do these smokers think this is? What would President Obama think if he walked into a bar or restaurant in Arkansas and saw people smoking? Oh wait.....he's a smoker too....I forgot.

I'm fully in favor of banning all internal combustion engines and all fireplaces and requiring food to be eaten raw! And if your furnace runs on natural gas or propane......SHAME ON YOU! Let us return to the cancer-free caveman days! And when there's no sin to tax....let's start taxing the churches!

I see the usual "anything goes crowd" is back in Libertus, Squirrelhenge, and arlibertylover. It's the same crowd that wants to arm everyone so we can have frontier street justice again. It's the same crowd that can't live in a civilized society for fear they'd have to curb their big egos and small libidos. Run for office you 3, the Republicans are in need of a few more jerks.

Damn Janus. That's what I get for a morning well spent in deep sleep.

I'm with those liberty lovers above. Bring back dueling to solve disputes.

There's one summabitch, I know I can out draw and out shoot him, and seems the only gentlemanly and fair thing to do is have a duel with him. It should be MY RIGHT! Is this going to be a free country or not??

I pay taxes on my guns. I pay taxes on my ammo. We'll have the duel on PRIVATE PROPERTY to boot.

Our founders would shutter to think we have lost the right to duel. Let's go ahead and introduce
a Aaron Burr Day in the next legislative session.
.

Bitch, whine, growl, scream, but, for the love of Zeus, can we quit making so many damn laws? ONE LAW, resolves the whole smoking and making the smoke nazis cough issue: Outlaw tobacco. Problem solved. And think of all the paper that saves. Think green.

In all honesty Rick it would be thinking Green...as in where did all the green go? Cigarette-tobaccy taxes are supporting so many gubbermint programs around america, land of the free, that to make it illegal or a prohibited activity would cost some folks lots more green.

We could make up the revenue loss by having public hangings with admission set at baseball game prices of say $120 for a front row seat and on down to $35 for a high bleacher seat. Don't laugh cause before you know it PerverseAmerica would fill the stands especially for a hated criminal.

Remember how many millions gleefully watched Saddam hang via the internetz. I must have seen it 3x. My old friend the church deacon couldn't watch it enough, even bought a bigger better monitor to see it better.

More convictions, more hangings, MoMoney. Just think how our collective need of revenge could be satiated.

As a Free Market-Center Right Nation all hangings could be contracted out. It could be real show bidness, the kind that produces big bucks. Run the thing like Queen for the Day, the old TV show, with a victim's family stand featuring close-up interviews, skilled, attractive emcee, and a villian saying how friggin sorry he is, and please don't put that rope around my neck. More crying and wailing = MoMoney.

Oh god...I mean Oh! MoMoney. I shiver just to think of the gross revenues.
.

I HAVE NEVER UNDERSTOOD DEBATES LIKE THIS AND LAWS LIKE THIS WHEN THERE ARE ROBBERIES, ASSULTS, THEFTS, KIDNAPPINGS, AND MURDERS BEING COMMITED ON A MINUTE BY MINUTE BASIS AND THESE PEOPLE ARE WANTING TO TRY TO CATCH SOMEONE SMOKING. SURE SMOKING IS NOT GOOD FOR A OERSON AND SURE SECOND HAND SMOKE ALSO IS NOT GOOD. BUT BE REAL FEWER PEOPLE ARE HARMED BY SMOKING THAN THE REST OF THESE CRIMES. YOU PEOPLE NEED TO STOP MAJORING IN MINORS.

eLwood, is your caps lock key stuck? Can't read your post. Gives me a headache to try.

"It's the same crowd that wants to arm everyone so we can have frontier street justice again."

Heh, heh, heh... ah, the miracle of the anonymous internet post, Janus, mine and yours and everyone else's. It allows -- nay, encourages -- people to make the most wild-arsed speculations about the motives of anyone who chooses to post about a topic, based on very close to zero information.

So, the fact I think informed adults are capable of making up their own minds about patronizing a business where smoking is allowed makes me part of the "anything goes crowd" and a potential Republican candidate for elected office? That makes as much sense as my looking at your post and declaring you to be a communist advocate of shared property and a nanny state. Neither characterization is supported by the statement that prompted it.

If you want to argue with my opinion on the Indoor Clean Air law, great! Fire away with every logical and emotional argument you care to make. But before you call me names and indulge in speculation about my political leanings, you really ought to actually try to find out what I believe on those fronts.

Man, i missed this thread farting around in the garden before the heat. Nice to see the average pro tobacco intellect hasn't changed much.

Arkansas clean indoor air law sucks. National tobacco free groups barely recognize the ACIA for the exemptions. If you want to subsidize the tobacco industry do it without demanding business owners or the public do the same.

There is no safe exposure to SHS. And smoke, like tobacco litter, is the biomarker for an unhealthy subsidy for a rogue industry. Y'all keep defending Philip Morris and RJR, it's cute.

I posted this on another thread before I saw this one, but I recently was walking down Clinton Ave. and noticed children sitting on the patio at Sticky Fingers. Didn't they go 21+ so they could allow smoking?

Why not Pines? They let winos in for free to steal your stuff.

Zara, I'm not pro tobacco. I quit 25 years ago. Best thing I ever did. I just don't like it when the PC set bullies people and prohibition never works. It just gives a false sense of superiority and lines the pockets of bootleggers, drug dealers, loan sharks and unlicensed abortionists. That's the direction we seem to be headed in on tobacco. Besides, we've irradicated tobacco smoke in the vast majority of public places. I say live and let live. I don't have to go to Sticky Fingerz or any other smoky place if I don't want to (although Sticky does seem to have a good ventilation system.)

If law skirters need to be outed why doesn't AT publish a list of marijuana smokers?

Bug--I agree that Sticky Fingers has a good ventilation system. The south end of the restaurant is ostensibly non-smoking during lunch. But in order to allow smoking at all, the restaurant elected to go 21 and over only--the sign on the door says so. But the back patio, which is not accessible from the street, had children with who I figured were their parents the day I saw them. Whether it was a one-time occurrence due to a newbie host/hostess, I don't know.

Bug, demanding a safe smoke free workplace is neither PC nor prohibition. There is no safe exposure to secondhand smoke. Period. Lung or breast cancer should never be the condition of any employment. The only business that benefits from tolerating tobacco is the tobacco business. And you may not have noticed that in 2006 the tobacco industry was convicted of racketeering and fraud in Federal court under statutes generally reserved for organized crime. Part of that fraud was a concerted effort to oppose clean indoor air as some myopic civil right.

ASHRAE, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air conditioning Engineers, sets ventilation standards in the U.S. and have stated that the only effective protection from SHS is to restrict smoking indoors. Businesses considering ventilation systems in order to allow smoking should ask the manufacturer if they will represent them in court and or pay any workman's comp claims. Unless they agree, expensive smoke eaters are a waste of money.

And last, Pines, you have hit on one of the major flaws of Arkansas' clean indoor air law. It's complaint driven. In order to assure compliance someone from ADH has to get a report and then go verify that the law is being broken. If they don't see an ashtray or someone actually smoking when they show up nothing happens. Unlike sanitation inspections there are no regular visits to assure a tobacco free business.

You can report non-compliance at www.arcleanair.com or call 1-800-235-0002. Be as specific as you can, When who, where in the building, etc. ADH reports that only 33 letters of non-compliance were issued this year if that gives you any idea of how lame the law is.

The whole over 21 schtick is BS that actually falls right into line with what the industry would prefer. But thats another post. Secondhand smoke is never safe and we do not lose the right to breath at 21.