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Wednesday, December 7, 2005

11:20 — Life Is Too Short

Posted by on December 7 at 23:20 PM

Brendan Kiley, our man on Queen Anne, reports:

I asked a street cop if police were going to start handing out tickets at midnight. “I can’t imagine we have the manpower,” he said. “Snohomish county has already said they don’t.” And the 25-foot rule? “No,” he laughed. “If anything, it will be selective enforcement.”

The Mirabeau Room did not have a game plan. Drinkers and smokers were merrily puffing and quaffing at 10 p.m. The bartenders and doorman said they didn’t know if they would be pulling up ashtrays at midnight. The stage side was non-smoking and showing anti-smoking and anti-drug cartoons with the Smurfs, Alf, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turutles trying to convince a wayward teenager to stop smoking marijuana, “an illegal substance that gives you artificial highs.”

At the Mecca, one drunk man in a nice houndstooth scarf shouted at me about the litter problem. “All these cigarette butts we are putting in ashtrays?” he railed. “They’ll be on the goddammed sidewalks! This is the stupidest law ever written!”

The waitress said she was planning to quit at midnight tonight. She and several patrons agreed that the cops would come down hardest on the dive bars. (She said she made the quitting pact with her boyfriend, who is too young to come into the bar. “Woooooah!” One grizzled patron shouted. “Where’d you meet him? A pep rally?”)

“If I have one more person asking me about the fucking smoking ban, I’m going to fucking choke him,” the bartender said. Behind her, a plastic baby hung on the wall with a cigarette taped to his mouth. Directly above it was a coaster with a message written in marker: “Life is too short. Live!!!!”