Long time readers of this blog or my Twitter followers probably know that I'm completely against smoking bans and prefer individual responsibility. If you don't want to smell like smoke, don't go near smoke. But that's neither here nor there. This is my mea culpa for my thought that the first bar to get caught violating the ordinance would be caught because city officials, be it police, health department, ABC, whatever, wanted that business closed or because they somehow competed too well with a cash cow like a casino (where smoking is still allowed). I don't think I ever wrote about this feeling or told anyone about this feeling but I know that I had that feeling.
Neighbors Lounge got shut down, quite simply, because they never stopped allowing people to smoke inside the bar. I did a quick Google search and found a review from New Year's Day this year (I know that these could be lies written by disgruntled losers who had a bone to pick with a nothing bar in a nowhere part of town, but since they're written in complete sentences, I tend to believe them a little)
they have the buzzer on the front door in order to allow their customers to smoke. We heard the old lady who owns the bar announce to bar customers that they could smoke as long as they were willing to pay the fine. She herself was smoking the night we were there.I also found a comment from a 3 year old post of Blog KC that said bluntly "Neighbors Lounge on 40 highway is allowing smoking and is collecting money to pay the fines." I also found a post on some sort of smoker's message board where the Neighbors Lounge owner, Patty Holler, expresses concerns about the smoking ordinance.
Patty Holler, owner of nearby Neighbors Lounge in Kansas City, said she's getting customers who used to go to RG's and other bars. She said she has sympathy for Houser.So I'm a little disappointed in Ms. Holler for her performance on the KCTV5 news this evening where she should have owned up to knowingly not enforcing the smoking ban. If she believes the law to be unjust, more power to her for snubbing her nose at the law. But she only hurts that case when she complains about the penalty being unfair and proclaiming some form of innocence. I'd like to see her put up a sign behind her bar that shows the Thomas Jefferson quote "If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so." I'm not saying she should, just that I'd rather see that than the 'aw shucks, we tried to enforce it' display she put on on the news.
"You hate to see this going on right across the street," Holler said. "We're scared here, if this passes on April 8."
12 comments:
ban or not,I am enjoying better smelling places. I wish the dickless legislators ban smoking at the boats as well.
the 'dickless legislators' aren't finished- you'll be whining when you can't get salt or certain drinks or gamble or eat fried foods or buy a dog or when you start a business and the bureaucrats tell you that you can't serve your customers what they want or that you can't type run-on sentences...
they already do most of that. now when they come after grammar and punctuation violations, I will have to surrender myself and hope they are merciful
I'm with you. Laws that repress personal freedom always are slippery slopes (As ANON suggests) to more and more invasion upon rights.
Besides the occasional cigar, I'm a non-smoker. If a bar's too smokey, I leave. The bar I move on to get's extra business, while the bar that's smokey remains viable to serve those whose choices differ from mine. The result, a balanced free market.
Smoking is banned, ostensibly for public health. When the argument is made that it is a person's choice to enter a smoking establishment, the argument is that it is banned for the employees' health as well.
Then when someone asks why the casinos get an exemption, no one has an answer.
That's because banning smoking has little to do with public health and everything to do with political popularity. As an ever-smaller percentage of the population, smokers are easy targets...except where a lobby with deep pockets comes in to change that.
m.v., as usual, is right. Ban it everywhere, or ban it nowhere.
Thanks JJSKCK, I've long since tired of the argument for or against the ban simply because the argument is always the same. It comes down to me to the fact that I don't think secondhand smoke can possibly be dangerous to someone coming in contact with it occasionally. And for the workers, they're adults and can accept the "risks" of secondhand smoke. Again, it comes down to personal responsibility and the government is rapidly making personal responsibility a thing of the past.
Yeah, each side will cite whatever study it deems convenient (pro-ban will use health, anti-ban will use economics) and there aren't enough hours in the day for the average person to check the validity of any of them.
The most annoying part of it to me is that the majority of the people who would vote for a ban don't even patronize the types of establishments affected by the ban in the first place.
Another blog writer who shoots his credibility in the foot in the very first sentence.
"Neighbors Lounge in Independence"
And continues shooting his toes off on the way to the end of the first paragraph.
"I don't think I've even been inside the Independence city limits in my time in KC. I only write of Neighbors Lounge because they got caught violating the KC smoking ordinance".
So how does a business that you say is located in Independence, get busted by K.C. over an ordinance?
I know the answer. You don't know what the heck you're talking about.
Independence is not a ward, district, section, part of town, street, road, highway, boulevard, etc...of Kansas City. Independence is an actual city with real boundaries.
How long have you lived here?
Btw, Neighbors Lounge is not located in Independence and it's certainly not the only bar in Kansas City that you can smoke in.
How does a buzzer on the front door allow you to smoke? Did someone just invent a smoke-enabling door buzzer? Or is the buzzer an all-seeing and all-knowing, living organism that gives folks permission to smoke? Or does the buzzer activate a chromosome in your body that makes you smoke once you get within 20 feet of it?
This blog must be one of those blogs like TKC that makes up shit and then when it gets called on its smorgasbord of stunning inaccuracies in its posts, its owner claims it's just a joke blog, so don't get your ass in a twist over some mindless posts.
Wouldn't you agree that joke blogs should have jokes and be funny?
Sorry Chief, I had it stuck in my head the place was in Independence and I have no knowledge of the part of town Neighbors is in. As for the rest, I don't have any idea what your criticism is. I didn't make up the thing about the doorbell, I was just quoting someone else. I don't see what else is inaccurate besides what is speculation (that Holler allowed smoking in the bar at all times) which I think is as valid a speculation as Chief Wiggum isn't your real name.
This is what getting linked to by TKC gets me. Thanks for reading a couple of posts before you decide to write out a diatribe of why I'm full of shit.
Neighbors isn't in Independence. It's 20 feet away from Independence. Chief can eat a dick.
Neighbors is in KC they took all the business of the Independence bars in the area (40 highway) when that ban went into effect..and bragged about it! Karma! Karma! There is a buzzer on both doors...if they don't know you...they don't let you in..there are people watching the parking lot for marked cars...what is next snipers? They can prevent fights I am sure they can prevent smoking if they want in that bar..but giving out altoid cans for ash trasy is like giving permission right? Go to Raytown better clientele!
Everything in the original comment is correct. She is a coward. When the other bars on 40 hwy were having meetings to see how to fight the ordiance...she was too busy...since she had taken their business. She was loving it!
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