My wife calls me a Pollyanna because I always try to find the good in a situation or in people. Perhaps that's true.

First off, I do not spend my money at any bar or restaurant in NO-Hio that doesn't allow smoking. I don't support businesses that don't support me. No Smoke - No Dough. As a D.J. I don't PLAY NO-hio venues that don't allow smoking. I tirelessly fight on several fronts, locally and nationally and internationally to have these dangerous violations of rights repealed.

That being said, I am kind of enjoying the prohibitionist era, roaring 20's feel that's come into the local smoke-easies. Some of the places I go have doormen, or security cameras or both. If you are not known to anyone, you're thoroughly sized up by the doorman or bartender before being let in. If you look like a squealer or narc or a DoH inspector you're not getting in unannounced. The evidence will be gone before the door opens.

We smokers have developed our own makeshift language of conspiracy. When you walk into a strange place, a place that you're not sure of because the word-of-mouth network let you down today, the first thing you do is look for the telltale signs... the faint aroma of smoked tobacco, or of over-utilized air freshener. a stray ash here or there, a couple cigarette butts in the garbage. If you think things are cool, you take your smokes out of your pocket and lay them on the bar or place an unlit one in your mouth or behind your ear. If the place allows smoking, at that point the bartender will usually give you a nod and/or sardonic look or subtle wink, followed by the code phrase that you're looking for, "You know its ILLEGAL to smoke in here"... not "You can't smoke in here" or "no smoking allowed", but the exact phrase that fulfills the establishments responsibilities under the law. At that point, you know that it's ok to take your pocket ashtray or Altoids tin out and light up.

There are the places with the "Secret" smoking rooms. Old storage rooms, big broom closets, unused game rooms, one place even has a space about 4 feet wide and 40 feet long between two walls from remodeling. Only smokers go in these secret places, none of the mythologically deadly second hand smoke escapes into the business proper. Again there is the conspiracy of of those that operate around or above the law... the wink, the look, the appropriate nod of the head.

Then there are the other more paranoid smoke-easies. When everyone in the place is a smoker, we tend to congregate in one area. One or two people will watch for newcomers or known Antis pulling into the lot or driveway, while the dozen or so others take ten minutes to enjoy a smoke and a drink, together, and inside.

The ban has, if nothing else, created new friends, new cliques, new groups, bound together with the cord of conspiracy, the ties of civil disobedience, and the glue of a common goal. It's a little thing, but for a few minutes, we wrest control of our lives back from the government and back from the healthist fanatics that wish to control our every waking moment.

Smokers, Brothers and Sisters in rebellion, I salute you all.
Anti's, you can kiss my butts. We're still smoking and there is not ONE SINGLE THING you can do about it.

We smokers will die at 75 and know that smoking may have contributed to our ultimate demise. The health Nazi fanatics will die at 76 and be really pissed off because they died of ... NOTHING.