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>no one talks about how much better life is since banning indoor public smoking
We did, but it's been so long now (at least in CA) that there's an entire generation of adults now who never experienced the world with indoor smoking. So it's just not something that really comes to mind now.
Not only how nice it is. But when the smoking ban came in we realised that pubs and niteclubs smelt like arse.
It launched a rejuvenation of pubs in ireland. Made them all have 1st smoking sections and then later lovely beer gardens.
Also food became far more important.
All connected or following from the smoking ban.
Id never go back. And i was a smoker until 2019
Back in the day - after leaving the clubs at 2:00 AM - I used to go home and shower because I smelled so much like cigarette smoke. Otherwise your pillow would stink like cigarettes for days.
Next morning you'd pick up the clothes you wore and they smelled like an ashtray. Better to leave them out on the porch so they didn't stink up the room, it was so bad.
Reminded me of old 'staff rooms' the walls were literally yellow, the were white once upon a time.
Crazy that hospitals used to have smoking rooms too.
Edit: I forgot that you used to be allowed to smoke on planes too but only international flights. Seems like a whole different world.
Lol my uncle was just telling me about when he was in his 20s and had surgery on his tailbone (so was around 1970s.) He had to stay in hospital for ages and his Dad used to visit after work with a few beers and they would all be there drinking and smoking on the wards.
My dad had 3 heart attacks one weekend in the late 90s and his buddies brought him beer and a carton of smokes to his hospital room the Sunday after he was brought back to life.
And you have the audacity to ask me what I learned from my mistakes....?
When I was in the navy there was small social room with a TV in the berthing it was the only area you were allowed to smoke in and would sit like 12 guys if they were almost in each others laps. People smoking in it 24/7.
We thought it was painted grey. Someone moved a placard one day. We found out the room was sort of a bright sky blue. The tobacco much coating the room was grey.
Planes, including commercial airplanes use to have ashtrays in the cockpit and everywhere else.
It's funny because they used to have ashtray fires on aircraft before and it never even got mentioned in accident investigation reports. I think the first mention was when pilots were distracted by an ashtray fire and a crash resulted some while afterward. But they didn't consider the ashtray fire to be a threat or cause of the accident, it was just mentioned in the report since it was on the tape recording and they had to log the events prior to the accident.
It wasn't semi-restricted until the 80s, and eventually led to a full ban on any flight entering/leaving the US in 2000. China recently banned it on all flights.
Banks too. I have these weird memories of going there with my mom and they'd have these huge ashtrays on top of the trashcans, and they also had a few butts too.
My country actually just banned smoking in the street too so I unintentionally have been smoking a lot less than a few weeks ago. It's kinda wild.
[Doctors](https://i.imgur.com/jlJPaW8.jpg) and [physicians](https://i.imgur.com/RceXhhi.jpg) and even [just as a random gift to the ‘rents](https://i.imgur.com/Cf8fZwb.jpg).
It's hard to imagine now. When I was in highschool I had a teacher who was an older lady. She was never a smoker and talked about how much she hated the staff rooms before the smoking ban. Because she'd be in there and everyone would be smoking and she came out smelling like she "smoked sixty a day". 😅
And like all progress it was met with resistance. I remember after it passed and there was a dude smoking his cigarette in front of the manager of a bar telling him he couldn't do that anymore, like he thought he was going to be the Rosa Parks of cigarettes or something...
At my grandparents' house they had a sort of bar separating the kitchen and dining room. There were lights hanging from the ceiling with these dark brown colored lampshades above them.
They had some fuzz stuck to them so I went to clean them.
I figured the dirt and fuzz would come off and a nice brass metal would be revealed.
Nope.
They were WHITE. Like, awkwardly-bright, pure WHITE white. My grandma smoked *so* much over several years that a thick‐ass layer of brown SLUDGE had covered the shades and attracted hair and dust into it.
It took bleach and a scrub brush to get it all off.
One time, when looking for a new apartment, I was informed that the tenant in the unit coming available had lived there for 8 years and smoked like a freight train. The landlord showed me the outside of the unit and the blinds were a nasty orangish-brown compared to the other units whose blinds were white. Cleaning crews replaced the carpets and some of the appliances, and painted the walls and ceiling before I moved in. Except, they didn’t wipe down any of the dark brown cabinets.
So like I always do with every new place, I wiped all surfaces that I would likely touch with a cleaning wipe - shelves, cabinet doors, handles, floors , etc. The wipes from the cabinet doors were the same orangish-brown as the blinds. If you took a hot shower with the bathroom door closed, then orangish-brown streaks would start coming down the walls near the ceiling. The tar from the cigarette smoke literally started seeping out of the walls. I was disgusted.
It suddenly occurs to me that rampant smoking may be the reason that dark wood panelling and dull yellow-ish hues were so popular in the 70s. It would have disguised the nicotine stains.
My current place is like that. When it gets really humid in the spring before I turn on the AC, the whole place smells like a bowling alley, which is one of the few places I was growing up that still let you smoke indoors
Ha! When my Grandparents died and their house was being sold the one thing I took was this oversized wooden fork and spoon that was on the wall of the dining room. There was of course a perfect smoke outline of them on the wall when I took them down.
I remember coming home in the early hours after a night out. That moment when you’re in the middle of taking your top of and have your whole head inside your shirt and the sheer stink of cigs and no air around you….so horrible.
My partner and I would have to weigh how much we wanted to go dance to live music vs how much we wanted to do extra laundry that week. Indoor smoking ban has been so nice.
Yeah, I remember drunkenly throwing my clothes on the floor after a night out, then having my carpet stink because of the contact with the clothes. And I was never a smoker.
Born and raised in the states but always flew back to see my Irish cousins and grandparents over the summer (dads side). Both his parents were heavy smokers and my mom, apparently, in the 90’s laid down an ultimatum of not ever bringing us to their house if they didn’t quit smoking inside while we were there at the very least. Pretty bold but my mom is vehemently against smoking and second hand smoke exposure. Anyhow, my grandmother quit altogether. My grandfather dialed it back a lot and my grandmother stopped being able to stand the smell and made him go outside.
My aunts still talk about it and thank my mom for doing it. It’s been almost 30 years and they credit the fact that my grandmother is still alive with that.
I’m a smoker/vaper and I enjoy a break from the heat and music to have a few minutes calm and chitchat. Watching 80s entertainment now the cigarettes really stand out.
Yeah, now when someone lights up a smoke in a piece of media it’s usually a very specific character choice, whereas 50 years ago it was jut a thing people assumed most adults did.
I'm American and I happened to be over for a wedding the weekend it happened. At midnight we all moved outside with our drinks and continued to smoke. I still have the ashtray from the bar that we used that night.
Moved from CA to Michigan 13 years ago and it was still allowed. Felt very weird/backwards. It's been many years since they finally banned it but the bowling alleys still reek.
It's... now and smoking is still allowed in a number of types of establishments in Virginia (most notably clubs, casinos, and restaurants that meet certain criteria).
Several co-workers raved about the good food at a local bowling alley. A co-worker and I went. The only person in there smoking was the cook. O.o
It was horrible food. I never did figure out if they were shitting us or if they really liked the food.
Yeah, I was gonna say...I'm 27 and have literally never seen anyone smoking indoors in a public place. Watching Mad Men, it just seems so weird to me, not just that everyone smokes so much, but where they choose to do it. All I can think about that every single inch of every room probably *reeks* of tobacco, and every wall is gonna get super yellowed too
I'm 37, and I was in high school when New York was talking about an indoor smoking ban. I can remember morning radio DJs saying that it would be the end of bars if it went through.
Eddie Izzard had a line in his comedy show in the late 90s about CA banning smoking in bars:
>My God, what have you been smoking? You haven't been smoking in a bar in California, that's for sure! Because you can't! Yes, no smoking in bars now, and soon no drinking and no talking!
It was considered so wild and crazy, but it turns out that for the most part, people love it.
I'm a few years older, and there was a window of time where NJ and NY had different rules. I can't remember which state banned smoking first, but I much preferred those bars! With the smoking ones, I'd have to shower when I got home to get the smell out of my hair
Casinos are the only thing I can think of. I walked into Harrah's in Lake Charles once. Never again. Others may have smoking, but at least had okay ventilation to carry most of the smell out.
Edit: I see they closed Harrah's in 2005. Horseshoe is in that location now.
Cigarettes were regarded as natural and necessary as coffee.
Imagine banning coffee out of workplaces, hospitals, homes, cars, out of Resteraunt sand finally anywhere indoors. It was really exactly that kind of legislative fight, and that kind of cultural and social shift in the end.
People can’t get caffeine from someone else drinking coffee in the same room or building, and that’s the important difference that is the only reason governments got away with forcing graduated bans on cigarettes out of workplaces. Scientists could prove second-hand smoke caused lung cancer. If only *smokers themselves* got lung cancer, cigarettes wouldn’t have been exiled outdoors over time. The legislative and social change was entirely based on workplace health and safety laws.
Adults would smoke in cars with children, with asthmatic children, and think nothing of provoking asthma attacks, after all the kids had inhalers. Smokers had an absolute right to their addiction before workplace safety laws changed the entire social zeitgeist.
Really? Whereabouts you at? I’ll be 30 in a week and from Canada and can distintily remember going to the restaurant my mom worked and there being smoking sections.
I’m 30 and remember restaurants having a smoking section when I was a kid. Now it’s just bars and music venues that allow smoking inside. Most of my friends and coworkers smoke, so the smell doesn’t really bother me.
I'm also 27, I have some very early memories where smoking indoors was a thing. Probably just comes down to different areas banning it at different times
"smoking or non-smoking?"
"Non-smoking."
"Okay, have a seat right here at the threshold between the two sections, where there are no barriers to keep the smoke from invading your lungs."
About a year ago I stopped to pee at a gas station/bar in Wyoming and had to walk through the bar to get to the bathroom. Between the thick haze of cigarette smoke, Conway Twitty playing on a sticky looking juke box and the dark brown fake wood paneling on the walls, I felt like I was transported back in time to the 80’s. It was depressing AF, lmao. Best part was, even though I was wearing a flannel and hopped out of a 12yr old SUV, the way the bar’s patrons stopped and looked at me, I might as well have been a Drag Queen getting out of a Tesla.
Kids into the whole vaporwave/outrun aesthetic need to visit that shithole so they know what the 80’s *really* looked and sounded like everywhere that wasn’t LA or Miami.
> Kids into the whole vaporwave/outrun aesthetic need to visit that shithole so they know what the 80’s really looked and sounded like everywhere that wasn’t LA or Miami
Spend a few days in Kingman Az. Grandmas still smoking in their cars with the windows up kind of 80’s shit still alive and well. It was just a gas stop for me going in and out of Vegas but holy shit. What a tragic Time Machine of a shit town.
I was just there! And this is *exactly* what I was thinking! All those kids in Cali just need to stop by the plinko sections of a casino then head over to Kingman.
Hey man, vaporwave enthusiasts enjoy the image portrayed in the media juxtaposed with the truth, not that they want to be there again.
80s and 90s was all "The future is here! Look at all the progress we will get! Recycling will save the world! Go into STEM and you'll be set!". The carefree attitude extoled in the media at that time belied the true fact that it was all fake and the future has not turned out like they said. That all the consumerism of that time was destroying the earth despite being told we can fix it if we just tried harder.
The memory of this time is happy but the truth reminds us it was all fake so there's a sense of melancholy to the whole thing. That's why there's a dreamy or depressing aspect to it (which is why a lot of the songs are slowed down).
Don't worry, I'm not trying to convince you to like vaporwave. Just giving you some info.
Right? Like fuck. Some people want to wear neons, listen to some jams, and dream of something different. But every time they do someone breaks down their door and screams "LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT RONALD REAGAN"
STEM came after the elder millennials who were told “just get a bachelors degree in whatever and you’ll land a six-figure job in no time!” graduated to find no jobs and the boomers mocking them for having “underwater basket weaving” degrees.
Seriously. I grew up in CA in the 80s and me and my friends talk about this from time to time. Like going to Vegas, I'm like what's this familiar smell?? Oooh right, cigarettes.
My grandparents smoked a big part of my childhood and lot of my fruit my friends smoked in high school, I actually don't come across many smokers nowadays. Honestly when I do the smell is a little nostalgic.
My wife is 10 years younger. When I tell her that people smoked in busses, trains, Cafés, everywhere, she replies "Naaah, that would have smelled horribly, wouldn't it".
Yes my love, it did. Oh, it did.
I used to remember having to leave my coat in the car so it wouldn't smell after going out, even if it was like 5 degrees out. Then coming home and having to shower because you just reeked. People don't know how good it is now.
This is accurate. I remember the smoking "sections" that were in every restaurant and how absurd they were, even as a kid it made zero sense. But my children, will never have seen it.
I also remember a time before home computers and widespread internet access. At one point your best option was the library for it. How wild is that now.
I don't smoke and never have. I recall when I was in my 20s, going out at the bars and waking up with a sore throat and a hangover
Those poor bartenders in that smoke every night.
Remember smoking in restaurants? Can't smoke here, but 2 seats down that way it's totally cool bro
While nicotine is an addictive substance, I believe there was a psychological aspect to wanting to mask obscenities that neglect had on us and the environment we lived in. as I grew older, noticed a lot of people like to hide from responsibility and proper manners. even I do it, and getting better at not being neglectful.
I used to smoke when I was younger, and if we couldn't afford smokes, we could go to a cheap club with no cover charge and just passive smoke for a few hours
My mom and dad smoked inside and while driving when I was a kid. I would of course go on to be a smoker and I was poor. That combo allowed me to figure out I would be having nicotine withdrawal when I’d go stay over at a friends house. It wasn’t allergies or home sickness, I just needed a drag.
My parents smoke but they used to be a lot poorer than they are now and this never worked for them. When they couldn't afford smokes they'd go looking in ash trays at pubs and casinos for butts they'd get the tobacco out of until they had enough to roll up into one regular cigarette.
I just wanna say as a sewer rat myself that I used to do this and it's actually not bad at all unless the butts are wet. Another similar sewer rat concept is that especially at universities or public events people throw away perfectly good food you can just collect from the bins, often still in packaging.
I'm reformed now lmao
Most of my family has worked in the Atlantic City Casinos at one point, the ones who made a career out of it had had at least 1 bout with cancer. Consider a career change for your health.
But like they have the smell of cigarettes mixed with the smell of perfume meant to mask the cigarettes but instead they just team up to gang rape your senses.
OMG, this.
The ban happened some time ago here (Ireland) but this was the immediate reaction. In the dirtier pubs you’d get a stench of stale beer (and /or smell from the toilets). In the nicer places, just the smell of BO.
I've visited a few places with indoor smoking in the past decade and it's always surprising how much work goes into accommodating smoking. The servers spend a few extra trips to the table just clearing dirty ashtrays and replacing clean ones.
to be fair we really should though. Vaccination rates for things like measles are falling and the public needs a reminder on how horrible these preventable diseases are
It really is lovely not having smallpox or the plague or leprosy! My grandpa always said “I HAD all those things you all get vaccinated for.” Life is good. I’m also jazzed about air bags! I’m jazzed about a lot of things.
Speaking of air bags and auto safety, before seat belt laws, apparently it was fairly common for kids to fall out of car windows and get run over. I’m not even talking about getting ejected in accidents — just a kid hanging out the window suddenly falls out when the driver makes a turn and gets squished by either the rear tires or the car behind them. And it still took until the 90s to convince parents that kids had to be buckled in car seats!
> before seat belt laws
Thank you Ralph Nader.
I remember as a kid people rebelling against the seatbelt thing. My dad would drive around with a beer between his legs, no seatbelt and all. Things were so different not very long ago.
Man, as someone who is currently recovering from shingles, get the singles vaccine.
If you've ever had chicken pox, shingles is living in your body, on a nerve. When it decides to flare up one day, you get cold sore style blisters along your body wherever the affected nerve runs.
I'm almost over it. I only have one 1/3" blister remaining.
I've been stabbed in the eye and this is still a close second for most pain I've ever been in.
I mean, something like 90% of adults in the US have had chicken pox at some time. The vaccine was introduces very recently, sometime in the middle 90s.
Same with Christopher Reeve’s wife. She fought so hard for him and got diagnosed with cancer as a non smoker but she was also a singer in nightclubs back in the day That’s now I believe she thought she got it.
1000%, I posted elsewhere, but I normally will wear jeans 3 or 4 times before washing them, but they always fucking reeked after playing a show. So it was either stink for 2 days or do laundry an extra day that week.
Bartenders, waitresses, and musicians were the original people that got the indoor smoking ban put into law. I truly do not miss the stank of smoke while watching a band play.
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/31/us/california-s-ban-to-clear-smoke-inside-most-bars.html
I remember meals would be ruined at a restaurant when the table next to you would light up a cigarette.
Cloths would reek of smoke after leaving a bowling alley.
Cars and planes would have ashtrays in the armrest that were always disgusting.
I'm too young to have seen smoking on planes, but I still remember playing with the ashtrays from all the planes that were in service in that time. Assholes would put gum in them, I don't know why that specifically is such a vivid memory.
That was gross, but smoking was definitely worse. I remember having massive headaches on flights from second hand smoke. They made the last 8 rows or something the smoking section, which obviously didn’t work.
You could smoke in malls where I live.
I remember when smoking bans started, before a bunch of towns amalgamated into the Regional Municipality our city is now, one town banned indoor smoking before the others. A friend met me at the mall in that town, and lit a smoke as soon as he entered, because he could in his town.
I think maybe you couldn't smoke in the stores, just the mall and food court. So really it was mostly getting on merchandise by the doors. But I can't really remember. I was a kid for most of that time.
You could smoke anywhere and everywhere. Watch the original Ghostbusters movie. It's a documentary of all the types of buildings you could smoke in the early 80's.
Digital screens kinda ruined physical buttons and knobs, didn’t they? I always use the pulley arm at the casino even though it also works with a screen tap.
I remember when McDonald’s had smoking sections and little tin ashtrays imprinted with the Golden Arches. Nothing like going to eat a 2,500 calorie meal while sucking in second hand smoke.
I remember the oldsters that would order a single coffee (free refills) and sit and smoke for hours, sometimes playing chess or cards. As broke teens we started doing it too, and suddenly there was a time limit but it was only enforced on us.
I actually remember being a kid and people smoking at the doctor's office. The seats had large ashtrays attached. Crazy to think about.
So much better now.
The smoking and non-smoking sections being seperated by a half wall with a foot of plexiglass on top while the smoke haze drifts across the entire family restaurant was a sight to behold.
I am so grateful I live in a time you can’t just smoke anywhere. The smell of smoke is awful to me. I can’t imagine what it’s like for people with conditions like asthma
Ignoring the eye rolls, scoffs and sighs. I will say you have to want to quit to be able to, she said it was like hell. She had quit a couple times before and one time for 2 years but stress brought her back. Now I think it’s been 6 months.
As an asthmatic, it was a godsend. I was in my 20s when it passed here, and I spent a lot of time in the bowling alley where my best friend worked. My ability to breathe improved *so* much.
I actually hadn't thought about it, but I think my biannual trips to the hospital for my asthma stopped around then too.
The "I refuse not to smoke in public. If you don't like cigarettes, don't leave your home." people were the same ones who eventually evolved into the "I refuse to wear a mask or get vaccinated. If you're afraid of Covid, don't leave your house." people.
Nothing bothers me more than cigarette smoke. We recently had a homeless guy was living in the hallways of the apartment and smoking, and it was *fucking brutal*. I'm so glad to be alive in a time when smoking is not allowed indoors. I would be constantly coughing and gagging otherwise.
I was watching Mrs. Doubtfire with my son and in the scene near the end where the host at the restaurant asked "Smoking or non-smoking?" my son asked me what the guy was taking about.
My son has never in his life known what a smoking section was.
I talk about this from time to time. I even remember where the smoking section was in some restaurants. (At McDonalds in my town you had to walk through the smoking section to get to the bathroom - very poorly thought out.)
There are still some places in the US where smoking is permitted indoors, and it’s always jarring to be in one of those places - for example, in Nevada (or Las Vegas, at least), it’s permitted in bars that don’t serve food.
Pretty interesting times now.
I’m Nebraska, I believe we banned it ca 2007ish. I was doing IT for an Applebees franchise around 2013. Walked into one in Missouri and was hit with a blanket of smoke. Had to think for a second. “Oh yeah. Wasn’t long ago that Nebraska was similar”
I lived in DC starting in 2007 - smoking had been banned in bars and restaurants in DC in early 2007, but was not banned in bars and restaurants in Virginia until 2009. It was always so jarring to go out to a bar in Arlington, Virginia and see people smoking - just across the river, so it didn't feel like traveling somewhere, but obviously a totally different set of local laws.
Fun fact indoor smoking is not federally regulated and all smoking bans are on a state level. 12 states do not have any restrictions to indoor smoking.
Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming, for anyone curious.
My wife has asthma and cigarette smoke can aggravate it. We'd always ask for non-smoking tables. Sometimes, you'd need to walk through the smoking section to get to the non-smoking section.
Other times, the dividing line was imaginary. The table next to you was in the smoking section and they'd light up. The smoke would never just drift over to the non-smoking section. NEVER! (Always.)
I love that you don't need to worry about inhaling those fumes anymore when you go out.
I appreciate it beyond words. Although there was already a downward trend, I have to think that the ban on indoor public smoking was an inflection point for the diminishing likelihood of addiction to smoking. I’m not sure I personally know and have contact with anyone who smokes today. It was not so 50 years ago, when 80% of my friends, acquaintances, and all random strangers I met were smokers.
A true story of change: twelve years ago I was taking both my sons, then a high school freshman and junior, on a last round of the college road-trips that had so occupied us for the preceding two years. On that trip one of our stops was at Oberlin, which I found highly impressive. My younger son’s comment was, “I wouldn’t go to this school; everyone here smokes.” This came towards the end of our time on campus, his comment occasioned by our passing the _fourth_ student we had seen smoking as she crossed in front of us, hurrying to class.
He had never indicated that this might be one of his criteria at any of the fifteen or more schools he had visited at that point, but we had never before seen so many smokers at one school, either.
Ohio is always in the top two or three smoking states per capita. Not sure where the other schools were, but it makes sense that young people + Ohio = more than your average number of smokers.
At least in CA we had smoking sections in restaurants. When I stepped into an Ohio restaurant with no ventilation, it was such culture shock. I sat down at the bar and ordered my food to go. It was so horrible.
Interesting to know. I put it down to Oberlin drawing a lot of angsty/outsider/counter-culture types, or maybe it’s angsty-outsider-counterculture types. Not a knock on Oberlin, I would have been happy if either kid had wanted to go there, _I_ would have liked to, myself.
I remember getting in an argument with someone at the time when our state was voting on banning smoking in bars. She was convinced that would be the end of the bar scene, and that liquor sales would be crippled. That the only reason people buy alcohol was because cigarettes made them thirsty.
I felt dumber walking away from her that day, and my faith in humanity had been lowered.
I have tried to describe it to my child. I can't communicate how nasty it could be. There was one restaurant my parents liked when I was a kid and refused to go by about 9 years old because it smelled so bad and made my nose run and my throat sore .
Don’t forget how the nonsmoking section was two feet from the smoking section, like the smoke would magically be stopped by an invisible forcefield between the two sections.
I remember seeing this when I was really young. Something along the lines of: "why are they allowed to smoke in that section, when the smoke just travels over the low wall to the smoke free section"
I was confused. And rightly so I guess.
I remember one of the last times I went out before the smoking ban, it was a bar downstairs from the entrance, so no windows or doors. Just a big vent in the middle of the room. The smoke was so bad my eyes stung and watered the whole time.
Not to mention that we STANK the next day, and our group wasn't smoking.
I'm so glad it's not a thing anymore.
Cigarette smoke sticks around forever. I didn't realize until recently my clothes reeked of the smell after visiting my grandma, who smokes in her home.
I think it's because it's been so much longer. I'm almost 30, my sister's in her 40s and neither of us remember a time when smoking indoors (other than in casinos) was allowed. But we both remember a time without the internet (at least easy access) and cell phones. I guess I remember when restaurants had smoking sections, but they were always patio/outdoor seating.
Interesting, I dont know the history of when the indoor smoking bans took effect where, but I'm in my 30s and I have clear memories of most restaurants having smoking sections back when I was a kid. You could still smell cigarettes in the nonsmoking section. When I was 16, I started my first job at a local restaurant, and that is also the year I took up smoking because EVERYONE back of house was smoking on the job (while making food!). This only lasted about a year before the ban came into play, but that was in the 2000's, doesn't feel that long ago to me.
Reading through the comments, even county by county, let alone state by state, has dealt with smoking completely differently. I might just live in an area where it was tackled way earlier.
That's interesting, I'm 37 and my state banned it in 2006. Admittedly, I am an asthmatic, so I always noticed when I was near smokers, but I absolutely recall requesting nonsmoking section seating, and being seated right at the partition where you were in a booth and there was a 2 foot tall clear plastic "separator" above the booth height from the booth right next to you. It was not a good system. Maybe you were lucky and grew up in California, where they banned it in the 90s?
I remember as a kid going to Luby’s and the smoking section was separated by a 2’ divider between the booths. I didn’t understand how that stopped the smoke and that’s because it didn’t! 😷
The GenZs at work barely believe me when I say, as a Millennial, that people could smoke in pubs and clubs right up until I went to Uni. The ones that smoke though always look like they wish it was still a thing and I'm so fucking glad it isn't. I literally avoided social gathering because of my asthma. Ridiculous.
I certainly do, especially working in a hotel where the most disgusting people walk in asking if they have a smoking room.
No sir, we are a no smoking facility and so is every hotel in the state. Please don’t smoke in my hotel or I won’t hesitate to hit you with the smoking fee that you sign for and acknowledge even though you’ll cry about that you didn’t know. Now please go away because you smoke Oder is giving me a migraine.
If my hotel finds evidence you smoke in the room, that’s a $200 fee. Why would you ever even attempt that?? Then I have the dicks that can’t walk 30 feet to the smoking area, and litter their butts all over my property. You can guarantee I’m watching my camera footage, seeing exactly who did it, and hitting them with $5 per instance. Fuck these people that can’t respect other’s property or the fucking world
As a GenXer, I grew up driving around town with my grandparents chain smoking with the windows up while I’m desperately holding back my nausea. We’ve come a long way
One time it was so bad from my mom's smoke (it was cold and raining and she had a van with the back windows that barely popped open) I had a panic/asthma attack and passed out in the car. She cracked a window but still smokes the rest of the way home
I was fairly young when this changed, but I still remember how disappointed I’d be when my dad (not a smoker) would accept a table in the smoking section of a restaurant to avoid having to wait. I also remember embarrassing my mom once in some waiting room by pulling my shirt up over my mouth and nose when a guy in the room lit a cigarette.
I was talking about this the other day, my asthma has been incredibly better since this!
In my teens I worked as a bingo caller, by the end of the night, you wouldn't be able to see the ceiling of the place!
The law changed while I was there, everyone was outraged. I was relieved!
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>no one talks about how much better life is since banning indoor public smoking We did, but it's been so long now (at least in CA) that there's an entire generation of adults now who never experienced the world with indoor smoking. So it's just not something that really comes to mind now.
Same in Ireland.
Not only how nice it is. But when the smoking ban came in we realised that pubs and niteclubs smelt like arse. It launched a rejuvenation of pubs in ireland. Made them all have 1st smoking sections and then later lovely beer gardens. Also food became far more important. All connected or following from the smoking ban. Id never go back. And i was a smoker until 2019
Back in the day - after leaving the clubs at 2:00 AM - I used to go home and shower because I smelled so much like cigarette smoke. Otherwise your pillow would stink like cigarettes for days. Next morning you'd pick up the clothes you wore and they smelled like an ashtray. Better to leave them out on the porch so they didn't stink up the room, it was so bad.
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Reminded me of old 'staff rooms' the walls were literally yellow, the were white once upon a time. Crazy that hospitals used to have smoking rooms too. Edit: I forgot that you used to be allowed to smoke on planes too but only international flights. Seems like a whole different world.
Lol my uncle was just telling me about when he was in his 20s and had surgery on his tailbone (so was around 1970s.) He had to stay in hospital for ages and his Dad used to visit after work with a few beers and they would all be there drinking and smoking on the wards.
My dad had 3 heart attacks one weekend in the late 90s and his buddies brought him beer and a carton of smokes to his hospital room the Sunday after he was brought back to life. And you have the audacity to ask me what I learned from my mistakes....?
Hold on, I gotta know. What did you learn from your mistakes?
Based on where I am in life, not much.
When I was in the navy there was small social room with a TV in the berthing it was the only area you were allowed to smoke in and would sit like 12 guys if they were almost in each others laps. People smoking in it 24/7. We thought it was painted grey. Someone moved a placard one day. We found out the room was sort of a bright sky blue. The tobacco much coating the room was grey.
Hospitals used to have ashtrays in the hallway!!
Planes, including commercial airplanes use to have ashtrays in the cockpit and everywhere else. It's funny because they used to have ashtray fires on aircraft before and it never even got mentioned in accident investigation reports. I think the first mention was when pilots were distracted by an ashtray fire and a crash resulted some while afterward. But they didn't consider the ashtray fire to be a threat or cause of the accident, it was just mentioned in the report since it was on the tape recording and they had to log the events prior to the accident. It wasn't semi-restricted until the 80s, and eventually led to a full ban on any flight entering/leaving the US in 2000. China recently banned it on all flights.
Banks too. I have these weird memories of going there with my mom and they'd have these huge ashtrays on top of the trashcans, and they also had a few butts too. My country actually just banned smoking in the street too so I unintentionally have been smoking a lot less than a few weeks ago. It's kinda wild.
[Doctors](https://i.imgur.com/jlJPaW8.jpg) and [physicians](https://i.imgur.com/RceXhhi.jpg) and even [just as a random gift to the ‘rents](https://i.imgur.com/Cf8fZwb.jpg).
It's hard to imagine now. When I was in highschool I had a teacher who was an older lady. She was never a smoker and talked about how much she hated the staff rooms before the smoking ban. Because she'd be in there and everyone would be smoking and she came out smelling like she "smoked sixty a day". 😅
>whiyebonve For a second I legitimately thought this was some fancy word for a shade of white paint
And like all progress it was met with resistance. I remember after it passed and there was a dude smoking his cigarette in front of the manager of a bar telling him he couldn't do that anymore, like he thought he was going to be the Rosa Parks of cigarettes or something...
At my grandparents' house they had a sort of bar separating the kitchen and dining room. There were lights hanging from the ceiling with these dark brown colored lampshades above them. They had some fuzz stuck to them so I went to clean them. I figured the dirt and fuzz would come off and a nice brass metal would be revealed. Nope. They were WHITE. Like, awkwardly-bright, pure WHITE white. My grandma smoked *so* much over several years that a thick‐ass layer of brown SLUDGE had covered the shades and attracted hair and dust into it. It took bleach and a scrub brush to get it all off.
One time, when looking for a new apartment, I was informed that the tenant in the unit coming available had lived there for 8 years and smoked like a freight train. The landlord showed me the outside of the unit and the blinds were a nasty orangish-brown compared to the other units whose blinds were white. Cleaning crews replaced the carpets and some of the appliances, and painted the walls and ceiling before I moved in. Except, they didn’t wipe down any of the dark brown cabinets. So like I always do with every new place, I wiped all surfaces that I would likely touch with a cleaning wipe - shelves, cabinet doors, handles, floors , etc. The wipes from the cabinet doors were the same orangish-brown as the blinds. If you took a hot shower with the bathroom door closed, then orangish-brown streaks would start coming down the walls near the ceiling. The tar from the cigarette smoke literally started seeping out of the walls. I was disgusted.
It suddenly occurs to me that rampant smoking may be the reason that dark wood panelling and dull yellow-ish hues were so popular in the 70s. It would have disguised the nicotine stains.
My current place is like that. When it gets really humid in the spring before I turn on the AC, the whole place smells like a bowling alley, which is one of the few places I was growing up that still let you smoke indoors
Ha! When my Grandparents died and their house was being sold the one thing I took was this oversized wooden fork and spoon that was on the wall of the dining room. There was of course a perfect smoke outline of them on the wall when I took them down.
I remember coming home in the early hours after a night out. That moment when you’re in the middle of taking your top of and have your whole head inside your shirt and the sheer stink of cigs and no air around you….so horrible.
My partner and I would have to weigh how much we wanted to go dance to live music vs how much we wanted to do extra laundry that week. Indoor smoking ban has been so nice.
Yeah, I remember drunkenly throwing my clothes on the floor after a night out, then having my carpet stink because of the contact with the clothes. And I was never a smoker.
It took three washes in the one shower to get cigarette smoke out of long hair after nightclubbing.
I always had to do the same if I was around cigarettes. I absolutely cannot sleep with any hint of the smell. Seems to cling to my hair so stubbornly.
Born and raised in the states but always flew back to see my Irish cousins and grandparents over the summer (dads side). Both his parents were heavy smokers and my mom, apparently, in the 90’s laid down an ultimatum of not ever bringing us to their house if they didn’t quit smoking inside while we were there at the very least. Pretty bold but my mom is vehemently against smoking and second hand smoke exposure. Anyhow, my grandmother quit altogether. My grandfather dialed it back a lot and my grandmother stopped being able to stand the smell and made him go outside. My aunts still talk about it and thank my mom for doing it. It’s been almost 30 years and they credit the fact that my grandmother is still alive with that.
Damn how old is grandma?
She'll be 47 this spring
And still young at heart
I’m a smoker/vaper and I enjoy a break from the heat and music to have a few minutes calm and chitchat. Watching 80s entertainment now the cigarettes really stand out.
Yeah, now when someone lights up a smoke in a piece of media it’s usually a very specific character choice, whereas 50 years ago it was jut a thing people assumed most adults did.
Tobacco companies used to pay film makers to include smoking in films.
25 year old Irish person, have no memory of when smoking indoors was common at home
I'm American and I happened to be over for a wedding the weekend it happened. At midnight we all moved outside with our drinks and continued to smoke. I still have the ashtray from the bar that we used that night.
Moved from CA to Michigan 13 years ago and it was still allowed. Felt very weird/backwards. It's been many years since they finally banned it but the bowling alleys still reek.
I was in Nashville in 2019 and it was allowed in some places. It was fucking weird
It's... now and smoking is still allowed in a number of types of establishments in Virginia (most notably clubs, casinos, and restaurants that meet certain criteria).
Well, tobcco is still one of virginia's exports rightt?
Indeed, it is. One of the restaurant exceptions is basically restaurants at places that produce tobacco products.
Still is. 21 and up bars only.
Several co-workers raved about the good food at a local bowling alley. A co-worker and I went. The only person in there smoking was the cook. O.o It was horrible food. I never did figure out if they were shitting us or if they really liked the food.
Yeah, I was gonna say...I'm 27 and have literally never seen anyone smoking indoors in a public place. Watching Mad Men, it just seems so weird to me, not just that everyone smokes so much, but where they choose to do it. All I can think about that every single inch of every room probably *reeks* of tobacco, and every wall is gonna get super yellowed too
I'm 37, and I was in high school when New York was talking about an indoor smoking ban. I can remember morning radio DJs saying that it would be the end of bars if it went through.
Eddie Izzard had a line in his comedy show in the late 90s about CA banning smoking in bars: >My God, what have you been smoking? You haven't been smoking in a bar in California, that's for sure! Because you can't! Yes, no smoking in bars now, and soon no drinking and no talking! It was considered so wild and crazy, but it turns out that for the most part, people love it.
I got burned by other people’s cigarettes a few times on a dance floor in the ‘80’s.
This serves to remind us that dumb and loud people have always been around and often had a loud and obnoxious voice.
And people are very resistant to change / people will always react poorly to change.
If banning alcohol wasn't able to end the bars, banning tobacco never had a chance, lol.
I'm a few years older, and there was a window of time where NJ and NY had different rules. I can't remember which state banned smoking first, but I much preferred those bars! With the smoking ones, I'd have to shower when I got home to get the smell out of my hair
Yeah, why would anyone go to bars if there wasn't a an addictive, soothing, unhealthy, invigorating thing to do there?
Casinos are the only thing I can think of. I walked into Harrah's in Lake Charles once. Never again. Others may have smoking, but at least had okay ventilation to carry most of the smell out. Edit: I see they closed Harrah's in 2005. Horseshoe is in that location now.
Cigarettes were regarded as natural and necessary as coffee. Imagine banning coffee out of workplaces, hospitals, homes, cars, out of Resteraunt sand finally anywhere indoors. It was really exactly that kind of legislative fight, and that kind of cultural and social shift in the end. People can’t get caffeine from someone else drinking coffee in the same room or building, and that’s the important difference that is the only reason governments got away with forcing graduated bans on cigarettes out of workplaces. Scientists could prove second-hand smoke caused lung cancer. If only *smokers themselves* got lung cancer, cigarettes wouldn’t have been exiled outdoors over time. The legislative and social change was entirely based on workplace health and safety laws. Adults would smoke in cars with children, with asthmatic children, and think nothing of provoking asthma attacks, after all the kids had inhalers. Smokers had an absolute right to their addiction before workplace safety laws changed the entire social zeitgeist.
Really? Whereabouts you at? I’ll be 30 in a week and from Canada and can distintily remember going to the restaurant my mom worked and there being smoking sections.
I'm 27 and definitely have memories of diners like IHOP and Dennys still having smoking sections I smoked in as a teenager
I’m 30 and remember restaurants having a smoking section when I was a kid. Now it’s just bars and music venues that allow smoking inside. Most of my friends and coworkers smoke, so the smell doesn’t really bother me.
I'm also 27, I have some very early memories where smoking indoors was a thing. Probably just comes down to different areas banning it at different times
They were.
I’m mid 20’s and I remember the smoking sections in restaurants, I was always in them. Good ol south east baby.
And the non-smoking sections were still full of smoke, just less so than the smoking sections.
"smoking or non-smoking?" "Non-smoking." "Okay, have a seat right here at the threshold between the two sections, where there are no barriers to keep the smoke from invading your lungs."
Yep. Good thing my parents conditioned me by smoking in the car with the windows up or I wouldn’t have been able to handle those restaurants.
Haha yeah. Like having the peeing and no-peeing sections in pools.
About a year ago I stopped to pee at a gas station/bar in Wyoming and had to walk through the bar to get to the bathroom. Between the thick haze of cigarette smoke, Conway Twitty playing on a sticky looking juke box and the dark brown fake wood paneling on the walls, I felt like I was transported back in time to the 80’s. It was depressing AF, lmao. Best part was, even though I was wearing a flannel and hopped out of a 12yr old SUV, the way the bar’s patrons stopped and looked at me, I might as well have been a Drag Queen getting out of a Tesla. Kids into the whole vaporwave/outrun aesthetic need to visit that shithole so they know what the 80’s *really* looked and sounded like everywhere that wasn’t LA or Miami.
> Kids into the whole vaporwave/outrun aesthetic need to visit that shithole so they know what the 80’s really looked and sounded like everywhere that wasn’t LA or Miami Spend a few days in Kingman Az. Grandmas still smoking in their cars with the windows up kind of 80’s shit still alive and well. It was just a gas stop for me going in and out of Vegas but holy shit. What a tragic Time Machine of a shit town.
Lol, I've been to Kingman exactly once and this describes it so well.
Good god I hate that place an unreasonable amount for how little time I’ve spent there
I lived down the road in Lake Havasu City for my teenage years. Its about the same.
Jesus, that’s a hard area.
I was just there! And this is *exactly* what I was thinking! All those kids in Cali just need to stop by the plinko sections of a casino then head over to Kingman.
Hey man, vaporwave enthusiasts enjoy the image portrayed in the media juxtaposed with the truth, not that they want to be there again. 80s and 90s was all "The future is here! Look at all the progress we will get! Recycling will save the world! Go into STEM and you'll be set!". The carefree attitude extoled in the media at that time belied the true fact that it was all fake and the future has not turned out like they said. That all the consumerism of that time was destroying the earth despite being told we can fix it if we just tried harder. The memory of this time is happy but the truth reminds us it was all fake so there's a sense of melancholy to the whole thing. That's why there's a dreamy or depressing aspect to it (which is why a lot of the songs are slowed down). Don't worry, I'm not trying to convince you to like vaporwave. Just giving you some info.
Right? Like fuck. Some people want to wear neons, listen to some jams, and dream of something different. But every time they do someone breaks down their door and screams "LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT RONALD REAGAN"
Remarkably apt
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STEM came after the elder millennials who were told “just get a bachelors degree in whatever and you’ll land a six-figure job in no time!” graduated to find no jobs and the boomers mocking them for having “underwater basket weaving” degrees.
Seriously. I grew up in CA in the 80s and me and my friends talk about this from time to time. Like going to Vegas, I'm like what's this familiar smell?? Oooh right, cigarettes.
My grandparents smoked a big part of my childhood and lot of my fruit my friends smoked in high school, I actually don't come across many smokers nowadays. Honestly when I do the smell is a little nostalgic.
My wife is 10 years younger. When I tell her that people smoked in busses, trains, Cafés, everywhere, she replies "Naaah, that would have smelled horribly, wouldn't it". Yes my love, it did. Oh, it did.
I used to remember having to leave my coat in the car so it wouldn't smell after going out, even if it was like 5 degrees out. Then coming home and having to shower because you just reeked. People don't know how good it is now.
This is accurate. I remember the smoking "sections" that were in every restaurant and how absurd they were, even as a kid it made zero sense. But my children, will never have seen it. I also remember a time before home computers and widespread internet access. At one point your best option was the library for it. How wild is that now.
Im 29. I never experienced people smoking indoors.
I don't smoke and never have. I recall when I was in my 20s, going out at the bars and waking up with a sore throat and a hangover Those poor bartenders in that smoke every night. Remember smoking in restaurants? Can't smoke here, but 2 seats down that way it's totally cool bro
The weeks after indoor smoking was banned was horrible in bars and pubs. You realised how much smoke covered the smell of stale beer and body odour.
And, at least in the case of one bar local to me, the stench of dead rats under the floor boards.
I've been to that bar.
Well yeah, that's Charlie work.
While nicotine is an addictive substance, I believe there was a psychological aspect to wanting to mask obscenities that neglect had on us and the environment we lived in. as I grew older, noticed a lot of people like to hide from responsibility and proper manners. even I do it, and getting better at not being neglectful.
This is very well put. Feels like finally finding the words to describe something I've known in my gut for years.
Tallahassee?
Philly
I used to smoke when I was younger, and if we couldn't afford smokes, we could go to a cheap club with no cover charge and just passive smoke for a few hours
My mom and dad smoked inside and while driving when I was a kid. I would of course go on to be a smoker and I was poor. That combo allowed me to figure out I would be having nicotine withdrawal when I’d go stay over at a friends house. It wasn’t allergies or home sickness, I just needed a drag.
My parents smoke but they used to be a lot poorer than they are now and this never worked for them. When they couldn't afford smokes they'd go looking in ash trays at pubs and casinos for butts they'd get the tobacco out of until they had enough to roll up into one regular cigarette.
I just wanna say as a sewer rat myself that I used to do this and it's actually not bad at all unless the butts are wet. Another similar sewer rat concept is that especially at universities or public events people throw away perfectly good food you can just collect from the bins, often still in packaging. I'm reformed now lmao
Casinos still have that cigarettes' smell
I work in a casino. We heard some stories of casinos going non-smoking during the Covid stuff but alas, not ours.
Most of my family has worked in the Atlantic City Casinos at one point, the ones who made a career out of it had had at least 1 bout with cancer. Consider a career change for your health.
Cause you still smoke in casinos.
But like they have the smell of cigarettes mixed with the smell of perfume meant to mask the cigarettes but instead they just team up to gang rape your senses.
OMG, this. The ban happened some time ago here (Ireland) but this was the immediate reaction. In the dirtier pubs you’d get a stench of stale beer (and /or smell from the toilets). In the nicer places, just the smell of BO.
The smoke covered up farts too lol
Balkans are laughing ( and coughing at the same time) right now
A beer and an ashtray please
I've visited a few places with indoor smoking in the past decade and it's always surprising how much work goes into accommodating smoking. The servers spend a few extra trips to the table just clearing dirty ashtrays and replacing clean ones.
I thought you intentionally said loughing, which would be a blend between laughing and coughing.
Ah, buses in the Balkans: "Ugh, which jackass is smoking right now?" Looks around, sees it's the bus driver
I’m pretty sure the Balkans banned *not* smoking inside.
I’m fairness we don’t talk much about how good things are without smallpox either.
to be fair we really should though. Vaccination rates for things like measles are falling and the public needs a reminder on how horrible these preventable diseases are
It really is lovely not having smallpox or the plague or leprosy! My grandpa always said “I HAD all those things you all get vaccinated for.” Life is good. I’m also jazzed about air bags! I’m jazzed about a lot of things.
Speaking of air bags and auto safety, before seat belt laws, apparently it was fairly common for kids to fall out of car windows and get run over. I’m not even talking about getting ejected in accidents — just a kid hanging out the window suddenly falls out when the driver makes a turn and gets squished by either the rear tires or the car behind them. And it still took until the 90s to convince parents that kids had to be buckled in car seats!
> before seat belt laws Thank you Ralph Nader. I remember as a kid people rebelling against the seatbelt thing. My dad would drive around with a beer between his legs, no seatbelt and all. Things were so different not very long ago.
I'm old enough that I got chicken pox as a kid. That alone was bad enough, vaccines are great.
Man, as someone who is currently recovering from shingles, get the singles vaccine. If you've ever had chicken pox, shingles is living in your body, on a nerve. When it decides to flare up one day, you get cold sore style blisters along your body wherever the affected nerve runs. I'm almost over it. I only have one 1/3" blister remaining. I've been stabbed in the eye and this is still a close second for most pain I've ever been in.
I mean, something like 90% of adults in the US have had chicken pox at some time. The vaccine was introduces very recently, sometime in the middle 90s.
Yeah I had chicken pox in the 90s, all I remember was the itch and calamine lotion.
>very recently, sometime in the middle 90s. Oh dear, we've got another one. Someone else want to tell them?
* Or polio * Or unleaded gasoline * Or even having to rewind a movie for minutes... minutes!!
As a drummer in a bar, on a stage, on a drum riser, at the highest elevation of anyone in the establishment, good god did I appreciate the change.
As a trombone player, so did I.
Never thought about how interesting has it been for wind instrument players to suck all that smoke irritating your lungs as you play.
RIP Roy Castle, lung cancer attributed to this exact thing - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Castle
Same with Christopher Reeve’s wife. She fought so hard for him and got diagnosed with cancer as a non smoker but she was also a singer in nightclubs back in the day That’s now I believe she thought she got it.
I mean just existing back then exposed you to smoke
Basically made them a smoker indirectly.
As a singer/drummer, what a difference it made to draw a clear breath.
1000%, I posted elsewhere, but I normally will wear jeans 3 or 4 times before washing them, but they always fucking reeked after playing a show. So it was either stink for 2 days or do laundry an extra day that week.
Bartenders, waitresses, and musicians were the original people that got the indoor smoking ban put into law. I truly do not miss the stank of smoke while watching a band play. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/31/us/california-s-ban-to-clear-smoke-inside-most-bars.html
I remember meals would be ruined at a restaurant when the table next to you would light up a cigarette. Cloths would reek of smoke after leaving a bowling alley. Cars and planes would have ashtrays in the armrest that were always disgusting.
I'm too young to have seen smoking on planes, but I still remember playing with the ashtrays from all the planes that were in service in that time. Assholes would put gum in them, I don't know why that specifically is such a vivid memory.
I have that exact memory.
Very vivid to me too.
That was gross, but smoking was definitely worse. I remember having massive headaches on flights from second hand smoke. They made the last 8 rows or something the smoking section, which obviously didn’t work.
People would buy smoke reeking clothing from malls
You could smoke in the mall?
You could smoke anywhere and everywhere. Doctors used to smoke in the examination room.
You could smoke in malls where I live. I remember when smoking bans started, before a bunch of towns amalgamated into the Regional Municipality our city is now, one town banned indoor smoking before the others. A friend met me at the mall in that town, and lit a smoke as soon as he entered, because he could in his town. I think maybe you couldn't smoke in the stores, just the mall and food court. So really it was mostly getting on merchandise by the doors. But I can't really remember. I was a kid for most of that time.
You could smoke anywhere and everywhere. Watch the original Ghostbusters movie. It's a documentary of all the types of buildings you could smoke in the early 80's.
Was born in 87 and I remember people smoking in malls in the early 90s.
High-schools used to have a smoking lounge for students even
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I think its still an option where I live, but most restaurants have banned it as a house rule now.
I thought the cigarette machines with those twisty handles were wicked cool back in the day tho. Haven’t seen one of those in a hot minute
Digital screens kinda ruined physical buttons and knobs, didn’t they? I always use the pulley arm at the casino even though it also works with a screen tap.
Remember the non smoking sections? Restaurants put a little gate or some tables between the two sections. It did nothing.
I remember when McDonald’s had smoking sections and little tin ashtrays imprinted with the Golden Arches. Nothing like going to eat a 2,500 calorie meal while sucking in second hand smoke.
I remember the oldsters that would order a single coffee (free refills) and sit and smoke for hours, sometimes playing chess or cards. As broke teens we started doing it too, and suddenly there was a time limit but it was only enforced on us.
I actually remember being a kid and people smoking at the doctor's office. The seats had large ashtrays attached. Crazy to think about. So much better now.
The smoking and non-smoking sections being seperated by a half wall with a foot of plexiglass on top while the smoke haze drifts across the entire family restaurant was a sight to behold.
I am so grateful I live in a time you can’t just smoke anywhere. The smell of smoke is awful to me. I can’t imagine what it’s like for people with conditions like asthma
As an asthmatic, there are places I can go now that I never could before.
Took me a year of nagging to get my mom to stop smoking (I have asthma) but it was so, so worth it.
Congrats, how'd you manage that? I've been trying to get my mom to quit for a couple decades with no luck
Ignoring the eye rolls, scoffs and sighs. I will say you have to want to quit to be able to, she said it was like hell. She had quit a couple times before and one time for 2 years but stress brought her back. Now I think it’s been 6 months.
As an asthmatic, it was a godsend. I was in my 20s when it passed here, and I spent a lot of time in the bowling alley where my best friend worked. My ability to breathe improved *so* much. I actually hadn't thought about it, but I think my biannual trips to the hospital for my asthma stopped around then too.
The "I refuse not to smoke in public. If you don't like cigarettes, don't leave your home." people were the same ones who eventually evolved into the "I refuse to wear a mask or get vaccinated. If you're afraid of Covid, don't leave your house." people.
Nothing bothers me more than cigarette smoke. We recently had a homeless guy was living in the hallways of the apartment and smoking, and it was *fucking brutal*. I'm so glad to be alive in a time when smoking is not allowed indoors. I would be constantly coughing and gagging otherwise.
I was watching Mrs. Doubtfire with my son and in the scene near the end where the host at the restaurant asked "Smoking or non-smoking?" my son asked me what the guy was taking about. My son has never in his life known what a smoking section was.
I talk about this from time to time. I even remember where the smoking section was in some restaurants. (At McDonalds in my town you had to walk through the smoking section to get to the bathroom - very poorly thought out.) There are still some places in the US where smoking is permitted indoors, and it’s always jarring to be in one of those places - for example, in Nevada (or Las Vegas, at least), it’s permitted in bars that don’t serve food.
Pretty interesting times now. I’m Nebraska, I believe we banned it ca 2007ish. I was doing IT for an Applebees franchise around 2013. Walked into one in Missouri and was hit with a blanket of smoke. Had to think for a second. “Oh yeah. Wasn’t long ago that Nebraska was similar”
I lived in DC starting in 2007 - smoking had been banned in bars and restaurants in DC in early 2007, but was not banned in bars and restaurants in Virginia until 2009. It was always so jarring to go out to a bar in Arlington, Virginia and see people smoking - just across the river, so it didn't feel like traveling somewhere, but obviously a totally different set of local laws.
Fun fact indoor smoking is not federally regulated and all smoking bans are on a state level. 12 states do not have any restrictions to indoor smoking.
Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming, for anyone curious.
My wife has asthma and cigarette smoke can aggravate it. We'd always ask for non-smoking tables. Sometimes, you'd need to walk through the smoking section to get to the non-smoking section. Other times, the dividing line was imaginary. The table next to you was in the smoking section and they'd light up. The smoke would never just drift over to the non-smoking section. NEVER! (Always.) I love that you don't need to worry about inhaling those fumes anymore when you go out.
A smokers corner in an open restaurant is like a peeing corner in a swimming pool.
I appreciate it beyond words. Although there was already a downward trend, I have to think that the ban on indoor public smoking was an inflection point for the diminishing likelihood of addiction to smoking. I’m not sure I personally know and have contact with anyone who smokes today. It was not so 50 years ago, when 80% of my friends, acquaintances, and all random strangers I met were smokers. A true story of change: twelve years ago I was taking both my sons, then a high school freshman and junior, on a last round of the college road-trips that had so occupied us for the preceding two years. On that trip one of our stops was at Oberlin, which I found highly impressive. My younger son’s comment was, “I wouldn’t go to this school; everyone here smokes.” This came towards the end of our time on campus, his comment occasioned by our passing the _fourth_ student we had seen smoking as she crossed in front of us, hurrying to class. He had never indicated that this might be one of his criteria at any of the fifteen or more schools he had visited at that point, but we had never before seen so many smokers at one school, either.
Ohio is always in the top two or three smoking states per capita. Not sure where the other schools were, but it makes sense that young people + Ohio = more than your average number of smokers.
At least in CA we had smoking sections in restaurants. When I stepped into an Ohio restaurant with no ventilation, it was such culture shock. I sat down at the bar and ordered my food to go. It was so horrible.
Interesting to know. I put it down to Oberlin drawing a lot of angsty/outsider/counter-culture types, or maybe it’s angsty-outsider-counterculture types. Not a knock on Oberlin, I would have been happy if either kid had wanted to go there, _I_ would have liked to, myself.
I remember getting in an argument with someone at the time when our state was voting on banning smoking in bars. She was convinced that would be the end of the bar scene, and that liquor sales would be crippled. That the only reason people buy alcohol was because cigarettes made them thirsty. I felt dumber walking away from her that day, and my faith in humanity had been lowered.
I still talk about it all the time. I worked in a night club when the ban came in to effect here and my life got 1000% better from that day onwards
I have tried to describe it to my child. I can't communicate how nasty it could be. There was one restaurant my parents liked when I was a kid and refused to go by about 9 years old because it smelled so bad and made my nose run and my throat sore .
Don’t forget how the nonsmoking section was two feet from the smoking section, like the smoke would magically be stopped by an invisible forcefield between the two sections.
I remember seeing this when I was really young. Something along the lines of: "why are they allowed to smoke in that section, when the smoke just travels over the low wall to the smoke free section" I was confused. And rightly so I guess.
Or non-smoking hotel rooms
As someone with allergies and family with asthma: **so much better**
I remember one of the last times I went out before the smoking ban, it was a bar downstairs from the entrance, so no windows or doors. Just a big vent in the middle of the room. The smoke was so bad my eyes stung and watered the whole time. Not to mention that we STANK the next day, and our group wasn't smoking. I'm so glad it's not a thing anymore.
Burns my eyes too. Sometimes, to the point to where I cannot see or drive home until I flush my eyes with water and spend a half hour in fresh air.
Cigarette smoke sticks around forever. I didn't realize until recently my clothes reeked of the smell after visiting my grandma, who smokes in her home.
Remember how all the bars were going to go out of business because of this communist plot to control us?
I think it's because it's been so much longer. I'm almost 30, my sister's in her 40s and neither of us remember a time when smoking indoors (other than in casinos) was allowed. But we both remember a time without the internet (at least easy access) and cell phones. I guess I remember when restaurants had smoking sections, but they were always patio/outdoor seating.
Interesting, I dont know the history of when the indoor smoking bans took effect where, but I'm in my 30s and I have clear memories of most restaurants having smoking sections back when I was a kid. You could still smell cigarettes in the nonsmoking section. When I was 16, I started my first job at a local restaurant, and that is also the year I took up smoking because EVERYONE back of house was smoking on the job (while making food!). This only lasted about a year before the ban came into play, but that was in the 2000's, doesn't feel that long ago to me.
Reading through the comments, even county by county, let alone state by state, has dealt with smoking completely differently. I might just live in an area where it was tackled way earlier.
That's interesting, I'm 37 and my state banned it in 2006. Admittedly, I am an asthmatic, so I always noticed when I was near smokers, but I absolutely recall requesting nonsmoking section seating, and being seated right at the partition where you were in a booth and there was a 2 foot tall clear plastic "separator" above the booth height from the booth right next to you. It was not a good system. Maybe you were lucky and grew up in California, where they banned it in the 90s?
I remember as a kid going to Luby’s and the smoking section was separated by a 2’ divider between the booths. I didn’t understand how that stopped the smoke and that’s because it didn’t! 😷
The GenZs at work barely believe me when I say, as a Millennial, that people could smoke in pubs and clubs right up until I went to Uni. The ones that smoke though always look like they wish it was still a thing and I'm so fucking glad it isn't. I literally avoided social gathering because of my asthma. Ridiculous.
I certainly do, especially working in a hotel where the most disgusting people walk in asking if they have a smoking room. No sir, we are a no smoking facility and so is every hotel in the state. Please don’t smoke in my hotel or I won’t hesitate to hit you with the smoking fee that you sign for and acknowledge even though you’ll cry about that you didn’t know. Now please go away because you smoke Oder is giving me a migraine.
If my hotel finds evidence you smoke in the room, that’s a $200 fee. Why would you ever even attempt that?? Then I have the dicks that can’t walk 30 feet to the smoking area, and litter their butts all over my property. You can guarantee I’m watching my camera footage, seeing exactly who did it, and hitting them with $5 per instance. Fuck these people that can’t respect other’s property or the fucking world
As a GenXer, I grew up driving around town with my grandparents chain smoking with the windows up while I’m desperately holding back my nausea. We’ve come a long way
Oh, God! Sitting in the backseat behind smokers! The worst!!
One time it was so bad from my mom's smoke (it was cold and raining and she had a van with the back windows that barely popped open) I had a panic/asthma attack and passed out in the car. She cracked a window but still smokes the rest of the way home
Unless you have an apartment upstairs: pub visitors smoke outside the pub now.
I was fairly young when this changed, but I still remember how disappointed I’d be when my dad (not a smoker) would accept a table in the smoking section of a restaurant to avoid having to wait. I also remember embarrassing my mom once in some waiting room by pulling my shirt up over my mouth and nose when a guy in the room lit a cigarette.
Best decision ever! As a non smoker this is something I am eternally grateful for.
I was talking about this the other day, my asthma has been incredibly better since this! In my teens I worked as a bingo caller, by the end of the night, you wouldn't be able to see the ceiling of the place! The law changed while I was there, everyone was outraged. I was relieved!