You Can Smoke Here

"You cain't really smoke on Earth no more, can you?" -- Cedric the Entertainer, The Original Kings of Comedy

It's become a mini-mission of mine to find restaurants and bars in New York City where you can still fire up without having to stand on the street like a degenerate junkie.

So this blog is for the smokers -- and I'm talking about the Unrepentant (wasn't that a Clint Eastwood movie?), not-apologizing-for-it, love-everything-about-it smokers, not our pals who claim they don't smoke, when in reality what they don't do is buy cigarettes but are happy to puff away at your $8-a-pack Natural American Spirits when you are socializing. (Note to Racer X and Peeker: This doesn't mean you). The smokers who groove on the ritual of smoking, the whole tamping of the pack on the heel of the hand, the sensuous unwrapping of the plastic string, the sheer enjoyment of that first puff of the day, the communal post-prandial cigarette shared after dinner when the dessert plates have been pushed aside and you're debating whether to open that third bottle of wine. You know who you are.

When someone tries to shame you with a lecture about the health issues, you look them coolly in the eye, blink twice like a lizard, drag on your butt, and say, "I like it." A smoker who never paws the ground shamefacedly when people berate you for polluting the air in their section of the sidewalk (proper answer to that: "We're OUTSIDE. Mayor Bloomberg hasn't banned it here...yet.") Besides, frankly, as my friend Showtime says, "Smoking just looks cool." It's true.

It's always astounded me that people think that it's perfectly okay to march up to a stranger and proclaim their social hatefulness. The other day a HOMELESS man said to me as I walked to work, "Hey, girl, you'd look so much more beautiful if you wasn't smokin' that cigarette!" Hello? A homeless man? But it's not just the homeless guy. Everyone thinks it's okay to comment on us. "Oh, that's so terrible for you!"

You know, I wish I had the balls to walk up to a fat person while they're eating something and say, "Oh, that chili-cheese hotdog is just so bad for you," or maybe, "You know, sir, maybe you'd look better if you weren't so unhealthily fat."

My super-secret wish-I-had-the-balls thing to say, though, would be to walk up to a preggo and say, "Wow, that looks like a nasty case of sperm poisoning."

But I digress.

About this blog. When I find a restaurant or bar that has a space where you can smoke -- I'll post it here. I'll tell you where, when, how, basically everything I can find out while I'm there.

And yes, I welcome your hot tips...since Janey can't be everywhere at once, I welcome a heads-up on cool smoker-friendly spots.