No smoke without ire

It is a scene now as familiar as a yellow cab on Broadway or the neon glow of Times Square. A small group of men and women huddled in a dimly-lit doorway, their faces illuminated by the brief flare of a lighter or the scrape of a match. These are the smokers of New York, an outlawed caste who take their guilty pleasures where they can. Mostly, these days, it is out on the streets, after an almost total ban on smoking in any indoor public place was introduced nearly two months ago.

Restaurants, bars, hotel lobbies, even the platforms of Grand Central Station, are now one giant no-smoking zone. For a while the Oak Bar at the Plaza Hotel held out, its owners insisting that they were still filling out the paperwork for an exemption. But after a columnist in the New York Times turned stool pigeon, the mayor's smoking police paid a little visit to the Plaza. The ashtrays have now gone.

In their place is a bizarre new etiquette. Even the most crowded bar has a row of empty stools. Don't make the mistake of sitting on them. Those half-empty Manhattans belong to smokers, the ones you pushed past on the way in. It is the same in restaurants. As each course is cleared, there is the sound of scraping chairs as half the table rushes for the exit.

The non-smokers stay behind, gloomily attempting conversation across the empty place-settings. At the same time, it is an open secret that there are places where you can still light up. They call them " smokeeasies" and their location is as closely guarded as any Prohibition-era gin joint. "I'm not telling you where they are," said one friend. "You might write about them. I saw what happened to the Oak Bar.''

Under the old rules, it was legal to smoke at the bar or in restaurants seating fewer than 35 people. This seemed to suit everybody - the
1.5 million who smoke and the five million who don't - beyond the most hard-core health campaigners.

Unfortunately, these included the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. His ban was introduced in April. Now inspectors patrol the city, handing out summonses that start at £250, but can rapidly escalate into thousands for repeat offences. Even putting out ashtrays can get you busted.

Among the early victims was the staff canteen of the posh Hotel Pierre and Senor Swanky's, a Mexican café on Columbus Avenue where a guest lit up in the loo. In those first few weeks, it seemed that God was on the mayor's side. This June was officially the wettest for more than 100 years.

The smokers hunched their shoulders against the deluge as the raindrops trickled from the end of their Marlboros. You could tell a hardened smoker because they had not just a hacking cough, but a bad case of the sniffles as well.

Now that New York is the usual July sauna, there are new complaints. The chatter of smokers on street corners is upsetting the neighbours. And an unsightly carpet of cigarette butts litters the entrance to even the smartest restaurant.

How it will end remains to be seen. Some bar owners are making dire predictions of bankruptcy. As for the mayor, his ratings in the opinion polls are barely hitting 30 per cent, one of the lowest ratings in history. These days, even City Hall is fuming.