Minnesota bars are once again allowing smoking by calling themselves theaters. A quirk of the Minnesota smoking ban is that it allows actors on stage to smoke. Hey, presto! We're all actors on the stage of life, right? As the immortal bard said, all the world's a stage, and we are all players upon this earth.
"So some bars are getting around the ban by printing up playbills, encouraging customers to come in costume, and pronouncing them 'actors'"
"The customers are playing right along, merrily puffing away - and sometimes speaking in funny accents and doing a little improvisation, too.
" 'They're playing themselves before Oct. 1. You know, before there was a smoking ban,' owner Brian Bauman explained. Shaping the words in the air with his hands, like a producer envisioning the marquee, he said: 'We call the production, "Before the Ban!'" "
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SMOKING_BAN_LOOPHOLE?SITE=AP&SECT...
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
everybody in the Distillery donning Shakespearian garb!
I don't think Ohio has any such loophole that allows smoking in bars for theatrical productions.
Sorry, no such loophole in Ohio, but I sure like the approach the rebel Minnesota taverns are using.
Big Jim
The neighborhood bar I work at might qualify as a nursing home and you can still smoke at nursing homes.
If we put a pillow and a blanket on the pool table and called it a bed, it might qualify as a motel. You can still smoke in motels. No, we would probably have to put in a shower. Maybe Carty could help with that. ;)