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Penny Arcade - Comic - Chirmp Chormpz
Penny Arcade - Comic - Chirmp Chormpz
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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Edit: oh, except for the states you'd assume:
I can’t imagine going back to the days where smoking indoors was acceptable. Going to pubs, clubs whatever back when I was younger and coming out reeking like and ashtray just from second hand smoke. Then it was gone and it just boggles my mind that places still are cool with it
One of the most unpleasant arguments I've ever been in was trying to convince a friend that works as a bartender downtown that a proposed smoking ban was a good thing. He was just all in on the owner's Kool-Aid, that if people can't smoke in bars they won't come and the bars will shut down, and furthermore it's all about freedom to choose; he chooses to work there and people can choose to go there whether they want to smoke or not.
I tried to liken it to environmental regulations for, say, coal mines, but I think he was just too dug in on "Freedom!" to make any forward progress
Of course, I don't know of any bars that closed, the fucking owners just had to spend a few dollars making nice little heated outdoor smoking spaces out of their existing square footage. And now second-hand emphysema/cancer is no longer an occupational hazard of serving drinks.
In my area despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth from bar owners the only company that actually went out of business was a company that did specialized cleaning for bars and restaurants, because it turned out smokers were 99% of the reason you needed professionals to come in three times a week and wash the walls and ceiling and shampoo the carpets and all of a sudden you could just have your staff run a rag over stuff occasionally and vacuum after close. Bars and restaurants were consistently cleaner with far less work and expense, and they didn't take a serious hit to business because nobody went to the bar to smoke, they went to the bar to drink and smoked because they were already there.
Drinking and smoking went hand in hand in the US for a very long time. When bans started happening in the 80's and 90's there wasn't just nobody alive who remembered not being able to *smell* a bar from down the street... There was nobody alive who as a child could have heard stories from an old person who did. For all meaningful purposes this stretched back to infinity.
And before the bans went into effect it wasn't just the bar owners fussing. Their customers were loudly proclaiming they would just drink at home or find a bar that defied the law.
And if we're getting into the truth of it, definitely not all but at least some of them probably *did*, and bars survived because for every one who did at least one person who already drank at home started drinking at the bar, or somebody who left early now stayed late, because it was no longer a miserable unpleasant experience for them.
This is one of the classical data biases, but it sure as hell looks to the owners in question like they're about to face a customer exodus.
Tossing one or two cheap cabinets in a hallway is a fairly common practice for bowling alleys that I know. So it's not like, a real arcade. Just a bowling alley with arcade game, singular. Wasn't that long ago that a single throwaway cabinet to keep the kids busy was a common sight at pizza places, too.
Back in the late 80s and early to mid 90s, every bowling alley had between a couple and a handful of arcade cabinets. I played Crazy Taxi at the bowling alley more often than I did at a regular arcade.
Yeah. It's hard enough to keep a bar/restaurant going in any situation. So I can imagine that someone says they're going to make such a fundamental change and you start panicking.
I'd probably have more sympathy if their status quo wasn't giving their customers cancer.
For sure. As a habit that makes you stay in one place, I understand the fear of eliminating smoking in bars. But you'll also get people that don't want to smell like smoke, families, etc.
And the cleaning thing mentioned earlier is a huge improvement. Butts, ashtrays, the disgusting tar on everything, all gone into the the street now ..
I think the poster isn't saying it's a made up place, but a wonderful awesome place.
If those guys get banned the bars will definitely go out of business.
sexual predators were foiled by my loud screams fast legs and deft wits
others do not escape
i made my own way in life
the idea if i can do it anyone can do it is false
they ought to have to work as i did
the idea i did it thus others should do it is sadistic
It was a glorious time