Smoke Break

Every now and then, I'll be at a show, either between sets or maybe while the 1st or 2nd band on the bill is halfway through their set, ...and I'll look around and notice that a handful of allies that I'd just been conversing with (albeit via close leaned, mouth-cupped shouts into their ears)... have disappeared.

They're outside...smoking cigarettes.

I decided last night that this scenario might be feasibly sutured into a refreshing interview format.

A potentially gritty, and maybe incoherently fogged plume of raw retrospection, between sets, or post-show...from a musician at a moment of relaxation.

So here we are...

It's the one-year anniversary of Michigan's Smoking Ban (in bars and restaurants). Read an article from the Detroit Free Press, particularly on the varying levels of committed/legitimate enforcement, from county to county. Here's another piece getting reactions from attendees of bars and restaurants, for-and-against. MLive also highlights how state officials are divided on the matter -

Anyhow... It's interesting to consider my perspective: I don't frequent bars or restaurants in the same way that those quoted in the stories above do, nor am I a "regular" attendee for the business owners also quoted^... It's usually just from the musical/band perspective. It's hard to tell if a venue is "packed" or well attended for certain shows, when the crowd is fluctuating in and out every 11-17 minutes, for the next cigarette.

Back, during the dagger chill of the winter nights and the lingering bite of early-early-spring...I got easily exasperated trying to 'hang out' or 'chat' or 'catch up' with the nicotine-needies, not that I don't love em or I don't wanna talk to em... Argh, I just didn't wanna take the cold if I wasn't getting the same nefariously relaxing chemical stimulating my own neurotransmitters...

But now it's mid-spring. Hell, it's almost late spring! No more jackets. No more bitter breezes.

Now that I'll be more-comfortably-loitering out there, perhaps somewhat awkwardly, considering I won't be holding a cigarette...

Maybe we can chat a bit... Maybe about music... Maybe about the world... Maybe about local government, about education, the environment.

Or about cigarettes.

Those things'll kill ya