Should our folk club be non smoking?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Bum(Fanny) Boy
Date: 28 Jan 04 - 10:57 AM

I have given up smoking now but the rent boys are prooving difficult.
Which is healthier?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: the lemonade lady
Date: 28 Jan 04 - 10:28 AM

Yes! Pure and simple. If you want to blow smoke over my beer, I could come and fart over yours! At least what comes out my body is less harmful.

Sal

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 28 Jan 04 - 10:12 AM

I once said "I was Dying for a fag" and a rent boy appeared.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: HUGH JAMPTON
Date: 28 Jan 04 - 09:23 AM

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Bobjack
Date: 28 Jan 04 - 09:21 AM

Derrick, never say "fag" on mudcat. It means something totally different to the yanks! Think on your stage outfit and you will get what I mean!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Hand-Pulled Boy
Date: 28 Jan 04 - 08:46 AM

Someone offered me a fag. I took it, broke in two and discarded it much to the horror of himself. Apparently I was supposed to get pleasure from watching it being destroyed by fire. Next time I'll read the instructions.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Jan 04 - 04:53 AM

I can't help it though, BJ. I'm so hot...

:D

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Bobjack
Date: 28 Jan 04 - 04:04 AM

If you don't set light to your club, it won't smoke. End of problem.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 09:47 PM

You're welcome. I remember the days when I had to sit, sick as a dog, next to some businessman on an airplane smoking a stinking cigar! Talk about air sickness. Now, thank God, I don't have to endure that anymore. I have no objection to people smoking out in the fresh air or in their own homes, but I sure wish for their own sake that they hadn't grown up in a home or a peer group that took self-poisoning for granted and thought it was a desirable rite of passage to "adulthood". Once hooked, an addict is hard to change. The cigarette companies know that, and they bank on it. In the 3rd World they are selling cigarettes to children legally...they figure a really young addict will give them a few more years of profit in the end before he or she dies miserably. It's the same principle that works behind selling heroin or crack cocaine...only difference being, cigarettes are legal. I would not suggest making tobacco illegal...you would see a drug trade and crime network grow that would make the present "war on drugs" look like a tea party. Remember prohibition? You can't legislate people into being wise and treating themselves sensibly, you can only provide them with the best information and education as they grow up, set a good example in front of them, and hope they make the right choices.

- LH

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: MAG
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 09:28 PM

er, Hawk ...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: MAG
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 09:04 PM

Thanks, Eagle, and others who have chimed in.

and we ignore ...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 08:36 PM

I'm not surprised FT... If the gunk coming off the smoldering end of a ciggy was present in the air of a mine-shaft or in a factory in the same ammounts, no bugger'd be ALLOWED to work there!

But bar\waitstaff is EXPECTED to endure it...

And the "Go Work Somewhere Else" argument holds no water... Cause it's about safety... not choice...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 08:09 PM

I Australia, there are now TV ads with bar workers asking people not to smoke in their workplace...

Robin

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Traditionalist
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 11:57 AM

NO!" - not if you want it to Traditional.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 08:43 AM

Well, Bobjack, what with all kinds of cancers, heart disease, stroke, etc., it's kind of inevitable.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Bobjack
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 05:09 AM

Should my smoking club be folk free?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 05:04 AM

In one of the pubs that "Travelling Folk" use (The Windmill at Weald), a previous landlord was an ardent non-smoker, he had a notice on the wall that was along the lines of:

The problem with people smoking is that their habit has a waste product which gets into my lungs, hair, and clothes even though I don't partake of it. I have a habit too - beer drinking. This also has a waste product which I release in more private surroundings. How would you smokers like it, if when I had a pint, I pissed all over your hair and clothes - let alone in your noses and throats !

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Mountain Tyme
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 03:00 AM

Attempting to understand those between the lines meanings of this subject question fashions dilemmas anew.
Music (hearing & vibration), smoke (taste & aroma), food & drink (taste, aroma & texture) among other such pleasure sense things are endemic to the human condition.
Aroma, be it a new mown field, fall leaves burning, a parlour fireplace, a charcoal grill, a horse barn, a good cigar or favorite cigarette blend, all are pleasures even beyond that of taste. If the cretins don't get it, so be it, research or clam up
Music without an accompanying aroma of good Turkish, Virginia, Cuban or other leaf does to me seem quite uncultivated. We're on the Moon, wake up! To ban "smoking" from odd off chosen places as this thread suggests would as such open risk of lingering truly dark ages obnoxious odors, to mention just two, methane and the perfume of the overweight. I see here no contest of comparison. When in an eatery, were I to observe an obese at an adjoining table consuming Brussel sprouts and corn, I would myself quickly request quietly of the management to be reseated at some greater distance, thus at the completion of my meal I would also expect to enjoy a smoke of my choosing in serenity.
Would I, could I, request banishment of the overweight from the pain to my eyes, (you must know they are being taxed now in thoughtful places) me thinks a more substantial subject discussion (non music threads) than a ban on smoking in pleasure palaces.
Smoking in itself, is not just a simple thoughtless multiple pleasure for the user, it is also a defense from those unconscious that permeate the aroma of surround.
Having rolled my own choice of learned gourmet leaf beginning circa 1945 to the tune of 40 to sixty per day, have become somewhat of a connoisseur as a result. Likewise of coffee if one would allow the comparison.
I play and sing a gig most every night. To tune my voice I smoke very heavily before performing otherwise I would sound like Kendall (remember how great he sang back in the old days when he smoked?:)... so thus would never consider contracting with a venue of non discerning no smoke cretins.
I also stand on the premise if you care to know, as Savarin suggests, in hunger being the best sauce. Listen to your body, "You are what you eat"/smoke/drink!
In closing this offering of just another opinion, I would like to suggest the possibility that if "folk clubs" for lack of a better term, continue to impose smoking bans, a more eclectic music might take its place and with the discerning, smoke will return.
Can we expect next that Starbucks and the other high end sugar & caffeinee shoppees will outlaw their health risk poisons? Nope I don't think so!
Can you picture the old fiddlers who kept the tunes alive for centuries until tech allowed us to record... without their clay pipes? I can not! LOL   Mountain Tyme

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: HuwG
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 02:39 AM

I have my own gripe with smoking co-workers. I spent an unpleasant year at a company where the man using the desk next to mine was a smoker. He would turn up at nine o'clock, switch on his computer, and promptly go for a coffee and a smoke. At nine-thirty he would reappear, answer a couple of e-mails, open and discard his junk mail, and go for a smoke. At ten o'clock he would reappear, look at his list of tasks for the day, and go for a smoke. At ten-thirty he would reappear, send an e-mail to management suggesting his first task be reassigned to me or someone else, and go for a smoke. And so on.

I became very tired of having to open the emergency door, setting off all sorts of burglar alarms and annoying security, to tell him he was wanted urgently on the phone. I calculated that over the course of a working day of seven hours, he would smoke twenty cigarettes and do perhaps thirty-five or forty minutes of actual work. Meanwhile, I would do seven hours work, and find myself upbraided if I left my desk for the most urgent of personal reasons.

I am currently working odd shifts behind a bar, while unemployed, and have equal objections to other bar staff who assume that once they have lit a cigarette, they can ignore customers and all other duties until they regretfully grind out the stub in an ashtray. Non-smokers (such as myself) seem to be treated as an inferior class to the smokers, who appear to be entitled to time off to indulge their habit.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,BOAB
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 02:22 AM

It's certainly true about Vancouver's pubs, and Victoria pubs too.I'm berthed not too far from either, and when the law was applied, had to listen to all the usual "it can't be enforced " cries. Oh yes it can!!
My own local tended to ignore the guys who continued to light up. One day a customer revealed himself as an "inspector", and issued a warning. Three weeks later, guess what; caught breaking the law again. Result, a $3000 fine---and a brand-new totally enclosed room off the bar, complete with heating, for the convenience of the smokers.Nothing wrong with that---and one helluva boon to the staff and the MAJORITY of the customers. I'm a bit uneasy though; the gangster crew now esconced in the parliament buildings in Victoria have had a hilarious time since they arrived, destroying all that is decent. Regression to the fug-infested bars is still a possibility!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 12:29 AM

Non-smoking? Definitely. People can smoke outside the door and get some "fresh air" while they do it.

"It's the only drug that kills someone who's standing next to you
Yet it does it by the smallest of degrees
So it's not that plain and obvious like a gun or a highway crash
But it's a worldwide cause of sickness and disease.
And there's poison in the package
And a dollar for the Man
And a young girl standing next to me
With a Rothmans in her hand."

(Lyric from a song I wrote called "Poison in the Package". I truly detest cigarettes and the huge companies who push them for profit. They're drug dealers and killers. I think anyone who wants to smoke has a right to do it...but not next to me in an enclosed public space where I am forced to breathe their smoke even if I don't want to.)

- LH

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: dagenham doc
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 12:09 AM

In New Zealand at the end of this year you will not be allowed to smoke in pubs clubs or work places. As for you people who want to smoke IN folk clubs............ get a life....... but not mine.

Doc

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: dianavan
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 11:46 PM

Please explain "over reactionary." At least give an example. No smoking in Van has been happening for about 10 years. It doesn't seem to have hurt business. In fact, more people are now going out and enjoying music.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 11:25 PM

Now there's a shock.. Vancouver being over-reactionary...

Like that's never happened before...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: dianavan
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 11:03 PM

In Vancouver, you can't smoke in any of the pubs, restaurants or just about any public place (including the work place).

I'd say compromise. Only ban tobacco.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 10:50 PM

Well said Sooz! I too can confine my bad habits to my own home. I can go anywhere that's non smoking, folk club, pub, concert,restaurant or even if non smoking friends call round. I certainly wont stand outside in sub zero temps just to have a smoke...if I'm going to have a fag I want to enjoy it!
I played and sang for 25 years in smokey venues. I dont have asthma ..or any other breathing difficulties. I'm with DM on this one. I eat healthily, I cycle or walk everywhere that I can, and avoid using the car if it's possible.
I dont wake up every morning with hacking cough wondering where did I leave my fags last night. First thing I want is brekfast!! You can control the desire for a cigarette!
Maybe I'll be one of the lucky ones and live into my 90's and wont end up in a hospital wing. If I do, maybe it wont be the cigs that I smoked..just the polluted air that I breathed while out on my bike. Whatever happens..non smokers are in the majority right now.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 08:45 PM

I've been to sessions where the music was great, but there was so much smoke in the air I simply couldn't bear to go back. I can tolerate a little bit of smoke (i.e. a few smokers -- if I'm not too near them), but otherwise -- for me -- it's simply not worth the unpleasantness of enduring more than a little smoke, no matter how good the music is.

FWIW, I have a still-vivid memory from more than 10 years ago:
The break room where I used to work had a couple of tables set aside for smokers; these tables had special vents overhead to suck up the smoke produced so nonsmokers didn't have to breathe it.

One day I happened to be in the break room while the fellow responsible for maintenace & such was cleaning these filters. I looked at them; the ventilation slits had a slimy greenish-greyish-yellowish coating. "What's that?" I asked him.

"That's the deposits from the cigarette smoke," he said. "Smokers have this stuff coating the insides of their lungs."

I've often thought that an anti-smoking commercial along these lines might be most effective...

Cheers,

YY

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: greg stephens
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 06:19 PM

Maybe, just maybe, one day it will become socially unacceptable to drive huge bits of metal round the country belching out carcinogenic fumes and running people over, purely for your own amusemnt(attending folk clubs, for example).. And McGrath of Harlow will suggest that people really ought to stop doing that kind of thing if they are asked politely not to. But I'm not holding my breath.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: MAG
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 04:53 PM

new verse:

I was standing -- by the doorway --

Trying to get a breath of (fresh) air

With the smokers -- all complaining --

Letting in that cold air wasn't fair.

M.A. who is probably going to brave the smoke tomorrow night to do the open mike.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 08:30 AM

You would have to be rolling Golden Virgin - ia...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Strollin' Johnny
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 07:50 AM

You'd be hard-pressed to find any where I come from. Virgins I mean, there are plenty of thighs.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Catherine Jayne
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 07:22 AM

Virgins Thighs eh Skipjack!.....are there many of the around for them to become popular!!!???!!!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Skipjack K8
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 07:12 AM

Speaking as a musician, and a well respected former smoker. What concerns me the most is the quality of some floor smokers in our clubs. I find it incredible the number of people who really should be moaning and complaining instead of smoking and coughing. It is no wonder some clubs are so poorly attended. I wish folks would just smerk roll-ups. They smell nice, produce far less smoke, have no chemicals, put themselves out when left in ashtrays, and less are smoked because of time taken crafting them. And I think the virgins' thighs would be very popular. Yes, I am a former smoker, but still hang around smokers, as I associate the smell of fresh smoke with social ease and good times.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Crystal
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 06:21 AM

As a singer with small lungs I prefer non-smoking clubs!
I have on occasion had to get out of a club thick with smoke because I was literally suffocating. It happened at Towersy, and has happened at other clubs too.
Let me tell you it is a HORRIBLE feeling!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 06:04 AM

Or in jOhns case - Hamsters???

:D

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Micca
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 06:01 AM

actually, Steve, they are rabbits, its just from the distance they look like hares

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 05:59 AM

Bonny black ones, or Creggan white ones, jOhn?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 04:29 AM

anyway=too many moany people about nowadays, smoking is good for you, and puts hares on your chest.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 04:25 AM

blsar, blar., blar=if you make your flok club no smoking, how do yoo expect the somoking people to go then?
stupif!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 04:18 AM

Kevin, thanks for reminding me ... anyone old enough to remeber when they used to have signs on buses saying "no spitting"? Hard to imagine a time when people didn't think that it was disgusting and horrible to (skip to the next sentence if you're sensitive!) spit phlegm on the floor of a crowded bus. But it was so once, and eventually folks were disuaded from this dirty habit and TB declined. In ten years time, we'll wonder how we could have put up with public smoking, even if we're (private) smokers. Meanwhile, say not the struggle naught availeth.

Steve

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Joybell
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 05:57 PM

After years of being bullied by smokers at last I've found friends. I've had smoke blown in my face - just for daring to open a window. I've had countless customers tell me that I was being paid to put up with their smoke. I've been repeatedly told by smokers that it wasn't smoke that was causing the uncontrollable coughing - and then the asthma. I have been unable to go out to for lunch or to birthday parties with friends. I lost my job as an entertainer. My True-love was punched and kicked (although he made a good account of himself in the end) for daring to politely ask a smoker to please not smoke in a non-smoking area. What a sorry tale! I'll stop now. The changes are coming too late for me - hopefully they are coming in time for others. Joy

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Oaklet
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 02:41 PM

Oops, just saw Micca's post down below. I am a bit slow tonight - its me hormones. Sorry about that.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Sooz
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 02:18 PM

Mike and I are regular visitors to many non-smoking folkc clubs which are very successful. No Smoke Foke and Booit Straps in Chapeltown and our own in Gainsborough included. We don't go to any where smoking is allowed. What are we missing? A night of coughing and wheezing, stinking clothes, sore eyes....what a difficult decision to make.
Oh, and we keep our bad habits inside our home!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 01:19 PM

"No spitting - no smoking"

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 01:09 PM

I went to see Pete Seeger at Manchester's Free Trade Hall in 1964, and I was amazed to see "no-smoking" signs all over the place. Pete had the right idea.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Hand-Pulled Boy
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 01:05 PM

I'm addicted to 'Fresh Air'. In fact I can't get enough of it although I know it will kill me in the end. I also love real ale and the best place to find it is in pubs but why do they have to play that bloody awful music?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,KB
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 12:31 PM

Great minds obviously think alike!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Catherine Jayne
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 11:51 AM

Oaklet....have you seen Micca's post with the song he wrote??? Its to the tune "will the circle be unbroken"...here it is just incase you didn't see it!

Should our Folk club Be non Smoking?

Chorus
Should our Folk club Be non Smoking?
by and by Lord bye and bye
or should the blue smoke go on curling
to the sky, Lord, to the Sky

I was standing in the Folk club
Gazing into the thick fog
When I saw a smoker leaving
He was looking for the bog

And I heard the Singer mutter
"All this smoke is living hell
And performing has me coughing
And it makes my clothing smell"

So they put it to the members
Should no smoking be allowed
"Would we get few more singers
Would we pull a bigger crowd"

And the talked all round about it
Bans will frighten folks away
And without them it will fold up
And this club will've had its day

and some others said theres many
Who cant stand the awful smell
And are sick to death inhaling
your fags and Cigars as well

So our club is now no smoking
Theres no cigarettes at all
If you want to have a drag now
step outside behind the wall

© Micca Patterson

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Oaklet
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 11:43 AM

There's just one thing that's been bothering me.....

The thread title doesn't half fit the opening line of the song "The Circle".

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Jim Knowledge
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 10:35 AM

I `ad that well respected musician in my cab the other night. `e said is this a smoking cab? I said nah, I done the valves last Fursday!!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 10:00 AM

I agree with Mc Grath's comment about smoke from cigarettes just left to burn. I once moved an ashtray with a smouldering cigarette away from me to a place downwind of the smoker. He went spare - "I don't want all that smoke going into my eyes and face" he shouted. When I suggested that he might extinguish it (after all he'd only had about two puffs) his reaction made me find another table (I had been there first) for my own safety.

On a lighter note, I recently heard a northerner say "When I were a lad, we didn't have any of this passive smoking - yer 'ad to buy yer own fags".

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Oaklet
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 09:51 AM

Guset,

I amongst others, belong to the Global Alliance of Barely Audible Scratchy Violinists. As we speak, our executive is meeting with the director of the English Society of Unaccompanable Singers and The Barton-Without-Hyphens-based, String Players Against Intonation.

The idea is to jointly promote slightly-below-par music with mistakes in it, for the benefit and amusement of all except those who describe themselves as well-respected musicians and smokers.

Guset, You can thank your lucky stars that we have irreconcilable differences with both the Piss Poor Piping Federation and the Guild of Hestitant Instrumentalists, or we'd have have a mighty movement on our hands. (Note: must buy toilet paper).

Now go away.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: breezy
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 09:40 AM

it could cause this thread to start smoking!!!

its keeping out of the public gaze that bothers me as general public are not going to be sold
'folk' when they hear em in sessions, court or otherwise

there is no quality control.

Grade 5 at least

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 09:39 AM

I smoke after sex if I have had a good time but I dont always look!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Hugh Jampton
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 09:11 AM

"Well respected musician guest"
                              What in heavan`s name has your point got to do with cigarette smoking in folk clubs? Beats me!!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 08:53 AM

I was very obviously not talking about folk clubs

Sorry Greg. I didn't realise that. Perhaps the thread title "Should our folk club be non smoking?" got in the way of the real issue, "the Jolly Potters on Hartshill"...

I think one of us has lost the plot somewhere;-)

On a more serious note. While I agree, and always have, that smokers do need to go somewhere I would dispute that "it's not fair for non-smokers to go into places where people do go to smoke". With that attitude we would still have men only and whites only clubs. It is only by the efforts of the people who have been 'unfair' that we have dragged some institutions out of the Victorian era! But, hey, lets not hijack the thread which is about smoking in folk clubs after all.

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Oaklet
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 07:19 AM

Ah ha! But I respect you most of all, luminary guset, for your smoking skills and humility. Let's start a pressure group to keep substandard performances and inexperienced performers away from our folk clubs.

Three cheers for guset!!!

Hip Hip...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 06:56 AM

Speaking as a smoker, and a well respected musician. What concerns me the most is the quality of some floor singers in our clubs. I find it incredible the number of people who really should be listening and learning instead of playing and singing. It is no wonder some clubs are so poorly attended.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 06:44 AM

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 11:20 PM

"Would it be possible to have the occasional night where smoking isn't allowed?"

Why not just make 'em ALL non-smoking nights? Let US smokers go the hell outside where we belong!

(I'm VERY serious here)

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 10:32 PM

Damn Micca,

haven't looked at this thread before - was going to do a song - now you've already done it!

It goes into my "carry around" song book!

Robin

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: JennieG
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 10:16 PM

Would it be possible to have the occasional night where smoking isn't allowed? Then people could decide if they wanted that more frequently. I know there are some artists who will only perform in non-smoking venues.
Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 08:50 PM

Not gonna happen MGoH... too much $$ to be made of selling tobacco for smoking

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 07:35 PM

How about a compromise? Just ban tobacco smoking...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Joybell
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 06:53 PM

Nothing I can add. It's all been said. Briefly though. I've breathed second-hand smoke all my working life. I've been tolerant and good natured about the escalating effects it has had on me as I got older. If I breathe any smoke at all now I experience attacks of life-threatening asthma. There is no doubt that second-hand smoke brought me to this point. Breathing is not something about which we have any choice. Smoking or not smoking around other people is. Joy

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: greg stephens
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 06:38 PM

Come off it, dave the Gnome. I didnt say people go to folk clubs to smoke. I specifically agreed that folk clubs should become no-smoking. I just said it's not fair for non-smokers to go into places where people do go to smoke, and tell them not to. I was very obviously not talking about folk clubs, where people go to listen to singing,primarily. I was referring to the Jolly Potters on Hartshill, where people sit in the bar and smoke and drink. That's what people do there. And I dont intend to spend my energy trying to force them to stop, however bad it is for them. They can decide in their own good time.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 06:29 PM

Never drive a car in a crowded room....that's just plain dangerous.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 06:22 PM

" John had a bout with throat cancer in 1995"

Fair nuff that...

See... learn something new everyday....

:-)

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: kendall
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 06:16 PM

Comparing smoking in a crowded room to driving a car is really over the top.
Logic and addiction will never agree.
75% of us don't smoke, 25% do you can handle the math.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 06:15 PM

To my knowledge John Prine smokes EVERYWHERE he plays.

But no one in the audience is allowed...."


John had a bout with throat cancer in 1995, a consequence of smoking, of course, and has not smoked since.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: John Routledge
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 06:09 PM

Exactlt DtG

If I opened a Smoking Club in the back room of a pub I wouldn't be too happy if a quarter of the members started playing instruments and singing :0)

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 05:24 PM

"I have never heard of a guest artist insisting that the club permits smoking"

To my knowledge John Prine smokes EVERYWHERE he plays.

But no one in the audience is allowed....

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Peter from Essex
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 05:09 PM

I have never heard of a guest artist insisting that the club permits smoking. Quite a few insist on non-smoking. Most members of the public will expect anything in concert format to be non-smoking and won't have a problem with a smoking ban.

The OP was about clubs not bar sessions. If you are in the bar then its down to the landlord, end of story.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 05:03 PM

I have already said that I think that arguments about car polution or the bigger issues are spurious here so I will not repeat myself.

As to the points raised about me trying and loosing, fair enough. I will be able to go to smoke free pubs and clubs eventialy, even in the backwaters of Salford! So it is only a temporary set back. I also agree wholeheartedly that smokers do need a place to go. Agreed. No dispute at all.

Nor do I dispute that you can't in all fairness go to a place where people go to smoke and demand they make the place non-smoking. I do however dispute that a folk club is "a place where people go to smoke". It isn't! A folk club is place to go to play and/or listen to folk music! For a folk musician to justify that people with breathing difficulties should be denied the right to attend ANY folk club, to my mind at least, completely beggars belief!

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Micca
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 05:01 PM

Should our Folk club Be non Smoking?

Chorus
Should our Folk club Be non Smoking?
by and by Lord bye and bye
or should the blue smoke go on curling
to the sky, Lord, to the Sky

I was standing in the Folk club
Gazing into the thick fog
When I saw a smoker leaving
He was looking for the bog

And I heard the Singer mutter
"All this smoke is living hell
And performing has me coughing
And it makes my clothing smell"

So they put it to the members
Should no smoking be allowed
"Would we get few more singers
Would we pull a bigger crowd"

And the talked all round about it
Bans will frighten folks away
And without them it will fold up
And this club will've had its day

and some others said theres many
Who cant stand the awful smell
And are sick to death inhaling
your fags and Cigars as well

So our club is now no smoking
Theres no cigarettes at all
If you want to have a drag now
step outside behind the wall

© Micca Patterson

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 04:50 PM

Nobody is addicted to smoking. The smoking itself is a ritual, not an addiction. The addiction is to nicotine.

Smoking is a convenient way to get the nicotine, but even a single person smoking in a room is forcing everyone else to breathe in the smoke, whether they want to or not. If anybody present would rather you didn't smoke, elementary courtesy requires that you don't smoke in the room.

What really does get up my nose, literally, is when someone puts down a fag to smoulder in an ash-tray, for example while they play a tune. That smells absolutely foul. When they are actually inhaling I don't mind it - it's probably not too good for you, but I reckon it's had the worst stuff filtered out in the smokers lungs, and it certainly doesn't smell as bad as in the ash-tray. But there are always more people in the room who would rather people didn't smoke, and that should settle things.

But there are other ways to get the nicotine, which don't involve imposing on other people in that way. Including the fine old traditional method of snuff. I have no doubt that as smoking bans become more and more common, snuff is going to make a come back.

Mind, you do get some funny looks when you take snuff in a public place...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clark
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 04:38 PM

Having a smoking section in a pub makes about as much sense as having a peeing section in a swimming pool. It's all or nothing and I (as a flute player) vote for nothing. I have to admit that the crac I get from playing in our occasionally smoky pub keeps me there... but only a couple times a month.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 04:25 PM

Heh... funny NSer...

But going non-smoking didn't hurt the subways... it didn't hurt the movie theatres.... it didn't hurt the airlines... Didn't hurt Greyhound Buslines... or Via-rail... or any of the other places smokers used to say they "had" to smoke in....

Why should it hurt restaurants???

(pubs/bars MIGHT be another matter... some say that most people who frequent such places smoke... I donno... I never counted 'em...)

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Non Smoker
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 04:18 PM

So Maine became a non smoking in public places place, but the restaurants didn't suffer?

Maybe because their biggest addiction and cause of heart disease is their overeating?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 04:14 PM

Hey... don't go reading YOUR adjenda into MY posts...

My post about me not being an addict is NOT a 'classic example'... it's the truth... -I- chose when and where I smoke... If I'm in someones house (most likely even if they smoke as well) I most often do not smoke... If I'm in a pub where smoking is allowed, having a few pints with mates over a few games of darts, I likely WILL smoke... I'n MY car or anyone elses, I don't smoke... Out for a walk, on a cold clear winters night, I will smoke...

But -MY- smoking is NOT the issue here... and how it got to be is beyond me...

DtG... so you lobbied and lost... It happens... Read what I said above about asking... sometimes the answer is gonna be NO... Life sucks... get a helemt... But you did all that you could do eh... You tried... it just so happens that you failed... you could try again and again and again util you 'get your way' or you could suck it up like an adult and go somewhere else... find something else to do....

That's an issue for your own consience... And I would NOT presume to offer advice on matters of consience... Except to say you gotta do what you think is right...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

"she always asserted that links between smoking and cancer, heart problems, respiratory deseases etc had never been proven. I'm sure she'd have still been saying this, if she hadn't died some years ago - of cancer."

Some experts will say she was right... some will say she wasn't... The trick I guess lays in proving that she wouldn't have died of cancer if she hadn'ta smoked... a hard case to make... I've known smokers who've lived to be a million... and I've know heath-junkies who've dropped dead at 28....

Sure... common sense would probably say that sucking lungfulls of smoke is probably really bad for you... But since when has common sense had anything to do with science? Look at the 'Meat Puppets' duped by the "common sense" of the Atkins Diet?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

"My honest advice to a folk club is absolutely don't allow smoking"

Here here... Like I keep asking and no one will answer... Are you going for the music or to smoke?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: greg stephens
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 02:48 PM

Dave the Gnome
I know what you mean, Dave. It's a genuine problem. We do disagree on this one(though I must point out that I came down firmly on the side of making folk clubs non-smoking in my post earlier). I really think, though, you can't in all fairness go to a place where people go to smoke and demand they make the place non-smoking.
   It's not only smoke that creates this sort o problem. I socialise, and play music a lot, with a number of Muslim firends. Some of them (but by no means all!) don't drink. In addition, some(but by no means all) of those who dont drink actively disapprove of other people drinking, and won't go into licensed premises. So all sorts of compromises and discussions have to take place to create the ideal circumstances yo make music socially, or to record. And then there is the fact that my partner is a fiddler, and also a woman. And some people dont much like women musicians, or women going out much anywhere.
   And never mind the music. What about the arguments about dancing...whether you do it at all, and if so whether you do it with members of the opposite sex. Life is a mine-field.
    But what reeeeeeally pisses me off is people who lecture smokers about their foul emissions which kill people, but drive cars themselves. Smoky rooms I can just about to;lerate, but rampant hypocrisy is just niggling in an all-pervasive way.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: stevethesqueeze
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 07:17 AM

The trouble with smoking is that ones smoke affects others nearby. Its impossible to smoke in public wothout affecting others. Drinking doesnt affect others in the same way and neither does injecting heroin. Its a kind of collateral damage........

I know that in ireland smoking in pubs will be outlawed within a few weeks and it will be interesting to see what happens there. Within a few short years smoking in poiblic will be a thing of the past and a good thing too.

But I have to say one reason I dont play in pubs anymore is the smoke. Someone elses problem isnt going to kill me by default.

stevethesqueeze

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 06:36 AM

Greg: if it's a smoking pub, you can choose for yourself whether to go in or not.

Clinton: Greg S... well said chum!

Dave the Gnome (cookieless as guest 05:41) : I have been forced out.

Clinton: Then lobby to change it!

It's funny you should say that Clinton. I did try. You will never guess what they said...

if it's a smoking pub, you can choose for yourself whether to go in or not.

In the words of Harvey Andrews, above Clinton, you just gave us a classic example!!

;-)

DtG

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 06:31 AM

Yes it can sometimes be quite amusing the way that some smokers will defend their addiction habbit. I knew a lady who was into every sort of natural health food and took notice of every health scare. I'm sure that if she'd seen somewhere that drinking product with water in them was bad for you, she'd have quite happily died of thirst. She wouldn't use washing-up liquid, eat anything with an E number in it and was virtually vegan. Although she was so obsessed with health dangers, she virtually chain-smoked. When challenged about this, she always asserted that links between smoking and cancer, heart problems, respiratory deseases etc had never been proven. I'm sure she'd have still been saying this, if she hadn't died some years ago - of cancer.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: kendall
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 06:08 AM

Smokers DO have the right to smoke, but not in public.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Terry K
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 05:52 AM

Great points Kendall, but I fear you will not convince them. It's because smokers are infected by the bone-headedly stupid gene - they really do believe they have a "right" to smoke. In the same way that equally bone-headedly stupid people believe they have a "right" to smack their children. But that's another issue.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: harvey andrews
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 05:30 AM

"I'm not an addict... (You CAN smoke and not be addicted... anyone who says differently is full of it!) cause I can go places and do things and NOT smoke... and be quite happy about it... To me it's a matter of choice... when and where I smoke... "

"addicts will do anything, say anything, use any excuse, any blackmail, any threat, any specious arguement they can find to justify their craving and their need to satisfy it in public"

Clinton, you just gave us a classic example!!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: kendall
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 05:13 AM

Like I said, it's a matter of ratio. Most people don't smoke, so why cater to those who do? If you were to open a new business, would you try to attract 25% of the population, or 75%? It's a no brainer.
There is no escaping this simple fact- I must breathe, you do not have to smoke.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 05:07 AM

Vectis, I too would like all folk clubs to be smoke-free, but in the real world thats's not always practical. Incidently, the room where you hold your club may be non-smoking, but the bar where I had to queue to buy my beer was one of the smokiest places I've been in - so I still went home smelling like a bonfire.

I do a lot of my singing in pub bars, where although I'm often a frequent visitor, I'm not one of "the regulars" - I therefore have to put up with their preferences. How many pubs would Travelling Folk find to sing in, if they decided to institute a non-smoking policy ? - how many of their regulars (audience as well as performers) would still come ?   Even more important how many more of those pubs would go the way of The Star and The Kings Arms at Brasted, The Royal Oak at Shoreham, The Addlestone Tavern etc., if pubs were forced to become no-smoking ?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: kendall
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 05:00 AM

On January 1, all pubs in Maine went non smoking. Restaurants have been non smoking for a few years. So far, they are all still in business.
Seems to me it's a matter of ratio. Non smokers outnumber smokers three to one. Anyone who believes in democracy should have no problem going along.
A final point; if you are addicted to nicotine, it's YOUR problem and you have no right to make it mine.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Bo Vandenberg
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 04:29 AM

I sympathize with smokers but care about _everyone's_ health more.

It really boils down to 'Breathing Is Not Negotiable.

To smokers:

Why do you want to harm the lungs and health of those close to you?

Why do you think that your addiction to smoking supersedes your compatriots expectation of the cleanest possible air?

If I put jars of foul smelling pond scum on all the tables I sat at, occasionally dosing the room with it for good measure, would you think me rude? What if I just liked breathing the fumes?


My honest advice to a folk club is absolutely don't allow smoking, you will keep your members longer, they'll sing better, and they will be more happy.

Especially if smoking is still allowed in your region, you might well have a more loyal following as a haven for non smokers. Smokers must realize that the days of indoor smoking are numbered they will not stay away if they want to sing. If you want to attract older performers, I'd advertise 'smoke free' wherever possible. The folk club near me went smoke free (City Bylaw) and it is much better. Smokers go out between sets or sometimes before their turn.

Its not a small issue, as some of the above messages will attest.


S

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Hand-Pulled Boy
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 11:27 PM

After a night singing my little heart out in a smokey pub I throw up and spew green and yellow phlem all over the wife's new wilton and usually shit myself before I reach the bog plus my testicals ache like a football's been booted into them. I think it's stopped me making babies and the wife's getting suspicious when I douse myself in petrol to get rid of the stale 'shag' fumes on me parka. Having said that some of my best friends smoke and want me to die at the same time as them. How thoughtful.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 05:46 PM

"I have been forced out."

Then lobby to change it!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 05:41 PM

Sorry, Greg. Rubbish. if it's a smoking pub, you can choose for yourself whether to go in or not doesn't wash with me. I do not choose to stay out of my own folk club. I have been forced out. It is a club I have helped to run for over 25 years but my nasal passages are now sensitive to the extent that I can no longer tolerate smoke.

Am I asking too much that the 25% of smokers in our club (I think it is less actualy) give us non smokers a break? Do you think that they would do a deal where we had 3 nights out of 4 non-smoking? Would they hell. I'ts their right to smoke so why should they have the terrible inconvenience of moving 5 yards into another room to help me enjoy my night?

And there is NO pub in walking distance where I can get away from it, let alone a folk club.

Yes - it's a realy good choice I have isn't it? Have terrible health problems or never go out...

Cheers.

DtG

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Peter Woodruff
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 05:25 PM

I am a smoker. I occasionally smoke cigars. I used to smoke a pipe and I regularly smoke cigarettes and salmon. I do not wish this habit on anyone so I am perfectly happy not to inflict my pleasures on someone else in the close quarters of a pub or folkclub...I just step outside to smoke my salmon. Ha ha ha.

Peter

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 05:03 PM

You may THINK you are Don... but don't kid yerself... yer sh!t stinks... just like everyone else....

But you are right in that...

"Many, many times I've seen people pull out a cigarette... only to be totally ignored as the clouds of smoke began to billow"

Is a very rude thing to do... I guess it's a matter of where... if it's someones home say... (say yours) and you ask me not to smoke... I'd be an a$$ to light up anyway... and it'd be your right to toss me out on my ear....

But in an "open to the public" space (A pub... or a club say), where smoking is permitted, all one can do is ask... And in asking, one of the possible answers is NO... you must be prepared for that... If you don't like it, the onus is on you to go... and to tell the 'owner' of that space why you are leaving and taking you $$ with you...   He'll either care or not.... depending on his goals as a business man...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: MAG
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 04:59 PM

(Rant.)
- Let's ask our dear friend Rick.

- Utah Philips has publicly stated that smoking is what damaged his heart

- the lately late Fred Holstein smoked like a chimney. At Holstein's once he was puffing away on stage and rather defiantly announced he could smoke becasue it was his place. One audience member (guess who) defiantly shouted "It's our air!" He once ran that "Smoking improves my voice" sppiel on me, and I stared him down. Yes, he looked away first.

- I cannot go to the local open mike because of the smoke. The place never heard of ventilation, but my band will only play no-smoking venues because the fiddler can't take the smoke.

Just LOOK at what smoking has cost us in the folk community.


M.A., who really meant to practice more on this rare extra day off, and who once snatched a ciggie out of the mouth of a kid on a bus who smirkingly lit up in her face (non-smoking bus)

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Bill Kennedy
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 04:41 PM

Don't know if any of you have, or remember, Fintan Vallely's 'Timber,
Concert Flute Tutor' from 1986, but he makes some statements about smoke and drink that are quite effective in thier non-judgemental, understated way. As to smoking, (under a great photo of a nun in habit with a fag hanging off her lip like an auto mechanic working on an engine, and all of us who smoke or have smoked can feel the smoke against our cheek and curling into our left eye. Some jobs almost required the cig for proper completion) he says:

SMOKING AND FLUTE PLAYING

"If you play music and smoke, then you might well be in a worse state than those who simply smoke, for you're going to find yourself in smoky atmosphere more often. If you play the flute it's worse again. There are of course no statistics available since flute players are a voiceless minority.
    Cigarettes seem to be handy for those boring interludes between tunes when you either don't know the other players, or have nothing to say to them. They also help cloud the atmosphere to enhance the onset of developing divil-me-caredness. But it must be presumed that smoking is particularly dangerous to flute players: We (in Ireland) seem to be condemned to do most of our playing in sealed beauty-board boxes filled with smoke. We (flute players) are the only people in the session environment taxing our lungs to the same extent as long-distance runners.
But while runners do their thing in the fresh air, we are filling every available scrap of our distended lung-tissues with smoke deposits. Meanwhile, the non-flute playing classes are happily shallow-breathing in as little as perhaps a third of it what we do. Presumably without ever lighting a cigarette we could already be shortening our lives dramatically?"

just a simple statement of the facts, and probably a nudge to flute players to give up smoking since they get enough by just breathing, not a lecture or sermon, and no call to action. well stated, Fintan!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 04:33 PM

Greg, I think I'm going to stand by what I wrote. Many, many times I've seen people pull out a cigarette and start to light up when someone nearby, often the host, says, "I would prefer you didn't smoke in here," or "If you want to smoke, would you mind stepping outside?" only to be totally ignored as the clouds of smoke began to billow.

You will note that what I said above was "anyone who inflicts his or her second-hand smoke on someone else is a rude, inconsiderate slob." I didn't say all smokers are rude inconsiderate slobs. I do have a number of friends who smoke, and knowing how my wife and I feel about smelling up our apartment with tobacco smoke, when they want to smoke, they step outside. They are not inflicting their second-hand smoke on us and are thereby not rude, inconsiderate slobs. Friend Bob (Deckman) Nelson (who also used to smoke, but has quit) has the same no smoking policy at his house, and so do the vast majority of my non-smoking friends and acquaintances.

And Clinton: I hate to be the one to break it to you, but I am Holier Than Thou. Try to bear up, eh?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: vectis
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 04:05 PM

My club went partially non-smoking 10 years ago and fully non-smoking as soon as we realised that even one smoker in the room even under the extractor fan stunk the whole club out.
We have gained audience and singers steadily ever since. Smokers can stand in the bar or lobby and puff away to their hearts content and don't need to miss much of the show to do so.
We have had some people who couldn't stand the loss of nicotine and stopped coming but very few.
I used to go out for a ciggy but got fed up missing bits of every club night, one of the reasons I gave up.
Go non-smoking if it won't cut the audience too drastically. Alternatively, set up a smokers area next to an open window or fan for a few months and then declare it non-smoking once people are partly resigned to the inevitability of it happening.
Good luck

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: greg stephens
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 03:49 PM

Don
I'm not sure if your use of the words inflict, rude and inconsiderate are entirely fair here. I'm going to pop out to the "Jolly Potters" in a minute for a pint or two of Joule's. i will probably go into the first little snug bar on the right. There will probably be people in there before me, who may be smokeking. They will not be "inflicting" anything on me, neither will they be being rude or inconsiderate. On the other hand, it would be incredibly rude and inconsiderate of me to walk in and inflict myself on them by telling them not to smoke, just because I dont want them to. I take people, and pubs as I find them, generally speaking. If they walk into my house, I'll ask them not to smoke. If I walk into a pub, I will follow the customs of the pub.Those who smoke,smoke, and those who don't, don't.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 03:45 PM

The whole planet should be declared a -No 'Holier Than Thou'- zone first...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 03:34 PM

The whole planet should be declared non-smoking. And this from a guy who smoked like a chimney for thirty years.

Any singer who smokes is missing a few brain cells. If you played a clarinet, would you blow hot smoke through your instrument thirty or forty times a day? Pretty idiotic, eh? And a clarinet can take it a whole lot better that your larynx can (besides, clarinets rarely get throat or lung cancer).

And on top of this, anyone who inflicts his or her second-hand smoke on someone else is a rude, inconsiderate slob. I was a rude, inconsiderate slob for decades, but one bright and shiny day twenty-six years ago, I grew another brain cell and quit. And you know what? My singing voice got better and stronger right away. And I no longer start each day by sitting on the side of my bed for fifteen minutes trying to cough up a lung (then reaching for a cigarette when the spasm subsides).

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 03:01 PM

Greg S...

well said chum!

Now... -I'm- a smoker... But maybe it's that I'm not an addict... (You CAN smoke and not be addicted... anyone who says differently is full of it!) cause I can go places and do things and NOT smoke... and be quite happy about it... To me it's a matter of choice... when and where I smoke... I guess it's not like that for every one... and for those who are 'compelled' I feel sorry...

But as Greg said... the non-puffers are winning... the pendulum has swung to thier side, and it's gonna go further before it comes back... so smokers... be ready...

And I gotta ask again... do you go out to the club to play music or to smoke???

The only place it bugs me is when I drive past a 'legion hall'... these are all non-smoking around here now, and it breaks the heart... to see the clusters of sad looking little old dudes who fought and killed and died and suffered to keep this country free, huddled around like sheep, with thier backs to the wind, having to smoke outside in the dead of winter... Please... let these dudes, who have served above and beyond enjoy a ciggie and a half draft in the warm......

Does it really matter that much?

Sorry... that's way off topic....

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 03:01 PM

The club I help run went non-smoking about ten years ago and had a big upsurge in attendance. Many people were staying away because of the smoke. After the change, the smokers kept coming and now adjourn to the parking lot during the breaks.

However, there are fewer and fewer smokers in the parking lot every year. Several have died from cancer and heart disease and more and more are quitting every year. I'm yet to hear any ex-smoker say they've regretted quitting.

So many singers have commented on how much they appreciate the non-smoking atmosphere.

I've never smoked myself, but now a night at the club means I don't come home stinking like I do and I feel a whole lot better the next day.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Frank Hamilton
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 02:46 PM

I have a great deal of sympathy for smokers. They are hooked on the most potent of all drugs, the habit that's harder to break than cocaine or heroin.

The problem is that tobacco smoke contains all kinds of harmful chemicals that kill not only the smoker but harm everyone within their cloud.

If you can smell it, it can hurt you.

The problem is that those addicted can't understand those who choose not to smoke. They do it so they figure it's their right to continue though it hurts others. It's not a malevolent thing, it's an addictive behavior which is not easy to break. So being "high and mighty" about it and saying "just say no" won't help the situation. But if more clubs were more non-smoking, then maybe the smokers would take the tough road and quit. They would be doing themselves a great service and to everyone who doesn't smoke around them.

There are plenty of ex-drug users who state that they really felt good being high. But the price paid is too dear.

It's tough to break a pernicious habit but worth the effort but I personally applaud the courage that it takes to do it. Alcohol and tobacco addiction require great strength to break. I'm grateful for those who have the courage to do it.

Frank

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: greg stephens
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 02:43 PM

I'm a non-smoker, but I'm on dean meister's side. the anti-smokers here are trying to make out that smoking in pubs or clubs is some sort of assault on people. Rubbish. if it's a smoking pub, you can choose for yourself whether to go in or not. we're all big girls and boys. It would be an assault if a smoker barges into a non-smoking place and starts lighting up, but we're not discussing that here.
    If you're running a club, it's a real dilemma. Go from smoking to non-smoking, and you drive away some of your regulars, but you'll get some new ones in return. You've got to guess what's going to be best.
    My personal opinion is, if it's a folk club(semi-formal, some of the time, guest act you sit and listen to). go non-smoking. Committed smokers can always slip out for a minute, that won't affet things.
   If it's session: stay liberal. It seriously spoils a good session developing if half the players keep popping out for a cigarette. I was involved in a session in a pub that turned the session room into the non-smoking bit. We soon folded the session because it never flowed after the change: the constant turnover of personnel through the evening completely wrecked the music.
    Difficult decisions: I'll just repeat, to any smokers, I do not consider you are being evil and assaulting me if you are smoking in your pub and I walk up to you. It is my decision if I come in. Please continue with what you are doing( though I have to say, general opinion is that it's bad for you). Those who dont want to go to smoky places, fine, we can all vote with our feet. Non-smkers are winning this one anyway,sorry puffers but you're going to end up outside everywhere soon. But it wont be me that kicked you out.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Strollin' Johnny
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 12:59 PM

I'm with Harvey.

If I play a smoking club (and I do) my breathing (and therefore my singing) suffers, when I get home my clothes stink like crap, and the next day I spend half my time coughing like some broken-down tinker's mare. And I'm neither a bronchitis sufferer nor an asthmatic, so it goes to prove what a filthy, antisocial addiction smoking is.

There are many other top-name artists as well as Harvey who only play at non-smoking venues, and their attendances don't seem to suffer.

If these guys who smoke want to poison themselves, fine. Just don't poison me.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: harvey andrews
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 12:35 PM

There's no way smoking and singing go together. As the performer I'm breathing more deeply than anyone else in the room. I'm also asthmatic and cigar smoke in particular will close my chest and end my performance.All my gigs are non-smokers now, folk clubs included and my audience numbers have not declined at all. I know many people who would never come to see me in a smoking environment. As to the smoking in pubs question, countries where a ban is in place report increased trade after a settling down period.Pubs are full of smokers because that's where they can smoke!
It is an addiction after all and addicts will do anything, say anything, use any excuse, any blackmail, any threat, any specious arguement they can find to justify their craving and their need to satisfy it in public.(see some of above postings).
If necessary they can always get together for their own pleasure. One of the worst things brewery chains did was take away the old smoking rooms in pubs and go open plan.
We need to either ban it completely or separate it to the satisfaction of both parties.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,KB
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 12:24 PM

(thought I posted this earlier, but it seems to not have got there)
My mum is allergic to smoke. Even one single smoker in the room can mean she has sinus pain for days afterwards. So the only chance she has to go to a folk club is if there is one nearby that is non-smoking. Our local FC is nonsmoking, and we are really grateful for that. Otherwise she'd have to stay at home.
A friend is asthmatic, and finds that smokey environments affect her voice so badly that she cannot rely on it - hence she doesn't sing. That is a real loss because she has a really lovely quality voice.
I am not allergic or asthmatic, but still find smoke affects my voice - so my preference is to go to non-smoking venues.
These are solid reasons for being very glad that there are nonsmoking clubs available, not touchy-feely or trying to spoil anyone's smoking fun.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: The DeanMeister
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 12:02 PM

Points taken, chaps. Just felt the need, as you do. Hope y'all don't mind. I don't often express my thoughts in such a way. I enjoyed it. Not really relevant to this thread, I appreciate. But it just seemed to touch a nerve. Think I'll go have a Horlicks now. Oh, and a cig. In my castle.

Toodlepip. Pete.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 11:58 AM

Do you go to smoke or to play music?

Cause I look at it this way... I can smoke whenever I want to... it's not always I can play music with other people...

I know I prefer non-smoking gigs... I've never been to a 'folk club' where you could amoke inside...

But then again, I won't smoke in my own car or house either...

why anyone would is beyond me... do some people LIKE to stink?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 11:53 AM

Peat [deanmister]-Go to Hull Folk Club, Chanterlands Ave, [opposite Micks house], we all smoke there, when the weather gets warmer you could go on your cycle, and have a few drinks as well.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Hugh Jampton
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 11:53 AM

What a dilemma our UK governments have created over many years.

Seriously discourage smoking and suffer enormous loss of revenue from tobacco duty.

Let the good times roll, collect the duty and pay enormous health care bills.

What are we like??

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Bobjack
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 11:49 AM

Last week I played at a small session that comprised 4 guitarists, 2 singers and 1 smallpiper. We all smoke. It would have been a bloody short session if the pub was touchy feely non smoking!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 11:48 AM

Was it Billy Connely that said having a smoking area in a non-smoking establisment is a bit like having a pissing area in a public swimming pool?

:D

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 11:48 AM

Yes...

But you have to live with the consequences...

Whatever they may be...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 11:43 AM

The three bars here on the Open University campus are not non-smoking (about the only places that aren't), but they have very good air filters on the ceilings which (a) pull the smoke upwards and (b) take it out of the air. Now, if you can get soem of these, and designate a suitable art of the room a smoking area, you've mostly solved the problem. How much it all costs, I don't know ...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 11:29 AM

I find it a little incongrous that many people (Not singling you out here DM, honest, loads do it!) begin to discuss the 'important issues' when discussing smoking bans. Yes, there are many, many more important things to worry about. Most of them are so important that we cannot do anything about them ourselves. Yet, when faced with the one thing we can do something about - people will not do it!

It's like saying "I cannot do anything about global polution so I will continue to polute the atmosphere around me". It is a level of reasoning beyond my limited abilities I'm afraid...;-)

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 11:29 AM

Deanmeister (11:08) Yes, much more relevant.

And in answer to your previous comment, "Irrelevant???? To who?"
The Kyoto agreement is irrelevant to this discussion. I happen to agree with the position you implied on that, but it has nothing to do with this discussion.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Bobjack
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 11:16 AM

Only 57!! Jeez, I thought you were much older!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: The DeanMeister
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 11:08 AM

Sorry to ambush the thread. It's provided a useful forum to get a few things off my chest (no pun intended!)

To answer the original question, I'm not against no smoking clubs, lets face it, we'll probably all be non-smokers before long. But currently, I wouldn't attend one. Guest, if you're starting a club, you must surely have support and a fair idea of who's likely to turn up and play? If a good proportion smoke, then a ban will kill it stone dead. If they don't, then by all means go for it and long may your club live.

Is that a bit more relevant?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: The DeanMeister
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:59 AM

IRRELEVANT???? TO WHO?

Puff the magic dragon, lived by the sea....thanks for the advice, SL.... feeling better already.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Sir Roger de Beverley
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:56 AM

I have never smoked in my life (and I'm 57)and yet nearly every week I sit in a pub next to smokers like the the Deanmeister, Ossonflags, Les & Maggie etc. It doesn't worry me. I happily set the pretty low risk from the secondhand smoke against the pleasure I get from playing and listening to other players - life without music, now that would be fatal.

R

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Sttaw Legend
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:52 AM

Deano, Go and have a fag and strum a tune to calm your nerves, but dont drop ash on your guitar.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: kendall
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:52 AM

The Kyoto treaty at which our half wit president walked out is irrelevent here. Dean Miester, it's not the non smoking policy that keeps you from enjoying that music, no, it's your own addiction. Face it.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SMOKERS RIGHTS.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:51 AM

Both Linda and I frequently drink at JD Wetherspoon pubs. Although these do have non-smoking areas, the air-conditioning is usually good enough to make it quite acceptable to sit in other parts of their pubs.

My worries about an outright ban on smoking in pubs is that we will lose even more pubs as a result. The statistics above (25% smokers, 75% non-smokers) are based on the population as a whole. I think that if you excluded the many people who very rarely go to pubs, that you would would find that the proportions would change to much nearer 50/50. If you then weighted the result by the value of pub trade that the smoking/non-smoking groups provided, I think the smokers would probably provide the higher figure. In the area around me, we have lost a high percentage of pubs in the last 10 years - I can think of at least a dozen within about a five mile radius. I'm sure that we would lose at least that number again if a smoking ban became law.

I'm a non-smoker (well I used to enjoy the odd joint when I was younger) and will not stay in an exessively smoky atmosphere. I don't let anyone smoke in my car, and on one occasion turned down a car bargain because the owner had smoked. There is a low level of smoke which I find tolerable, and provided that this is not exceeded I am quite happy.

I also feel that if the majority of a pub's regular clientele are smokers, then it's a bit unreasonable for a relative stranger to expect them to to change to suit him. After all there are plenty of pubs where loud pop music, lack of decent beer, or just the general decor or atmosphere would prevent me from drinking - why should I single out smoke as anything different. I'm actually rather glad that there's a place for people who like those pubs, as it keeps them from trying to change the pubs which I like.

Folk clubs are perhaps a slightly different matter, but there are quite a few performers who I can think of who are smokers. How many performers would turn down a well-paid gig because the premises weren't non-smoking ? Mind you you, when Joe Stead was younger, he hated people smoking in the front row and would often drop their cigarettes into their drinks.

Finally as was proved the other month at the White Horse, Hertford, there can be other reasons for a smoky room beside tobacco !

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Oaklet
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:51 AM

De-Mister, you haven't touched on holiday homes or the deregulation of the buses, yet. [{*!*}] I'll tell you what gets right up my nose. Them bloody Cybermen all over the place, that's what.

And sterilised milk. I hate that stuff.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: The DeanMeister
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:50 AM

Oh, and what did the Romans ever do for us...? lol

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: The DeanMeister
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:43 AM

I know, Breezy. I'm just a little fed up with a few things at the minute. Like, did anybody see Michael Buerk's follow up documentary last weekend on Ethiopia? I cried all the way through it. But 2 days later George DUBBYA announces he's gonna spend BILLIONS of dollars on the space programme, putting man on the moon, colonising Mars etc. when we can't even sort all our crap out down here. We send boys to get shot at without sufficient equipment, doctors to fix them without sufficient medical supplies, and millions of people are starving to death. But the space programme is apparently more important to the greatest nation on earth?

Frankly, I think having a fag at the back of the bloody folk club is an inconsequential issue. I sit in a traffic jam every morning caused by mothers dropping their children at school, burning fossil fuel, choking the atmosphere, when they only live half a mile away. These are the same people who whinge about a puff of smoke in their direction.

Told you I was off on one...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: freda underhill
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:37 AM

my father was a dedicated smoker, and he was damn sure no-one else was going to interfere with his pleasure. He died ten years ago with a cancer on his lung.

My mother, another committed smoker, died of cancer in her 50s, as did all her siblings (also smokers).

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: breezy
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:30 AM

and if you cut out the fags , even healthier still.

You go to a folk venue for the comaraderie and the music not a ciggie.

Not smoking wont kill you.
.
Its cool not to smoke anyway.

George, you reading this.??
If I kept him singing then he could'nt light up.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:26 AM

I'd go for non-smoking. I have helped run a club for nearly 30 years now and found I can no longer go regularly because my health now dictates I cannot tolerate smoke:-( Why should I have to give up the club I helped establish because of the insensitivity of a minority?

And sorry, DeanMeister, I don't think you will get much support. Not being able to smoke in a club may make you a little sad. Being able to smoke will make some people a lot dead. No contest I'm afraid.

Cheers

DtG
(Smoked for 25 years. Gave up 10 years ago)

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: The DeanMeister
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:17 AM

But it's ok to live on Big Macs, and feed your kids chips every night? I have a healthier diet than most people I know. I have low cholesterol, normal blood pressure, am not overweight, and take regular physical exersise.

Oops, I seem to be going off on one....

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Tony Blair
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:10 AM

You could say that you want to help with my latest no-smoking campaign, the one which shows the smoke and ash as fat, and explains what damage it can do to your body - just a thought.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: The DeanMeister
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:04 AM

Thankyou, Guest.

Perhaps the US could sign up to the Kyoto agreement while they're at it? And replace their Chevy V8s with nice sensible 1.3 hatchbacks...? FAT chance.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dita
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 10:03 AM

The Folk clubs in Stirling and Glasgow are both non-smoking and have been for a few years.

In both it was as a result of members request and was voted on. Despite the fears no loss of audience resulted.

Both have a separate bar where smokers can indulge without going outside.

A number of artists contracts insist on having a non-smoking venue, so if you are already non-smoking, you have no conflict on the night.

I do know that a number of regulars at both clubs wouldn't/couldn't attend if the venues allowed smoking, so it's swings and roundabouts, you might lose some hardline smokers, but might gain some people who have looked in the door and been put off by the smoke.

If you do go down the non-smoking road, advertise the fact (might get some new folk in), put up signs and have a notice at the door.

Hope this helps, John

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:59 AM

Can you please all stop driving as well, as the fumes are also toxic.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: The DeanMeister
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:58 AM

I'm speaking as a smoker, in an area that has three clubs that I regularly attended, two of which became non-smoking. I stopped attending.

Maybe the clubs concerned think that's a relief, but I enjoyed attending, and playing at these clubs. But I will not drive to a club in the evening, restricted to soft drinks, and not even be able to have a cig. For me, that makes a crap night.

Now there is only one place I can go to sing a song, have a beer, and smoke a cig if I wish to do so. It has all but driven me from the thriving folk scene in this area. And that makes me a little sad.

Any support out there?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:57 AM

I used to smoke for years (50-60 a day at one time), and I know how hard it can be to go without for a whole evening. Nobody's stopping you popping outside or in the next bar or somewhere for the 2 or 3 minutes it takes to smoke a ciggie -- about one moderate-length song: you're not going to miss a lot! I don't smoke now (and I'm well past the self-righteous stage), and I don't like the pong on my clothes after being in a smoky room -- and it only takes one cigarette to do it.

Peggy Seeger sings a very funny song about meeting a guy in a cafe who insists upon his "smokers' rights"; she goes away and changes to an approporiate diet, then comes back and insists on her "farters' rights", and the boot's on the other foot. Just think about it for a moment -- nobody could imagine they'd be allowed to stay anywhere if they insisted on breaking wind at intervals and expect everyone else to put up with it, would they?

Just to clarify Padgett's point, Roy Castle never smoked in his life, but he contracted a particular form of lung cancer that's exclusively found in smokers. He'd worked in smoky clubs and theatres all his life, and it was caused by passive smoking. He died in 1994 aged just 62.

Steve

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: freda underhill
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:46 AM

There are more non smokers than smokers - and just as many of them want to listen to music.

I left my partner of 14 years (a blues singer/piano player). one of the reasons was that i had reached the end of my limit of tolerance on smoky venues. as the folk ones are non smoking, and i preferred folk, it was an easy choice.

i did not want to spend any more time breathing in pea soup thick tobacco smoke.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Mooh
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:45 AM

Non-smoking. No excuses, the smokers have heard the logic and it's unassailable. I have avoided pubs for years because of the smoke and gave up a decent paying hobby of playing in them because of the smoke. The rare time I visit the local watering hole I regret it except for the limited fellowship it brings. I never smoked but my parents did and I hated it since before I can remember, and now that I don't drink I feel like a pariah.

What's so hard about stepping out for a smoke anyway? I gotta step out for fresh air or to take a shit.

Do what you want with your club, but smokers are a dying breed.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Pied Piper
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:32 AM

All enclosed public venues should be non-smoking, it's about time these selfish people took responsibility for forcing there addiction on other people.
They can't even be bothered to go outside for there fix.
PP

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: JennyO
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:27 AM

Non smoking is the way things are going. Pretty soon it will be taken for granted that any enclosed public place is non smoking, so although I sympathise with the smokers not having their rights, they are fighting a losing battle.

Our folk clubs in Sydney are all non smoking, and they are still going. Make your club non smoking.

Jenny

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Martin from Barton Beds
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:21 AM

At The Bull in Barton we have smokers, but because it is in a Public House and not a room off it we can't ban it altogether, but we try to limit them as much as possible, we have an air extractor and sometimes open the door if needed.This conpromise seems to work well.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Pied Piper
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:18 AM

Only after the fire brigade has put them out.
PP

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: breezy
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:18 AM

I had to hold non-smoking gigs as they were in a straw filled barn.
Funnily or not the barn was ignited by spontaneous combustion during the time we were there one summer.
Always hated the stale stench of tobacca after a night in a smokey venue.
Geoff Pickles from Morley said it wouldnt work.
Well he was wrong.
With children attending it's even more important to be non-smoking.
When I embarked on my project of running a club it was always going to be a non-smoker.
So far so good,and its not that you lose custom its a positive selling point and we gain more than we lose.
And me clothes dont have to be hung outside when I come in at nights.
The story of Roy Castle is true and warnings should be heeded.
Smoke knakkers yer singing voice and breathing.
Stand up and be counted.
Finished,
can I get down now ?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: kendall
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:17 AM

I wont hide behind "Guest" on this one. I smoked for 47 years, and what did it get me? CANCER! Smoking is stupid, expensive and fatal. If you must smoke, have the decency to take it out of the room as you would if you had to take a shit!
I MUST breathe, you dont have to smoke.
There is a fine folk gathering at a pub in NH that I dont go to because of the smoke. They have a "smoke eater" but it has a small appetite.I have a dear brother who wont come to my house because he is too damn lazy to step outside with his toxic fumes.
The fact is, in this country at least, only 25% of us smoke. Now, who can argue that the other 75% have no right to breathe clean air?
Your right to kill yourself doesn't include me.
I just lost a good friend to throat cancer, 53 years old. He put off getting examined too long. I'm lucky thay caught it in time, and after 1 1/2 years, there is no sign of it returning.
If I visit a friend who smokes, that's his business, it's his house and his health. I can stand it for a while, but, I firmly believe that smoking should be banned in ALL public places.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Jim Knowledge
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:15 AM

That one upstairs is mine.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Santa
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:14 AM

We had one performer refuse to go on because the club was held in a smoking pub. (He was ill at the time, to make due allowance.) Our organiser smokes - the chance of us going non-smoking is negligible! My wife and I would prefer it, but we're only two votes in a non-voting organisation. Them as does the work, meks the rules (and I've no objection to that). Plus we'd need to find a new venue - not easy.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:14 AM

I `ad that Tony Blair in my cab the other day. I asked `im what was `e was gonna do about the non-smoking lobby? `e says I`m gonna support it so as to make people more `ealthy. I says does that go for cannabis as well? `E says nah, we`re gonna legalise it!!

I once rolled a fag for that Bert Jansch in our folk club near Crystal Palace. I dunno what `e thought `e was getting but it was Golden Virginia.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,G String
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:13 AM

Listen to the "Ciggy Song" by harri Watts band.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,You only have one set of lungs
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:07 AM

Yes.   I love Irish music but avoid Irish pubs in the U.S. if there is a haze of smoke hovering above in a cloud. I don't drink or smoke but often a pub is where the best music is. What a shame it is that a singer will intentionally harm his lungs and vocal cords with such a disgusting habit (I am an ex-smoker and alcohol drinker).

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: KJ
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:07 AM

Difficult one, as a smoker & a performer I prefer to visit clubs that allow smoking. However, I don't really like imposing my filthy habits on others who disapprove. Is your club big enough to have a smokers corner or a designated table by a window or some form of ventilation?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:04 AM

I'm a non-smoker and hate very smoky atmospheres, but I agree with previous postings, good ventilation can usually help to reduce the problem to a point where it's bearable. One problem can be that some fans make rather a lot of noise though. Linda (who suffers from asthma) and I have often opened pub doors and turned straight round and left because of the smokiness of some pubs though. Sometimes the smell of the smoke seems to stick around for the rest of the day.

There is talk about making all pubs non-smoking areas, but I think that would cause many pubs to close down or break the law. A much better idea would be to impose a limit on the amount of smoke particles in the air. Any premises exceeding this could then be shut down as they could be for other health hazards. Would this be acceptable to smokers or do they prefer a heavy fug ?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: freda underhill
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:02 AM

we have four non smoking venues in sydney - the smokers have to go outside. and now smoking is banned in any hotel, venue, restaurant or place that serves food.

next year, every area in pubs will be banned for smoking. they've been bring it in gradually. the venues have survived.

fred

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dani
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 09:02 AM

We have a smoky club down the street: not folky, but they host blues jams, rock bands, jazz improv nights. The smoke is fine there, I guess, but as an ex-smoker I find it a little uncomfortable, and when I go home at night I reek, and need to leave my clothes on the porch overnight!

Our place hosts more folk-ish stuff, and the place has always been non-smoking. People smoke out on the back deck, and bands have told us over and over and over that they appreciate having a place to play that's NOT smoky.

Allowing smoking eliminates plenty for sure, NOT allowing it means some will have to walk in and out a few times during the night.

Tough call.

Dani

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: John Routledge
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 08:53 AM

I would be delighted to join the half of the audience who stayed.

Some of us are fed up with feeling horrible after a smoking club night just because some smokers won't pop out and have a smoke at the bar or in another part of the venue.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 08:52 AM

Yes all folk clubs should be non smoking, but you'll probabaly lose a lot of members
Chapeltown Sheffield has a lovely club called No Smoke foke, with an excellent following ~ it has won the Roy Castle Award, Roy was a National entertainer for many years who also played trumpet and contracted lung cancer
Singers also need lungs to breathe with!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 08:48 AM

Democracy says that if most people are Non Smokers, go for the ban.
Commonsense says if All the audience are Non Smokers and most of the singers and musicians smoke, bang goes your club. I know a lot of people who limit their attendance of some clubs simply because of the Smoke/Non Smoke situation. Its down to the people who go to the club most of the time, and has nothing to do with ANYONE else.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Players No6
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 08:46 AM

In my experience a high number of musicians are also smokers.As a smoker myself, I would not set foot in a non-smoking folk club! open the windows! fit an extractor! or lose half your audience!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,c,sparra
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 08:45 AM

Ventilation, ventilation, ventilation and no pipes suits me. Now where's me tabs.

Subject: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 08:28 AM

I've come in as a guest on this one as its a delicate subject.

Basically our singers club has been thinking about making it a non smoking club. This naturally will not go down well with smokers. I wouldn't mind opinions on this one.
I'm a non smoker, and support a ban but still feel uneasy on the issue. Cheers