Where There's Smoke...
Possible Ban Stirs Controversy

The ACC Commission's legislative review committee plans to begin developing a stronger smoking ordinance next month, possibly banning smoking in all public businesses, including bars.
District 9 Commissioner Tom Chasteen says the committee is gathering information on smoking ordinances in other cities, and that developing a new ordinance is about a 90-day process which will tentatively begin on February 17. The committee will also hold a public hearing on the ordinance at a later date. It is unknown if the proposed ordinance will target restaurants and bars on equal terms, or if it will treat them differently, as does the current ordinance.
Some bar owners and employees fear that a strong non-smoking ordinance would hurt their businesses.
"What I've heard is it has a 50 percent effect on bar industry [profits]," says Last Call manager Eyal Reisin. "People should be allowed to do what they want; it's still America."
"Although we all are aware of the health risks associated with smoking, we feel that until... a clear majority of bar patrons avoid our establishment because of our current smoking policies, we should continue to allow smoking in our facilities," says Chris Godfrey, an owner of Cutters Pub.
The possibility of an anti-smoking ordinance was the main item of discussion at a recent gathering of business owners sponsored by the Athens Bar and Restaurant Association.
"I think all of us are concerned because we don't know what the Commission is planning to do," says Mary Long, who owns Five Star Day and Speakeasy and is on the association's board of directors.
While Five Star Day has gone non-smoking at the request of its customers, Long opposes an ordinance that would ban smoking in Speakeasy. She says that it makes sense for Five Star Day, a restaurant that does not serve wine or liquor, to be non-smoking, but that Speakeasy should allow smoking because it does a lot of bar business and is mainly open for dinner.
Pam Brittingham and Dottie Alexander, who both work at The Globe, say they are worried about an ordinance that bans smoking at restaurants. The Globe does serve food, but after 9 p.m. it is basically a bar. An ordinance that bans smoking in places designated restaurants "would signal the end for places that do serve food but are primarily bars," Alexander says.
"I'm a non-smoker, and I think it's going to harm a lot of bars in town," Brittingham says. "The whole idea is to protect servers from second-hand smoke, but we're talking about people who live off tips," she says. If a smoking ban does harm bar business, servers may be the first to feel those effects.
Both Brittingham and Alexander say friends of theirs in New York and California have cited a 50 percent drop in business after smoking bans were passed. Brittingham says The Globe plans to turn its upstairs area into a non-smoking section in the near future.
The Five & Ten restaurant in Five Points has recently banned smoking, and owner and chef Hugh Acheson says their decision to do so has been well received.
"Our bar has been busier since the ban," he says. Previously, smoking was allowed only at the bar at Five & Ten, but Acheson says the smoke was a nuisance for all the customers due to the size and layout of the dining area. The restaurant's last review in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution gave it three out of four stars, and the cigarette smoke was the only complaint, Acheson said.
"We're not trying to be over progressive... a lot of customers are happy, only two have complained," he says.
District 6 Commissioner Carl Jordan says he is in favor of an ordinance banning smoking in all public businesses. "These are the kinds of things we should be regulating," as a matter of protecting public health, he says. Jordan says that such anti-smoking ordinances are a growing trend in other Georgia cities like Statesboro, Albany, Valdosta and Bainbridge, as well as DeKalb and Gwinnett counties. Jordan says that smoking bans have not had long-term negative effects on business and tourism in other cities. Such policies that protect the public health, he says, are in the end pro-business.
"I don't think it's something our local government needs to take on at this point," says District 5 Commissioner David Lynn. He calls the issue of public smoking an "externality" the market is best suited to deal with. If there is demand for bars and restaurants free of tobacco smoke, then that demand should be met by businesses acting in the interest of profit and not by government intervention into the matter, he says.
While there are plenty of bar owners against stronger smoking ordinances locally, they are fighting against a national trend to keep cigarette smokers outside businesses by law.
"The market has to determine whether or not a place is non-smoking," Long says. "People can choose to frequent a place that is non-smoking if that's their preference."
There are also worries that a smoking ban will create more problems than it will solve. Mickey Darich, a downtown bar patron who has lived in Athens for 15 years, said he worries about the smoking ordinance leading to people having more house parties, which could cause problems. "I think it will increase people driving under the influence," he says, explaining that while taxis are a common way of getting downtown at night, people are more likely to drive themselves to a party.
Brittingham says she has heard complaints from friends in New York City that the smoking ordinance there forces smokers to crowd onto the sidewalk, leaving large amounts of cigarette butts behind.
The Bar and Restaurant Association is concerned with loss of business revenue, tax revenue for the county, safety issues from overcrowded sidewalks and having the police enforce the smoking ordinance while fulfilling their other duties, Long says.

Aaron Jollay

Aaron Jollay is a local freelance journalist.

Duplicitous Developers
Red Flag On Prince Ave.

The plan for the proposed development next to and behind McDonald's on Prince Avenue was presented to members of the Historic Boulevard Neighborhood Association, among others, on Jan. 6 (two days before their request was presented to the ACC Planning Commission) and again on January 28. Analyzing my ultimately negative feelings about the proposal following those meetings, I have focused on some instances of what I feel is less than a forthright presentation of information by the developers.
The first thing I recall striking a negative chord was the developers' assertion that, without rezoning, they could build a 60,000-square-foot, 65-foot high monster on the existing C-N-zoned parcels on Prince Avenue that would make everybody unhappy. For someone who, for more than 20 years, has been watching efforts by commercial developers to intrude into residential zones, this tactic waves a red flag. Typically such claims are a smokescreen, based on half-truths, and usually the worse the comparison the more undesirable the project they are designed to justify. I believe this example is no exception.
Speaking of half-truths, the developers' main justification for the mammoth scale of the project, requiring its intrusion into residential zones, is based on price they will have to pay to acquire the land. As a real estate appraiser (primarily of residential property, but the principles still apply) I have some knowledge in this area, and I know that value is a two-sided coin. The present value of the land is based on the existing zoning, and presumably the developer's contract with the present owner is based on the value of the four parcels contingent upon the success of the application to rezone. It makes at least as good sense to argue that a development proposal should be based on developing the property as presently zoned, which would yield a substantially different bottom line - and a much less objectionable development.
There are a couple of further issues that I am inclined to interpret as evidence of disingenuousness on the part of the applicants. For one, there is the rhetoric that their willingness to make some trivial concessions to their ready-made plans, such as designating right-turn-only exits onto Nacoochee Avenue (two of them - though traffic will be able to enter from either direction) and lowering the sea of concrete of the upper level of the parking deck to a couple of feet below Nacoochee Avenue (though it would still tower above Hiawassee) and adding a few potted trees to it, amounts to more than a token gesture. For another, at the Jan. 28 meeting, when the applicants were confronted with the issue of compliance with the neighborhood-oriented requirements of the future land use plan, their response alluded to some examples of retail businesses that might sign on to the project that might provide some services to neighborhood residents - in no way recognizing a basic distinction between a development that is designed to serve and benefit the neighborhood, as the future land use plan seems to require, and one that only incidentally serves the neighborhood.
Finally, their comments relating to the existing zoning struck me as somewhat duplicitous. While they made no overt claims, the tone of their remarks defending owners' rights to develop property seemed to imply that the residential zoning currently applied to two of the four parcels they hope to assemble somehow constitutes an unfair restriction on their prerogatives. Zoning is a legitimate manifestation of the police power of local government for the benefit of the community, and I feel strongly that it has been applied appropriately, both for the RS-15 parcel that shares a property line with the Boulevard Historic District and for the RM-2 parcel that presently accommodates the Prince Rondavel apartments. These two parcels (which comprise more than half of the footprint of the mammoth project proposed by the applicants) provide an appropriate and necessary buffer between the historic Boulevard neighborhood and the inevitable commercial development adjacent to Prince Avenue, where there presently exists an abundance of underdeveloped properties already zoned C-N. Furthermore, the uses described in the future land use plan for this area are perfectly consistent with the current zoning, and I challenge anyone who tries to defend this proposal as a "neighborhood-oriented" project to read the very clear definitions in the future land use plan of "neighborhood mixed use," "residential mixed use" and "single family use."

Charles Apostolik

Charles Apostolik is a real estate appraiser and a resident of the Boulevard neighborhood.

Why Stop With Iraq?
Let Their People Go

During his State of the Union address, George W. Bush exalted the liberation of the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq from the tyranny of brutal and corrupt regimes. Bush recognizes that a lot of work remains to be done. "As long as the Middle East remains a place of tyranny, despair and anger," Bush said, "it will continue to produce men and movements that threaten the safety of America and our friends."
He's right. If we really want to win the war on terrorism, we've got to stop sitting around the Sunni triangle picking rose petals off our Kevlar jackets. If we're serious about liberation as a tool of terror prevention, we've got to invade every dictatorship, topple every autocracy and occupy every patch of soil where evil tyrants oppress their people, especially in the Muslim world.
Job One: Saudi Arabia. The country's evil monarchy financed 9/11, bans opposition parties and forces women to wear the abaya (identical to the Taliban's burqa) and doesn't even allow them to drive. According to Human Rights Watch, the Saudi Interior Ministry's General Directorate of Investigation subjects its political prisoners to "sexual harassment by threat or the actual practice [of] inserting an iron rod in the rectum." Bush says any dictator who runs "rape rooms" deserves execution. After we invade and replace his government with a democracy, therefore, George W. Bush should personally behead King Fahd (or stone him to death - these are the ways in which the Taliban-style Saudis execute their victims). Saudi Arabia is big but sparsely populated. Surely we have a spare 100,000 troops for the liberation of 23,000,000 Saudis.
Then, as Patton would say: on to the Arabian Sea! The long-suffering citizens of Yemen crave liberation from dictator Ali Abdallah Salih, whose vile Central Security and Political Security Office stormtroopers murder civilians at random. When an opposition candidate for local office dared to speak up recently, Salih's CS-PSO goons beat him to a pulp, shaved his head and bulldozed his house. Well, those days are over! We'll drive Salih into his local spider hole in no time. Then victorious U.S. troops can score some well-earned beachfront R&R.
While we're out democratizing, let's not forget those nasty little Gulf states: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are run by a bunch of slave-trafficking, election-banning, opponent-torturing, democracy-despising kings, emirs and sultans. We can take these despots out, easy - another 100,000 soldiers ought to do the job.
Of course, many republics of the former Soviet Union - places like Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan - are Saddam-style dictatorships still run by the same Communist Party thugs who oppressed people under a different flag pre-1991. They use the former KGB to spy on dissidents, who are found dead, clearly bearing the marks of torture, or are simply "disappeared" entirely. The citizens of these regimes would welcome liberation.
In October, says HRW, Azerbaijan's president Ilham Aliyev "carried out a well-organized campaign of [election] fraud. [There was] brutal and excessive force by police to suppress demonstrations, severely injuring at least 300 protesters, and killing at least one protester. Police arrested close to 1,000 people, including national leaders of the opposition, local opposition party members, activists from nongovernmental organizations, journalists and election officials and observers who challenged the fraud. [There were] numerous cases of police torture - through severe beatings, electric shocks and threats of male rape against opposition leaders, particularly by the Organized Crime Unit of the Ministry of Interior."
Across the Caspian Sea in Uzbekistan - yet another central Asian country where oppressive leaders steal the nation's oil wealth while most people make do on $20 a month - anti-corruption activist Ruslan Sharipov currently languishes in prison under the Uzbek regime's trumped-up sodomy charges. "During the first days of his detention," says Human Rights Watch, "arresting officers threatened Sharipov with physical violence, including rape with a bottle."
Charming fellows, our allies in the war on terrorism.
In neighboring Kazakhstan, independent journalist Lira Baiseitova published a story about Swiss bank accounts allegedly used by Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev to funnel stolen oil revenues. The next day, her 25-year-old daughter Leila "disappeared." One month later, she turned up dead in police custody. Cops said she had tried to hang herself - a standard "cause" of death in central Asian jails.
And Turkmenistan's vicious Saparmurat Niyazov - "Grand Leader of All Turkmen" to his friends - has a new bag. An edict issued November 2002 forces internal exile upon "those people who have lost the respect of the nation, and who disturb the social tranquillity with their bad behavior" - i.e., those who aren't his friends.
Admittedly, central Asia spans four time zones. We'll need about a million troops to occupy the whole steppe, but what the heck - some analysts think the region will supply 80 percent of the world's oil in 25 years. It'll be worth it! Oh, and there's the liberation thing, too.
Syria, Iran and Lebanon: add them to the list. All three nations jail and torture political opponents, censor journalists and threaten human rights organizers. Lebanon, like most of the other nations targeted here for regime change, censors the Internet - and uses it to ferret out homosexuals for future arrest. Allow 75,000 troops for Syria and Lebanon, plus another half million for Iran, and let freedom ring.
While we're taking out oppressive Mediterranean regimes, both Israel and Yassir Arafat's Palestinian Authority have got to go. Israeli strongman Ariel Sharon, complicit in war crimes during the 1980s, is building a Berlin Wall-style "security fence" dividing Arab villages, employs child soldiers in his army and wants a law that would ban Palestinians married to Israelis from living in Israel. Meanwhile, Arafat treats public funds like his personal bank account, jails and tortures political opponents and stands by as his officials assassinate one another. To hell with the "road map" - both sides need an old-fashioned preemptive ass-whupping, American-style! (Allow another 300,000 occupation soldiers.)
A couple of million troops here, a few trillion dollars there, pretty soon we'll have this whole Middle East thing all worked out.
Then: Across to Africa.
After that: South America Libré!
And don't forget: Eastern Europe - free at last!

Ted Rall

Ted Rall is the editor of the new anthology of alternative cartoons Attitude 2: The New Subversive Social Commentary Cartoonists.