Smoking Ban Transforms Kalamazoo’s Smoker-Friendly Restaurants
A month after the new smoking ban took action in the state of Michigan, Kalamazoo businesses are breathing in the fresh air. Even establishments that were previously known as havens for smokers have readily embraced the change; for some, it was a switch they would have made earlier if not for the fear of losing customers. Dana Owens, a manager at Fourth Coast, says the café didn’t consciously nourish its identity as a smoker-friendly place; it was simply the last Kalamazoo café to allow smoking. The management has wanted to limit the amount of smoking for a while, but they didn’t want to segregate people.
For weeks now signs on the walls of the café have decreed “NO SMOKIN’,” but Fourth Coast still bears reminders of its past. The stale smell of smoke lingers, and the red and yellow checkerboard tables are covered in small circular pockmarks—cigarette burns. For those customers who don’t want to step outside to light up, a poster on the back of a coffee machine advertises a smokeless, electronic cigarette that acts like a nicotine inhaler and can be used even indoors.
Smokers made up such a large part of Fourth Coast’s clientele that the staff was nervous about the change. The coffeehouse has felt the difference, but not in the way it expected: instead of losing customers, it’s gaining them. “More people come in who wouldn’t before,” Owens says. Owens used to smoke himself but doesn’t any more and he prefers to work in a smoke-free environment. “There are less unsavory people who come in just to light up,” he says. “It feels safer, more comfortable.”
Now that Forth Coast is no longer hangout for smokers, the café can more clearly define its identity as a place where creativity is cultivated. Owens says, “We’ve just got this reputation for being more in tune with the artistic community, and I think that’s what’s going to keep us afloat.” That and the devotion and comradeship of the staff. When the café’s ceiling needed renovation, the employees put in extra hours to get it done. “That love, that’s what’s kept us in business for seventeen years,” says Owens. For long-standing neighborhood business like Fourth Coast, the ban is “just another hurdle.”
Another established Kalamazoo business that welcomed the ban was Olde Peninsula Restaurant and Brewpub. Before the ban took action, Olde Peninsula allowed smoking at the bar that forms an island in the center of the restaurant. Some tables are in close proximity to the bar and smoke would sometimes waft into the dining area despite the restaurant’s ventilating system, says Assistant Manager Natasha Tamminga. “There were a few people who would come in and say, ‘We really wish this was non-smoking,’” she says. “If anything, we had a lot of people come in, and if there’s a longer wait, they want to sit at the bar and have a drink while they’re waiting for a table, but if there are a lot of people smoking then they wouldn’t.”
For Olde Peninsula, the ban seems to have no down side. The bar is crowded and noisy on a Sunday night just before closing as friends and couples chatter over pints and plates of onion rings. “We’ve had nothing but positive feedback,” says Tamminga. “Everyone’s really excited that there’s not really a smoking area.”
Especially the management. “Our owner was thinking about going non-smoking earlier but when the Radisson went non-smoking, we checked their numbers and they lost some money at first,” says Tamminga. Not willing to run the risk of losing customers, the restaurant heard the news that a smoking ban was in the works and decided to wait it out until all businesses had to go smoke free.
Judging from the lively scene at the bar, the smoking ban’s goal of creating healthier restaurants and workplaces has been realized without too many hardships for establishments like Olde Peninsula. According to Tamminga, a couple of the restaurant’s staff members even quit smoking as a result of the ban. She neatly sums up the overall attitude to the shift, saying, “I think clean air makes everyone happy.”
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Week 10 Workshop Responses
Marina—
I loved your opening—the names provoke curiosity and give hints to the subject of the article. Like we talked about with your first article, I think you might need something like a definition of feminism early on in the piece. I mean, not like “in the OED, feminism is defined as…” but like some kind of statement linking feminism to this campus. Sorry, I know that’s kind of vague. Maybe one thing that could help: you say, “This play has positively affected the women on our campus…” but that leaves me wondering HOW exactly they are affected. I think specifying things like this, and generally showing in concrete ways that feminism is an important and contested issue on this campus, would make the article’s focus more clear. I was also confused about what this article was trying to do. Are you focusing on the play? On feminism in the arts? On feminism on this campus? On Laura and Rachel? Also, since you’re dealing with a play, showing some scenes with action could be cool.
Andrea—
This article really grabbed my interest, and it touches on so many important social issues, especially with the economic situation today. I loved the little details you included, like the items on her lawn, the PJs, the syringe box, and Martha’s Vineyard. You really know how to make a statement with just an image or a name. I thought that organizationally, this piece could be tweaked to heighten the impact of certain revelations and to tighten the article’s focus. Right now I’m confused as to whether you’re mainly talking about MS, Lisa’s trouble getting a job, or Mira’s doubts about higher education. Obviously you can’t talk about any of those things without talking about the rest of them, but I think if you specify the idea of the story that you want to tell in this article, then you can make everything fit together, and all the facets of the story will point to one main focus. You’ve got really great quotes and Lisa and Mira are well fleshed out as characters, so I think it comes down to making smooth transitions from topic to topic. For example, I got confused after the second paragraph, because you had been talking about Mira’s doubts and then you went to a scene with Lisa and introduce the topic of MS. I didn’t see what that had to do with education at first. So just make sure all the details and the transitions are meshing together and this article will have a really big impact.
Simona—
Really fascinating. I had no idea this was going on at K. The quotes and the scenes are great; it definitely felt immersion-like. For example, the way you observe the students’ reluctance to take notes, and what that says about the paperwork that goes along with this stuff, which in turn says a lot about how under-funded and understaffed the program that students are the ones doing this complicated bureaucratic stuff (it also says a lot about how dedicated the students are). So great noticing throughout this piece. I thought there were some organizational issues – for example, the paragraph “In 2009 the Michigan Civil Rights Commission…” seems out of place because it’s stuck in the middle of a scene. Why not move it to the part where you start talking about the forms and obtaining licenses? Also, while I don’t mind that the piece opens with a scene, I think it would be even more powerful if you had some kind of a tantalizing lede to introduce the fact that students are going out in spite of the danger and doing the government’s job by fighting civil rights violations. Overall, I think this is an important issue that more people need to know about, on campus and off.
Steven—
Well, you’ve got a treasure trove of gorgeous, deftly noticed details; now I think you need to be more selective about which ones you’re using. The description needs to serve a function in your story, and when you start out with so much of it, the reader gets bogged down and doesn’t know what all these images are pointing to. For example, why is it important that Kokkinos has a secretary? Why should we care about what the priest’s hair looks like? I think maybe you need a little something at the beginning to introduce what your doing in this undertaking, your questions as an outsider…basically explain why you’re there. I thought that there were a lot of hilarious moments in this article, and I definitely got a good sense of your outsider-ness. The children and the matriarchs are full of life. I think you’re well on your way to having a lot of intriguing characters that draw us into the story. But I think that in order for YOU to be a full character, we have to know why you’re there and why this whole outsider/insider thing is so important. You kind of get to it in the end when you’re talking to the priest, so I think maybe just starting off with something brief to let us know who you are and what your doing would make things really stick together.
I loved your opening—the names provoke curiosity and give hints to the subject of the article. Like we talked about with your first article, I think you might need something like a definition of feminism early on in the piece. I mean, not like “in the OED, feminism is defined as…” but like some kind of statement linking feminism to this campus. Sorry, I know that’s kind of vague. Maybe one thing that could help: you say, “This play has positively affected the women on our campus…” but that leaves me wondering HOW exactly they are affected. I think specifying things like this, and generally showing in concrete ways that feminism is an important and contested issue on this campus, would make the article’s focus more clear. I was also confused about what this article was trying to do. Are you focusing on the play? On feminism in the arts? On feminism on this campus? On Laura and Rachel? Also, since you’re dealing with a play, showing some scenes with action could be cool.
Andrea—
This article really grabbed my interest, and it touches on so many important social issues, especially with the economic situation today. I loved the little details you included, like the items on her lawn, the PJs, the syringe box, and Martha’s Vineyard. You really know how to make a statement with just an image or a name. I thought that organizationally, this piece could be tweaked to heighten the impact of certain revelations and to tighten the article’s focus. Right now I’m confused as to whether you’re mainly talking about MS, Lisa’s trouble getting a job, or Mira’s doubts about higher education. Obviously you can’t talk about any of those things without talking about the rest of them, but I think if you specify the idea of the story that you want to tell in this article, then you can make everything fit together, and all the facets of the story will point to one main focus. You’ve got really great quotes and Lisa and Mira are well fleshed out as characters, so I think it comes down to making smooth transitions from topic to topic. For example, I got confused after the second paragraph, because you had been talking about Mira’s doubts and then you went to a scene with Lisa and introduce the topic of MS. I didn’t see what that had to do with education at first. So just make sure all the details and the transitions are meshing together and this article will have a really big impact.
Simona—
Really fascinating. I had no idea this was going on at K. The quotes and the scenes are great; it definitely felt immersion-like. For example, the way you observe the students’ reluctance to take notes, and what that says about the paperwork that goes along with this stuff, which in turn says a lot about how under-funded and understaffed the program that students are the ones doing this complicated bureaucratic stuff (it also says a lot about how dedicated the students are). So great noticing throughout this piece. I thought there were some organizational issues – for example, the paragraph “In 2009 the Michigan Civil Rights Commission…” seems out of place because it’s stuck in the middle of a scene. Why not move it to the part where you start talking about the forms and obtaining licenses? Also, while I don’t mind that the piece opens with a scene, I think it would be even more powerful if you had some kind of a tantalizing lede to introduce the fact that students are going out in spite of the danger and doing the government’s job by fighting civil rights violations. Overall, I think this is an important issue that more people need to know about, on campus and off.
Steven—
Well, you’ve got a treasure trove of gorgeous, deftly noticed details; now I think you need to be more selective about which ones you’re using. The description needs to serve a function in your story, and when you start out with so much of it, the reader gets bogged down and doesn’t know what all these images are pointing to. For example, why is it important that Kokkinos has a secretary? Why should we care about what the priest’s hair looks like? I think maybe you need a little something at the beginning to introduce what your doing in this undertaking, your questions as an outsider…basically explain why you’re there. I thought that there were a lot of hilarious moments in this article, and I definitely got a good sense of your outsider-ness. The children and the matriarchs are full of life. I think you’re well on your way to having a lot of intriguing characters that draw us into the story. But I think that in order for YOU to be a full character, we have to know why you’re there and why this whole outsider/insider thing is so important. You kind of get to it in the end when you’re talking to the priest, so I think maybe just starting off with something brief to let us know who you are and what your doing would make things really stick together.
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