Blues Notes

(Toledo Free Press, November 9, 2005)

When I was in first grade, the connection was made between smoking and lung cancer. A doctor from a local hospital came to our classroom with a cage of rats and injected them with nicotine. After they died, he cut them up to show us their blackened innards.

Around that same time I was introduced to music. Back in the 60s schools had budgets for arts education, and my class was taken to a performance of Peter and the Wolf. Immediately I was hooked, and not just on that, but also on the jazz piano of the supper club where my uncle worked, and the rock that echoed from the next-door-neighbor’s basement.

By my sixth year of life then, two facts were clear: I hated tobacco and I loved music. Forty years later I feel the same way.

Now if you’re listening to a symphony in a gilded hall, or a concert in a recital studio, it’s likely you’re some distance from Marlboro Country. But when you seek out the jazz or “new” scene, things get dicey. New music mostly starts in bars and clubs, and in Toledo, that mean fogs of blue.
 
Not long ago I lived in Germany where smoking is a given, not just in drinking and dancing places, but also in kitchens, schools, offices, and even on certain modes of public transportation. The music in Europe is great, but the air is toxic.
 
Shortly before I returned, Toledo passed a progressive no-smoking ordinance, similar to that in place throughout New York, America’s arts capital. But because our ordinance was applicable only in city establishments, smokers fled to the ‘burbs. Restaurant and bar owners complained about business losses and within months, Toledo’s no-smoking ordinance wafted on- and upward
 
Believe me, I understand the proprietors’ concerns. Tobacco is legal in America, so gerrymandering districts in which cigs can be lit is duplicitous. New York has been successful because its restrictions apply state-wide. What’s law in Manhattan is law on Long Island is law in Buffalo. Until Ohio does something similar—there’s a rumor such an initiative might be on the 2006 ballot—business guys have a legitimate beef.
 
But so do I. If you’ve been reading me very long, you know I’m an advocate for the local arts scene. But there’s a huge part of it I don’t participate in because I can’t enjoy the acts while my eyes and throat are burning.
 
There’s one specific place in town that bring in terrific bands and is welcoming to guests of all ages.  I’d like to frequent it more, but I can’t take the smell. In theory, the performance area, away from the bar, is off limits for smoking–signs say so–but the reality is different. The last time I was there a waitperson was asked to relocate smokers nearer the beer taps, but she said she couldn’t. Later when I asked the proprietor what his policy was he said, (I’m paraphrasing) “No smoking, but:” “but” being if it means the loss of a customer, “butt” wins. “It’s mostly kids,” he said confidentially of those who light up.
 
Again, I understand his philosophy, but the health and arts advocacy parts of me are warring about it. To get any kind of arts scene going, a community needs the support of its younger members, but it’s mostly younger people who smoke.
 
Reconciliation of this seems impossible unless a state–or better yet, nationwide–smoking ban is passed. But as this country was founded on tobacco (as well as alcohol and slavery, but that’s another column), that’s gonna be a while.
 
So for the most part I’ll have to contain my listening-to to more classical (and expensive) venues. That’s too bad, because as much as I like Prokofiev, I also like JT and The Clouds. Music may soothe the savage beast, but cancer kills. 
 

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