Smoking in the theatre of the absurd

From: Sheila Kromer
To:
Cc: Mark Benjamin
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 7:47 AM
Subject: Smoking in the theatre of the absurd
Hi,

My name is Sheila Kromer, owner of Barnacles Resort on the north end of Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota. I just wanted to let you know that I thoroughly enjoyed your article, "Smoking in the theatre of the absurd" (http://www.advancetitan.com/story.aspx?s=6984). Your points were well made. We were the first bar that started theater nights with Mark Benjamin. Our theater nights are still going on and have helped our bottom line financially. Many small mom & pop bar owners are being devastated by the smoking ban that was put into place last October in Minnesota. We believed our legislators when they said that business would increase but that has not proven to be true. I would like to share my liquor sales tax numbers with you so you have an idea how this has impacted us. If you visit the website www.freedomtoact.com , you will find all types of information and stories from bar owners & others who have been affected by this ban. I caution Wisconsin to think this through...this type of devastation affects a lot of people and not just bar owners but vendors, distributors, the entertainment industry and so on.

Thank-you for your time,
Sheila Kromer


Barnacles Resort Numbers
Below are our %'s of loss or gain based on liquor sales tax. These numbers are based on comparing the same month, year to year.

Jan 06 compared to Jan 07 our liquor sales tax numbers increased +26%
Feb 06 compared to Jan 07 our our liquor sales tax numbers increased +58%

Dec 06 compared to Dec 07 our liquor sales tax numbers decreased -21.5%
Jan 07 compared to Jan 08 our liquor sales tax numbers decreased -26%
Feb 07compared to Feb 08 our liquor sales tax numbers decreased -2%

January is always our busiest month of the entire year. Weekends are always busier than weekdays by far.
We started theater nights on Feb 9th, a Saturday night. (unadvertised). There was 1 weekend in February that we did not have theater nights at all, 2 weekends that we only had it on Saturday nights, and 1 weekend that we had it on both Friday & Saturday nights.

Interesting numbers aren't they....did the quote "recession" take a vacation in February compared to January? These numbers can easily be vetted...I have nothing to hide.

Sheila Kromer
Barnacles



Smoking in the theatre of the absurd
by Max Davies, of the Advance Titan
A recent AP wire story in the Post-Crescent entitled “Theatre of the Absurd:...” could well be prophetic for Wisconsin bars should the anti-smoking lobby and legislators get a state-wide smoking ban in taverns approved. The article describes an exception in Minnesota’s smoking ban allows performers to smoke and use cigarettes as props. As enacted, “The smoking ban, passed by the Legislature last year, allows actors to light up in character during theatrical performances as long as patrons are notified in advance.” Actors in these bars enter through the actor’s entrance, pick up their prop ash tray and partake in a spontaneous production of what tavern owner Brian Bauman calls “Before the Ban.” Patrons are encouraged to dress up and act dramatically. Much of the impetus to exploiting Minnesota’s loophole evidently came from “Mark Benjamin, a lawyer who pushed bars to exploit the loophole.” This creative circumvention of the smoking ban has incensed lawmakers and the health Department, who are taking measures to impose fines up to $10,000 for such spontaneous drama. Such defiance should illustrate several important facts about human nature. The more restrictions put on human action, the more creative the human mind becomes at finding loopholes. Legislating morality about smoking is a dumb idea, regardless of the health benefits that might result. If life isn’t fundamentally absurd, it soon will be the way things are going. The main selling point is that it costs taxpayers money in several areas of significant amount. However, when Governor Doyle cannot manage to create a budget that doesn’t plunge Wisconsin citizens into a state-wide debt, it seems completely unjustified to pick on an industry that already gets heavily taxed, forced to pay out for prevention programs from its own product, and is also an unnecessary product which people choose to use. According to Carla Vigue, Office of the Governor, “In 1999, then-Attorney General Doyle negotiated a settlement with the tobacco companies that would have delivers $180 million annually to pay for anti-smoking efforts. Instead, it was used it to fill a one time budget hole.” Doyle thus showed his fiscal irresponsibility once, and he will only do so again with his new legislation. “The Governor’s new anti-smoking initiative will include a plan to partially restore this funding and ensure the money gets used the way it was originally intended. Over the next few weeks, the state will refinance the tobacco settlement bonds, securing a lump sum of $600 million that will be permanently locked away.” This isn’t to deny that there are serious health problems that can and do occur from smoking, but smoking is a choice, and as long as there are different community laws regarding smoking, we can and should let patrons decide where they want to go. To impose one uniform law limits a patron’s choice and takes away the rights of individual communities to work out their own answers. If a community complains that their businesses are losing money, then perhaps it is a good indicator that they made a wrong decision economically. Doyle’s coloration of this issue in a recent USA Today article as, “If the state doesn’t act, Minnesota’s ban and one that takes effect Jan. 1 in neighboring Illinois could make Wisconsin “the ashtray of the upper Midwest,” is a gross distortion of an issue that should be focused on freedom of choice. What might some of the unintended consequences of this resurgence of the theatre of the absurd? Perhaps the U.S. will have renewed interests in the works of Artaud, Camus, Absurdism, the Panic Movement and Surrealism. Or maybe after legal absinthe becomes more widespread we’ll realize French culture has so much more to offer the U.S. -for however much longer France remains French.
Turning back to the original idea of this article, what will happen when creative dissent hits on a way to show the hysteric efforts of lawmakers to tell people how to live? Human ingenuity will prevail.