An ode to the smoker’s bar

RIP, smoky Mercury Lounge

Tulsa lost an icon on New Year’s Day. It wasn’t some ill-fated celebrity who managed to hang on until just after midnight. The Tulsa Driller hasn’t gone missing and the Coney-I-Landers are all still where they belong. Cain’s Ballroom remains. Hanson is—shockingly—still a band. The icon in question didn’t close or move or die. It just changed, and it will never be the same. 

Rest in Peace, smoky Mercury Lounge.

The decision by Mercury Lounge at 18th and Boston Ave. to ban indoor smoking comes as smoke-friendly bars and cities across the country are falling like dominoes, issuing new rules and ordinances to prohibit smoking indoors. Like guerrilla encampments in enemy territory, bars are the last holdouts in a country that has turned decisively against tobacco, and they are dropping like flies. And unlike formerly smoke-filled bars in so many cities across America, Mercury wasn’t forced to ban cigarettes by a draconian Nazi nanny intent on saving everyone from themselves. Mercury imposed the ban on itself. 

Do not be deluded: this changes everything. Having lived through the implementation of two citywide smoking bans, in D.C. and New Orleans, I can tell you exactly what is about to happen at Mercury. The most notable and immediate change will be in the number of people who hang out outside the front door and on the smoking patio. They will include smokers, occasional smokers, and non-smokers attracted by the fact that there are a lot of people hanging out outside, or perhaps by the fact that smokers are cool. (I can’t tell you precisely why non-smokers congregate in smoking areas, I can only tell you that it happens; it always does.) 

This will have a somewhat injurious effect on life inside the bar. More people outside will mean fewer people inside, which will make it easier to get a drink, but the lack of smoke will also suffocate something ineffable and vital. I’m reminded of the time in college when student council dorks wanted to start up an open mic in the student union, employing red lights and pillows in an attempt to create the atmosphere of a “smoky bar,” but one without cigarettes or booze. The result missed the mark, of course, because smoke is what gives a place the atmosphere of a smoky bar. Puritans and health nuts can lambast cigarettes all they want, and right they are to do so, but take away tobacco smoke and you remove a certain character from a space: something forbidden and dangerous, plus a certainty that you couldn’t stay in that smoke-filled hellhole forever and a devil-may-care embrace of the moment while you’re there.

Also, forgive me for saying it, but in all likelihood Mercury Lounge is about to become very stinky. Non-smokers will point out that it already smelled bad, what with all the cigarette smoke. To that I will say only that after the passage of smoking bans in their respective cities, one classic dive in D.C. somehow took on the sharp stench of vomit, and one old neighborhood haunt in New Orleans suddenly smelled distinctly like decades of ass sweat on bar stools. I actually prefer smoke-free bars but even I want the smokers back at those joints.

That’s not the whole story, of course. Patrons and especially bartenders at Mercury will inhale less second-hand smoke, which is good. More importantly, by pushing smokers outside Mercury has given a boost to one of the greatest joys of smoking cigarettes: the out. Like a comma in the evening to be deployed basically whenever one feels like it, stepping outside for a smoke is an excuse to get away from your friends, or your date, or the jerk-off who won’t leave you alone, or just to take a quiet moment to yourself. 

The outside congregation also becomes a surprisingly great place to meet a potential future ex. The smoking area is a kind of purgatory where it’s relatively safe to start talking to a stranger because you won’t be there for long so you probably won’t be stuck talking to them forever. And the smoke-free atmosphere makes everyone, even the smokers, smell less terrible once they leave the bar—meaning your hair won’t smell so god-awful in the morning, and your date won’t smell so god-awful that night. And then there’s the singular joy of lighting up in a non-smoking bar after hours, when most patrons have gone home and only a small cadre of regulars, bartenders, and perhaps a few of the bartenders’ interloping friends remains. You lock the door, get one last drink and light up in defiance, like a secret meeting of dissidents in an ancient, forbidden ritual. 

Which is pretty cool. Sad though it may be to see Mercury go smoke-free, it’s probably for the best.

For more from Denver, read his article on how to fight back against the new threats to liberal democracy.