{bazima.com}

In the war here at home Mayor Mike Bloomberg threatened to unleash his Doomsday budget in full effect to save our financially suffering city. His plans for devastating cuts to public education and the sanitation and fire departments alone will make for one big stinking terrorized fire hazard full of angry retarded kids.

Meanwhile New York nightlife is public enemy number one. This is fast becoming not the city I knew I would one day live in when I was a twelve-year-old Bostonian wearing a purple and black checkerboard mini-skirt and a J. Geils Band baseball tee to grandma's house on the Upper West Side one weekend every couple of months.

And all the while, the smoking ban burns on. While some bar hoppers may be trying to ban the ban, bar owners are more worried about going out of business. At the dawn of Bloomberg's cigarette smokedown owners across the city searched frantically for loopholes in the impending plan and when many found that they could build separate specially ventilated smoking rooms in their venues, they began construction with the quickness. Then Governor Pataki signed a state law last month superceding all of the original allowances, filling in those loopholes and leaving bar owners with their brand spanking new totally useless isolation tanks and thinner wallets to boot.

While the ban may or may not have an affect on my own fag habit I think it's safe to say I won't be going to bars any more or less frequently. I like bars. I'm a smoker and a drinker. And a New Yorker. People, I am here to help. I care about this fucking hell hole's economy. I live here! I will go to French restaurants! But, I am only one petite lady. I can only drink so many Jack & Dry's in one sitting. And after that, I can only down so many Apple Martinis. There must be more I can do.

I'm thinking those newly built detention centers don't have to be total losses. Maybe we can't smoke in them but there's plenty of other stuff we can do. For example. Bar owners worried about maintaining smokers' business? What do smokers love just as much as lighting up? Going down, of course. Make your specially different rooms into Makin' Out or Makin' It Rooms. Either or. Or both! Get a condom machine in there. Or a honey dust, hot oil or Bonne Bell Lipsmacker dispenser. Take a cue from the blonde babe from the Peanut Gallery, what's-her-name, and turn the smoking room bar into a Kisses (and then some) For $.25 (and then some) Booth, but at city prices! Did I just make that up about the Charlie Brown characrter? Can I spell character? In any case, watch business boom whatever borough you're in and help bring back some of that happy smut that Giuliani chased out of Times Square.

Since you're strapped for cash but you've already got the Room, haul down that widescreen TV and the DVD player from your railroad apartment above the bar and show movies. Or, start a comedy club. You tend bar, you know lots of jokes, right? Recently a friend of mine walked his pitbull into one of the diviest of all dive bars in the East Village only to be escorted back outside. Turn the promise of those pre-paid puffing chambers into a for-profit dog kennel. If nightlifers can't bring their Camels to your venue they can bring their canines instead. This winter nearly killed us all, right? Invest in a sun lamp and a couple of those kiddie pools from Target and invite patrons to spend a drunken eve indoors, poolside. But no peeing!

Bar owners! Get creative! Give up the space for Bar Mitzvahs! Get that Gaping Void Guy who draws cartoons on the backs of business cards in bars to do caricatures! Hire Bazima and Kyuti to host private parties! Pay me! I'll draw a crowd! I'll quit my job! All that is wrong with the city will be right again!

Here's another idea. Are we not at war? (We still are, right?) Is New York City not under attack by terrorists and a millionaire mayor? Why don't the local taverns turn their dry walled loopholes into Peace Rooms? I know this ain't California but with one of the toughest smoking bans in the country and the likelihood of getting fined up the fanny for phoning up your roommate at The Strokes concert to tell her you spotted Kelly Osbourne kicking some Spence girl's ass in the bathroom, we might as well all pack it up and move to Mendocino. Aren't there funner things we can fret over and less assinine things to worry about than, say, a bouncer getting stabbed for trying to put out some punk's cigarette? Can't we all just get along?

New Yorkers, let's all join together in the Peace Rooms in watering holes citywide in our Fuck Burberry T-shirts and our angrier than Avril Lavigne attitudes and save a bar for the good of the economy. Let's all take two steps back, one deep breath, and a long ass toke on a Marlboro Red outside of a bar and remember why we're here. Because we love slash hate New York. And New York loves slash hates us right back.