How Paris Copes with Bistro Smoking Ban

Noted by Midwest Bureau Cub Reporter Paul Knue, who adds, "Back in the day when I did actual journalism I lived for stories like this, and for writers who could actually write. Nice."

This winter, the coldest Paris has seen in years, the sidewalks in front of many cafés are full. Under electric heating lamps or cozied up close to the blue flame of propane burners, customers sip their coffees or their Cokes or maybe the rare glass of wine or beer or pastis, and they smoke. For a year now the inside of the café, even a "café-tabac" that has a license to sell cigarettes and cigars, has been off limits to those who want to light up....

Tourists, of course, still come expecting the city of the '20s, of Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, and at first glance it looks much the same. The municipality has been careful to retain elegant facades. But behind them are fewer and fewer actual homes, more and more open-plan offices with suspended ceilings. The life of the city of lights is being hollowed out. And the cafés that once served as lounges for the poor, meeting rooms for businessmen, tabletop ateliers for artists, are losing not only clientele but the conviviality that was their true raison d'être.

[From How Paris Copes with Bistro Smoking Ban | Newsweek International | Newsweek.com]

And I, tourist, spent the night in one of those cafés once, with a couple of friends. Didn't have money for a hotel (spent it all at the Moulin Rouge). Slept in a back booth. But that's a story for another time.