Arlington, The Daily Feed

Smoking Ban in VA Starts Tomorrow, Top 10 Reasons to Love It

Photo courtesy of
‘Santa the Magnificent’
courtesy of ‘M.V. Jantzen’

Merry Christmas Virginia.
For the majority of its residents, Virginia becomes a better, healthier and down right less stinky place to live tomorrow. Starting Tuesday, December 1st (i.e. TOMORROW), smoking will no longer be allowed in Virginia bars and restaurants. There are some exceptions that do make sense and I’m sure there will be a handful of bars that put in the work to provide for a completely separate smoking area that is ventilated, etc., but for the most part, all bars and restaurants in Arlington, Alexandria and beyond will be smoke-free starting tomorrow. Virginia joins DC and 23 other states in banning smoking in bars and restaurants. After the jump, you can even see my top ten list!

Continue reading

All Politics is Local, The Daily Feed

Is Virgina Going Liberal?

You go boy!

You go boy!

For years, I’ve considered crossing the Potomac as the entry into a whole other country, a bastion of conservatism that confused my liberal mind. Now I think its Virginians that are confused. Or at least the gun toting, God-fearing types who must be thinking they’ve awoke in Maryland this morning. Just look at these two lead stories in the WashPost:

What’s next? They allow popsicle beer?

Downtown, Entertainment, The Daily Feed, WTF?!

And So Begin the Exemptions

Photo courtesy of
‘Cigar’
courtesy of ‘J$’

It’s gotta be nice to have a councilman in your organization; so that he’ll take on the first exemption to the smoking ban so you can have a cigar on St. Paddy’s Day. That’s right, the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick (and their circa 1998 website) have convinced Councilman Jack Evans (Ward 2) to put legislation before the council that would exempt the fraternal organization on St. Paddy’s day so they can have celebratory cigars with their celebratory whiskey.

This one seems crappy to me. I know, holiday, but if we do one exemption, it’s going to be a dozen of them. Better would be to write an exemption process and let people petition a committee of the council for it, instead of going the legislative route. It seems that Evans took this on of his own volition, but it seems to be an inefficient way to try to do this on a regular basis, if we want to do that at all.