Pat Troy, owner of Pat Troy’s Irish Pub in Alexandria, is one of the few restaurant owners speaking out against the city’s proposal to use it’s zoning power to prohibit smoking in bars and restaurants:
The pugnacious bar owner has become the most vocal critic of the city’s proposed ban and vows to fight it in court if it passes. “I’m a fighter. What’s that saying, oh I love it, ‘Don’t Tread on Me.’ The government is taking over every part of our lives.”
It’s not that Troy advocates smoking. He has never smoked, and even though he has run a bar for 27 years, he has held to a pledge he took in Ireland as a teen never to drink. He doesn’t allow cigars or pipes in the bar. He has taken friends aside and told them to lay off the cigarettes. He asks smokers not to sit up front near the bands that perform and has installed smoke-eaters and fans in the bar to keep the smoke away from the no-smoking section in the Blarney Room. (He also switched to more expensive oil to fry his fish and chips, to voluntarily eliminate trans fats.)
For him, the fight against the city is about personal freedom. If city residents had a referendum and voted to ban smoking, he would be all for it. “But this way, the government says we’re going to do this and the hell with ya,” Troy said in his Irish brogue. “It’s like being in a communist country. We’re saying, you people who don’t smoke are wonderful. And you people who do smoke, you’re bad. There’s no place for you in our society.”
I love it ! I may just have to stop by Pat Troy’s place the next time I’m in Alexandria.
March 15th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Two words: free publicity
March 16th, 2007 at 7:17 am
Sure, someone in that area willing to fight the smoking ban AFTER I move back to Illinois