It will survive

New York

The Big Bagel is facing one of the worst financial crises since the city teetered on going broke during the Seventies, when it actually defaulted on its bonds, and President Ford famously told the place to ‘drop dead’. I remember being in Elaine’s at the time, and when the headlines came in with the morning papers a cheer went up from the drunken customers. Elaine’s, the favourite watering-hole for writers and showbusiness folk, was packed back then, at five in the morning. Not this time. I was there last week, hosting a party for friends, and the place was like a library on Saturday night in Belfast. Business at New York bars and restaurants has plummeted by as much as 50 per cent in the wake of the smoking ban, and many establishments are on the brink of shutting their doors. It is as if Mayor Bloomberg purposely set out to kill off what was left of post 9/11 nightlife in the country’s most swinging city.

Which, of course, he has not. What we have here is a severe form of narcissism, a grandiose, self-centred, over-inflated ego imposing its will on a supine populace much too cowed by authority to practise civil disobedience. Mind you, Bloomberg has a tough job – one he inherited – but his dictatorial streak of all or nothing is hardly helping matters. Most people I’ve spoken to, smokers and non-smokers alike, feel that people who own and run bars and restaurants should be given a choice. An owner decides whether his establishment is smoking or non-smoking, and then the customers decide where they want to eat and drink. It’s very simple, really, but the Ayatollah Bloomberg thinks otherwise. In the meantime, deserted city bars and restaurants have fallen on very hard times.