The General Assembly's move earlier this year to ban smoking in almost all bars, restaurants and other venues has led to a bit of shifting and adjusting among businesses ahead of the January 1 implementation of the new rules.
The latest change: Honey's, the I-85 and Guess Rd. fixture (in)famous for its smoky reputation -- earning a head-scratching designation whose trumpeting in the DCVB's Durham Image Watch e-newsletter seemed to prove there's no award too arcane, or bizarre, to avoid being touted as one of Durham's honors:
The Durham diner Honey's Restaurant on Guess Road has been selected as one of the top 10 restaurants in the country where patrons can smoke according to R.J. Reynolds Co's Doral brand cigarettes, which is hosting a virtual throw-down for the No. 1 smoking restaurant in America on its Web site, with the public casting votes for the hot honor. (Durham Image Watch, 5/30/2007)
Well, the smoky days at Honey's are just about over, with the diner closing for about 36 hours this coming Sunday to go smoke-free throughout, and presumably giving the old cigarette machine the boot.
Other businesses around town have made their own adjustments. The Green Room, for instance, has transformed itself over the summer to become all non-smoking, a nice change for the venerable pool hall. (See Gary's recent Endangered Durham post for some thoughts and recollections on the business when it was in its former Broad St. location.)
Downtown bar and restaurant Tyler's, on the other hand, is close to wrapping up a massive exterior renovation to add an open-to-the-elements bar and seating area -- a preparation, one supposes, for providing smokers a replacement for their Speakeasy (the only smoking-allowed establishment at American Tobacco) once the new law takes effect.
Honey's conversion has had a generally positive reception on the Duke Park listserv, where a lack of marauding pitbulls and Parks & Rec bathhouse complaints has allowed conversation to drift to new subjects in recent days.
Some residents noted they had avoided going because of the wafting scent of smoke coming over from the smoking section -- really, a slice of the eastern side of the north-central Durham institution, and one whose segmentation lacks any sort of ventilation or drywall approaches, making seemingly audacious assumptions relative to the laws of particle physics about how smoke actually travels.
Interestingly, some current and former smokers on the thread welcomed the news, one noting that even when she partook of the habit (outdoors, not in her home), she found Honey's too smoky to enjoy. Says another:
Even being one myself, I have no patience for people who smoke in confined spaces with children. It may seem backwards, but even when I go to place that offer a smoking section, I go to non-smoking because food and cigarettes are a horrible mix. Honey's is a nice little historic diner that has a good ole greasy spoon ambiance, which doesn't exist enough anymore, but if we can't take our kids to that old "down home" kind of place, then it is useless.
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