Smokers lose even more places to light up. (flickr, needoptic)

Poor smokers! Forced to shiver outside with chilly, chapped fingers all winter long, and then when the weather finally improves, New York announces that it will be expanding its state park smoking ban.

The ban on smoking in some areas of state parks had a rocky start (the state suspended it temporarily after smokers' rights groups threatened to sue) and the legal challenge is, in fact, ongoing, But apparently, New York State is feeling very cocky, not only moving forward with the ban, but extending it to even more parks. Now smokers will only be able to suck fresh air into their damaged lungs when they visit one of the city's parks. Or, the skin particle-laden air that passes for fresh in New York City.

"Our state parks embody the rich, natural beauty that New York has to offer, and our residents should be able to enjoy them free of pollution or second hand smoke," Governor Cuomo stated in a release, calling the expanded ban "an important step forward in ensuring New York's families can enjoy great outdoors smoke-free, in a healthy environment."

Smoking is already banned in all New York City parks, public plazas and boardwalks—in addition, of course, to all office buildings, restaurants, and increasingly, apartments. Smokers are increasingly being forced to huddle unhappily on the city's already packed sidewalks. State parks were some of the few outdoor spaces where smokers could still light up.

Now smoking will now be almost totally banned at Bayswater State Park, Clay Pit Ponds Reserve, East River State Park, Gantry Plaza State Park, Riverbank State Park and Roberto Clemente State Park. Smokers will be restricted to the sidewalks abutting exterior roads and the parking lots. Increasingly, the only oasis available to smokers is the back patio of a bar.

The ban will likely be unwelcome news for the city's smokers, who have had to contend with two new Bloombergian assaults recently: attempts to raise the smoking age to 21 and to hide all cigarettes behind curtains to dissuade impressionable young smokers from seeing (and therefore wanting?) them.

Moreover, the ban comes at a particularly bad time for smokers, who will not be able to light up at anything goes, topless, lifeguard-less Fort Tilden this year. The National Park will remain closed for the summer season because of Sandy damage, forcing sunbathers and swimmers into the city-controlled no-smoking Rockaways beaches.

Smoking rights advocates have vowed to continue their battle: "The obstinate posture by NYS Parks Commissioner Rose Harvey and her staff  in the celebratory announcement about this ban as if nothing is amiss is abhorrent," wrote Audrey Silk in a press release. "The crusade against smokers to date has so emboldened government  that there's no second thought to whether or not they're acting above the law by imposing law on citizens who choose to smoke and then fully expecting them to respect it."

Still, it's almost enough to extinguish a smoker's hope.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the legal challenge had been squashed. Despite the state's decision to expand the ban, it is, in fact, ongoing. The Observer regrets the error.

Meet Stephen Dwarf. (YouTube)

Do you remember that amazing Stephen Dorff "Behind the Scenes" infomercial for Blu-E Cigarettes? The one that was six minutes of rambling, apparently unedited footage of actor Stephen Dorff (Blade, FeardotCom, Space Truckers) wearing a silly hat and playing piano in someone's beach bungalow while taking e-cig breaks during a commercial for the Blu-U brand?

Well, one e-cigarette company decided to take it to the next level. Meet White Cloud Electronic Cigarettes’ newest spokesperson ... Stephen DWARF.

http://youtu.be/fNmxTdn7hC4

Like it wasn't sad enough that e-cigarettes are peddled by actors whose careers are so dead that the name of the spot was Stephen Dorff's "Rise From the Ashes." Can you imagine the conversation with the ad team for this one? Like one exec came in all excited Monday morning and threw down the Stephen Dorff copy, announced, "You know what? We can make this better. All we need is a pun and a tiny man with a dream."

"You mean another Stephen Dorff spot? For a different brand?" Another of White Cloud's ad team would ask.

"No. I'm thinking bigger! How about Stephen DWARF?"

"That's technically smaller, and offensive."

"Johnson, that's exactly the kind of in-the-box thinking that keeps you from being called The Don Draper of e-cigarettes."

"No one is ever called that."

"People will, after they meet Stephen Dwarf."

Tensions are flaring up.

Other luxury buildings may have failed in their bids to squelch smoking within their walls, but that has not stopped a Central Park West co-op from trying to evict a chain smoking trustfunder.

The El Dorado, where celebrities like Alec Baldwin and Marilyn Monroe once lived (both known to to light up on occasion), is trying to oust ninth-floor resident Diane Wells for her smoky ways, according to the New York Post.

“On multiple occasions, the cigarette smoke and odor [have] filled the entry halls on at least the ninth and 10th floors of building, requiring shareholders to traverse a cloud of smoke between the elevator and their apartment entrances,” the complaint says, according to the Post.

The problem? While a building can, in its rules and bylaws, forbid smoking on the premises, this one doesn't. And Mayor Bloomberg's proposed legislation won't help them here—that would only requires that buildings disclose their smoking policies, not mandate a smoking ban.

Although Ms. Wells has lived in the four-bedroom apartment that she inherited from her mother Constance Cheney for a number of years, the building asserts that holes in the walls and plumbing have made the situation worse and that Ms. Wells refuses to let workers in to fix them or to use the air purifiers her neighbors have bought her.

And there are indications that Ms. Wells, a transsexual who was born Jonathan Cheney, has used cigarette smoke for vindictive purposes before. She was convicted for assaulting her mother in 2005. The prosecutor for the case told the court that the mother described "incidents of physical and emotional abuse where defendant blew cigarette smoke in victim's face during an argument over money and pushed the victim backward into a wall where her head hit a picture frame."

The New York smoking community, already under siege and dwindling in number, will no doubt be upset to hear about this latest effort to extinguish Ms. Wells' right to light up at home. But it may never come to a battle of the butts—she is also behind on her common charges and is battling her other two siblings for control of the apartment and the rest of her late mother's fortune.

kvelsey@observer.com

What most people who don't live in New York might not see is the way our city government deals with that perpetual public health scourge, smoking: Not just by banning it from pretty much everywhere, but by also producing the most terrifying, grotesque, nauseating anti-smoking ad campaigns this side of Europe, and putting the print ads everywhere cigarettes are sold.

Today, the city lost a battle in court over those ads and their right to force them on cigarette retailers. Via an AP report, an appeals court ruled that the federal government is the entity with the power to tell citizens (with authority!) not to smoke. Which means the city is not that entity.

The appeals court said the resolution is preempted by the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act. It was enacted by Congress in 1965.

Which means those signs are probably going to come down, at least until the city can find a way around the ruling. Best, however, is the statement at the end of the report:

Philip Morris USA issued a statement saying it was pleased with the ruling.

Of course they are. Their customers—the writer of this post being one of them—aren't going to be reminded with the purchase of every increasingly expensive pack of cigarettes that the very thing they're buying won't just kill them, but do things to them that will make them miserable, like give them strokes, and impotence, and cancer of the face, and so forth.

But don't expect the mayor to take this one lying down. Surely he'll find a tax to levy on retailers of death sticks, or simply rename them death sticks, or just start paving public sidewalks outside bodegas with photo-realistic pictures of cancer-filled lungs, or giving tax breaks to bodegas who employ people who speak through a hole in their throat. If anything, while this appears like a setback, it's simply an opportunity for the city to get more creative about reminding it's citizenry just how terrible these multinational billion-dollar corporations truly are.

Which, really, they should.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Take up the torch! (Dale M. Moore, flickr)

It may be a small victory in a losing war, but at least José Arozamena can come home tonight, light up a cigarette and take a long, celebratory draw.

A judge has ruled that Mr. Arozamena, who lives at 260 Park Avenue South, can continue to light up in his apartment, the Post reports.

The condo board may have been emboldened by Mayor Bloomberg's most recent move to kick smoking in the butt, but they were a little overzealous. After all, the mayor's proposed legislation would only have required formal smoking policies and disclosures, not full-out bans.

Moreover, smoking wasn't forbidden by the condo, even if the board did try to argue that the smell of smoke violated house rules.

The judge found scant proof that Mr. Arozamena was the source of the stench, if there was a stench, or that his love of lighting up was unreasonable conduct. It all made Mr. Arozamena as hard to kick as a two-pack-a-day habit.

And while smokers can draw a long, ragged sigh of relief at this news, it's likely to be short-lived, with 59 percent of New Yorkers preferring smoke-free apartment buildings.

But really, as irksome as the occasional whiff of cigarettes can be, anti-smoking crusaders should put things in perspective. At least they don't live next to a fish farming enthusiast.

kvelsey@observer.com

No smoking! (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

A Queens resident is fuming with smoke!

Phil Kinogsberg of Bayside has been pushing to have smoking banned in his co-op complex for the past five years, but now he's shifting focus to banning smoking in all multi-family residences in the city, according to Crain's.

His failed attempts in banning his 120-unit complex and its sister complex of the same size have pushed Mr. Kinogsberg into tackling the city as a whole.

"I think that smoke-free housing is something that needs to be done because there's no way that when someone smokes in an apartment it stays in that apartment," Mr. Kinogsberg told Crain's. 

Sheelah Feinberg, executive director of the NYC Coalition for a Smoke-Free City, told Crain's that it is a "slow build up" and that there are a few buildings on the Upper East and West Side that ban smoking, including 1510 Lexington which is known for its "no smoking" clause in the lease.

Smoking in New York has dipped to 14% and anti-smoking laws has its benefits from reduced risks of fires to less needed repainting.

The no-smoking-at-home-for-anyone campaign has flaired up before, gaining particular interest after last year's smoking ban in public parks. It remains unclear whether this effort will be stamped out, but whatever happened to being king of one's own castle? In New York, even when you own, you never truly own.

mewing@observer.com

Illo: Chris Gash

Around the middle of the summer, brightly colored fliers started appearing on the Lower East Side, strewn across coffee shop counters and discarded on curbs. “Island Smokes,” they said. “A healthier, less expensive alternative to smoking. Amazing!!!” There was a cartoon palm tree swaying on some exotic atoll to drive the point home, but more intriguing was the word “discount.” And then the details: this wasn’t really so much an alternative to smoking as a way to do it cheaper. Island Smokes went for $29.99 a carton. Three bucks a pack. Peanuts.

That’s less than what you pay in the south. Less than West Virginia, even. A price tag to win over any pack-a-day New Yorker. Our heartbeat quickened and our palms grew hot—as if a pretty girl had walked through the door.

The location, the flier claimed, was at that bustling Chinatown border corner of Eldridge and Broome (next to Vanessa’s Dumplings, in LES-speak). But surely this place, such a cost-friendly refuge from Mayor Bloomberg’s war on cigarettes, was some kind of myth. There had to be a catch. It was too good to be true.

Turns out is true, but it’s too good to be legal. On Nov. 14, the city filed suit against the shop and its Staten Island sister store, insisting that the Island Smokes is in violation of the Contraband Cigarette Trafficking Act. That edict forces each pack sold in New York to bear a stamp indicating that its price includes the government-mandated $5.85 tax—and Islands doesn’t collect a penny of that fee.

But the people behind Island aren’t panicking. The opposite, really: in 2012 they plan to open outposts in the East Village, Queens, and Brooklyn. If they can shake the feds, expect a total takeover of the city.

And at the center of the fight are the cigarettes themselves, the little paper tubes you fill up individually and place into a tin one at a time. It’s a personal, almost sanctified experience: You create each one yourself, only to burn it as a sort of divine sacrifice. To be a patron of Island Smokes is to get closer to your smoking.

It took a few months after salivating over that first flier for The Observer to seek out these legendary cigarettes. We walked across Delancey Street en route to the corner of Eldridge and Broome, and in the afternoon chill we lit a Marlboro—maybe our last brand-name cigarette. A few guys outside of the marigold-hued Spanish bodega shot the shit in spitfire Chinese, and after passing a man slurping up dumpling soup we saw a stoop on the right. “Island Smokes,” the sign read. The door was jammed, but we jiggered it and went inside.

“What do you want—mild, medium, full flavor, it’s all tobacco, natural tobacco,” a guy said. “You know the toxins in cigarettes, regular cigarettes, we don’t have those, it’s just the smoke.”

The attendant was pointing to a ten-page Wikipedia printout taped up on the wall. It was an addendum to Wikipedia’s “Cigarette” entry that listed, in full, the hundreds of life-threatening chemicals present in your normal plug of a Parliament or Marlboro. He repeated that his cigarettes have none of them. (He failed to mention, however, that they are still cigarettes, and they will still kill you.)

“Come on, let’s get you set up,” he said. In one hand was a plastic container stuffed yay-high with shards of that addictive leaf, and in the other a pocket-sized tin container. “Island Smokes,” the tin said.

On either side of the store sat pleased customers working the machines. Each device let out a whirr as the clumps of tobacco sifted from the hatch down to the guts of the thing. To make a cigarette, affix the pre-rolled tubelet to the nozzle at the bottom of the machine, press the magic button and watch the brown leaves scrunch nicely into the little paper pirouette. Then you have a cigarette.

“This working for you?” the man asked. His name was Kenny and his sparkly earring matched the glow of his cigarette’s cherry. Oh, yes, you can light up inside, and the ashtrays are placed at every seat.

We nodded, but we were lying. The first attempts at engaging with the future of cigarette addiction went horribly awry, one split cylinder after another. Could we attach the filter’s edge to the pursed lips of that rumbling  machine? Not at all. Could we act cool in front of scowling NYU girls in vintage Hermès scarfs? Not at all. Could we ever condone a simple smoke joint that tried this hard to be hip? Doubtful.

But it was winning us over. With muscle memory we got the rhythm down, and making these cigarettes proved easy. And the noises the thing makes! There was a quick nudge onto the nozzle, the this-way, that-way insertion followed by a ramming of the button and a thrilling big desperate vroooovvvroo-oooom noise, and then the leafy wonderment packing the paper in a fast rush. It was all over pretty quickly.

The vibe was Summer of Love, enhanced by the unrepentant Beatles-Stones-Hendrix soundtrack. Strangers were met with a Heyyy you! A few customers discussed plans to join a march supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement. And those who asked how all this was legal (we certainly didn’t) were met with a simple explanation: It’s no different from picking up a pack of tobacco and rolling papers. But why roll yourself when you can hang out, listen to “Purple Haze” and have a robot do it for you?

Soon enough there were 20 little chimneys in our tin, mercenaries in the fight, and we left the place after smushing our third little monster out in the ashtray.

Immediately after, a friend’s birthday dinner offered an opportunity to see how the Island Smokes would go over with the uninitiated.

“Could I try one of those, instead?” said a friend, who blogs at the website of a weekly magazine. We had stepped outside of Zucco: Le French Diner on Orchard Street, and he’d pocketed his Camels at the sight of our tin. We gave him one.

“It hits well,” he said.

“Is that one of those cigarettes?” Greco, the restaurant’s owner, asked us. He had come outside, too.

We asked him what he meant by “those.”

“These,” he said. He was holding up a brightly colored flier. We said yes, gave him one, and Greco smiled.

We indulged in that pack without remorse and wound up back at Eldridge and Broome the next day. Another 20 fresh-packed smokes marked by the fingerprints pressed on them with each packing. Another 20 dimpled, imperfect man-made cigarettes we could call our own and love. Another 20 sons and daughters.

We left $4.50 poorer than we were before.

It was a night to go out, and we took our full batch to the Boom Boom Room, for the premiere of Another Happy Day, the new film starring Demi Moore and Ellen Barkin. It was a loud time, full of spilled cocktails and salty little canapes, and occasionally Olivia Wilde danced without regard to Kanye West songs. After a few drinks we crept upstairs, to the smoking balcony, where we unfurled out peacoat and snapped open the tin.

“What is that you happen to be smoking?” said a bright-eyed thin girl. Her accent was British and she had a Twiggy-gone-Seberg hairdo. We told her, she asked for one, and let the plume of smoke dissipate before the November expanse of Manhattan skyscraper ice palaces arranged in front of us.

She's a 23-year-old actress who most recently played Kate Middleton, convincingly, in the movie adaptation of the royal courtship.

She wasn’t sure what we meant when we said “Island Smokes.”

“It’s, um, from this place,” we said. “On the Lower East Side, where you make your own cigarretes, and, um there’s this... It’s five bucks a pack.”

“You can’t be serious,” she said.

“Well, I’m afraid I am.”

“Take me there.”

We agreed to meet the next day, though the actress had one stipulation.

“No phones,” she said.

“What?”

“We’re not going to exchange numbers.”

“How will I know you’re coming?”

“I’ll meet you there at six.”

“6:00?”

“6:00.”

“Will you actually be there?”

“I want you to take me to this cigarette shop.”

The next day, in a white coat and rose-colored beret, the actress was standing on the corner of Eldridge and Broome smoking a Parliament—her last brand-name cigarette, she was convinced.

“You actually made it.”

We were walking up the stairs to Island Smokes.

“Of course,” she said.

She looked at her watch. It was 5:53.

“I didn’t want to be late,” she said.

After hearing of the city’s lawsuit, The Observer made a requisite trip back to that Chinatown corner. It had been a two-week break marked by that holiday trip home—our excuse was we had lost our tin over a late night in Washington, D.C.. It was a tin we’d probably never again hold. Not expecting the place to be open for much longer, we opted not to buy a new one.

“I can’t really talk about that,” Kenny said, regarding the lawsuit. “But, well, I’m not worried.”

We asked about the new location on Avenue A, the East Village outpost that was to be their first franchise.

“Oh, I don’t know what’s happening with that,” Kenny said.

And what happened to the big machine over there, the one that could make a carton of smokes in under a half hour?

“Not sure what happened with that, they took it away,” he said.

By then 15 smokes had been inserted, filled, packed and sealed. A woman asked us if we wanted a plastic bag to put them in. We looked at her, fished into our pocket, and found an empty pack of Marlboro Reds. We could stuff them into this, we told her. No one would know the difference.

Then, after packing our last cigarette, we walked outside, lit one and walked away.

Ms. Couric is not a smoker.

The Observer had just finished dinner at Osteria Del Circo and we felt like having a cigarette. The restaurant, tucked into a sloping corner of midtown, was hosting a party for the new documentary The Man Nobody Knew, about the C.I.A. mystery man William Colby, and there was a perfectly fine little patio-like nook outside, so we went and lit up. The cigarette was a Marlboro Red and when it was done we stomped it out and walked through the revolving doors, to talk to the guest of honor, Katie Couric.

"I saw the screener on Friday and I thought it was really interesting!" Ms. Couric said of the movie.

"Did it give you any insight into how the C.I.A. works," we asked. "In regard to the government in general or--"

"Have you been smoking?" Ms. Couric asked us.

"Um, what--"

"Have you been smoking?"

"I did just have a cigarette, I, um--"

"Because you smell like cigarettes!"

"Is that because--"

"You've gotta stop doing that," Ms. Couric said. "You're a young person, you have healthy lungs, why are you doing that to yourself?"

"It's a really bad habit, I should really--"

"And you're so young," she said. "How old are you?"

"Yes," we said. "Very young."

"So stop smoking, seriously, it's so uncool. It's such a turnoff. Girls don't like it either!"

"You don't like it, Katie?" we said. "Really, it's a turn off?"

"Yes, it is, for sure."

"That's probably true."

"But really I have to go," she said as she put on her coat. "I thought the movie was really interesting and I'm glad I got you to stop smoking."

Ms. Couric, we must admit that that is not exactly the case. But maybe we'll try harder.

Ms. Frankel.

In April of this year, Bethenney Frankel sold her line of Skinnygirl liquor drinks to a large distributor for $120 million. Suddenly, she's no longer just a contestant on The Apprentice, or one of the Real Housewives of New York City -- she's a thriving mogul, a 21st century success story.

But things might not turn out, um, Bethenny Ever After. The New York Post reported today that Whole Foods will yank the Skinnygirl Margarita -- the brand's signature product -- from the sixteen stores that carried it. Turns out the thing could give everyone cancer. Yikes!

The drink -- which Frankel crows on her Web site is "the margarita you can trust" with "all natural ingredients" and "no preservatives" -- actually contains the preservative sodium benzoate, sources said.

Studies have found that the preservative can become carcinogenic if mixed with other substances such as vitamin C.

How could you do that to us, Bethenny, we say as we stomp out an early morning cigarette. We're never drinking Skinnygirl Margaritas again.

Residents have long had to worry about their neighbors smoking, and landlords were often held to account, but never before had a case been brought in court over the matter until last month. Now, a judge in Nassau County has ruled that a renter in an Upper East Side apartment building had cause to break her lease, according to Crain's.

While this was an isolated matter, and the case was largely a matter of six months' unpaid rent, at least one expert believes it could have more far-reaching repurcussions.

While there won't likely be an avalanche of similar cases, tenants will begin to use secondhand smoke as an offensive measure against landlords, said Stuart Berg, a partner at Kurzman Eisenberg Corbin & Lever. "Landlords should take notice and start modifying leases to become stricter in terms of who to lease apartments to."

For co-ops, it may become a trickier situation. Mr. Berg is working with two co-ops in the city now, where the co-op boards are requiring smoking tenants to install ventilation or air filters in the apartment. Dealing with the issue is a little bit harder in co-ops because they have to vote and amend co-op bylaws. "It is easier for non-co-op residential landlords to deal with it by modifying leases and not permitting smoking in the apartment," he said. "Co-ops do not have that flexibility."

Harsh!

And with talk now circulating about banning smoking out front of buildings, pretty soon the only place left for New York smokers will be inside their cars (those that have them).

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo