Dizzying night out for smoking's last gasp

Carl Lunt (left) and Garry Collier tried smoking - and got dizzy; "packet-a-day chick" Barbara Tom predicts uptightness. Picture / Geoff Dale

There comes a time when becoming part of history is more important than health.

So in the performance of a lifetime Garry Collier and Carl Lunt became smokers for a night.

It did not go too well.

"I had to put it out," Mr Collier said.

"It makes you dizzy."

At bars across town were sights to horrify the most righteous Minister of Health, as punters celebrated the last night of legal smoking in pubs.

Malt's owner, Luke Dallow, banned smoking inside the Grey Lynn bar in October.

Last night, however, smoked food was handed out, old tobacco ads had pride of place and Spaceman lolly cigarettes were given away.

A smoke machine was standing by, although the smokers were already pretty much doing its work.

And, just for last night, "smokers" included non-smokers, ex-smokers and the smokers themselves.

Mr Collier waved his cigar with relish.

"I went to the shop and he gave me a great big one. I said 'I can't smoke that - I've never smoked before in my life'. So he gave me a smaller one.

"The reason is it's damned history. If you can't smoke anymore in a pub, I thought I'd better smoke in a pub so I could say I had.

"But this is one of the bravest Government decisions ever made." Behind him his friend, Barbara Tom, glowered, already contemplating a future of nicotine deprivation.

"I only smoke when I have sex, which means I'm a packet-a-day chick. I think you will find a lot of up-tight people. There could be violence, you know."

Mr Lunt had bigger worries.

"My concern is that they will legislate light beer."

Mr Lunt had his own cigar.

"It's kind of like 6 o'clock closing. So now I've participated in it. I've embraced it and I will be telling my children 'I remember I was at a pub the last time you could smoke'.

"And they will say, 'Were you allowed to smoke in pubs, Dad?' And I will say, 'Yeah'."

Across town in Parnell, the old Cuba Cigar Bar had become the new Cuba Cocktail Lounge and Grand Piano Bar.

Cigar lover Lance Paradis sits next to the "smoke-free inside" sticker, placed on the window that same day.

"Prohibition does not work," he declared, waving his 5cm-fat cigar about.

His partner, Raven, quit smoking a month ago, but allowed herself one cigar - vanilla-flavoured - last night.

So as the eve of the fine, long tradition of smoking in pubs and bars ends, the last word goes to Mark Twain, as slightly re-written by Cuba's posters:

"If there are no cigars in New Zealand, I shall not go."

A man at the Shakespeare Tavern in the central city steadily puffed his way through seven cigarettes in the 15 minutes before the ban kicked in.

The staff marked the occasion by turning off the music and telling all to smoke their last cigarette.

Wild clapping erupted at Deschlers on High St at midnight, but it was not to welcome in the ban.

People in the packed bar just wanted the jazz band to play some more. Ten minutes after midnight smokers still happily smoked inside there and at the Occidental on Vulcan Lane.

No one had asked them to go outside, they said.