The Beginning of a Trend? I hope hot

Another reason for me to go back-support their businesses!

If I read it right, the cafe business in France is failing as a result of the smoking ban in cafes and the economic downturn.

I am always of two minds about smoking bans and will leave it there.

The economic downturn and its impact on area businesses is something that has been on my mind lately. This recession seems likely to sink a lot of businesses that offer atmosphere and color to life rather than basic needs. We all have a vote about this with our dollars. For me it is more important to save the local bagel/coffee shop than say the local McDonald's though I buy coffee from both. So, I am concentrating on spending my dollars on those firms I want to survive. Likewise I am buying bus tokens and walking shoes rather than replacing a second car.

Back to travel. We have our tickets for Germany. I will make sure to offer my financial support to the Gasthof and Franken-Wein industries. Hopefully others feel the same.

Regards

The tiny little pubs in Germany fought against the ban and won! If your business is too small to put in an extra smoking room, you may choose to make your establishment smoking or non-smoking. All the really little neighborhood places were really suffering and the people who lived upstairs were of course not thrilled with people smoking out on the sidewalks at all hours of the night, talking loudly and throwing those butts on the sidewalk too.

So, perhaps the little French pubs will follow suit.

We thank you, Frank, for that internet Link. This happened before. In approximately the year 2000 I read : 300 bistros in Paris shut down (went out of business) in one year, because the owners did not earn enough profit. There is now a downturn in the economy, and there might not ever be an upturn, but two cafes in Paris that I believe will continue to be there in the year 2009 are Cafe' Flore, and Les Deux Magots, both located at boulevard St-Germain.

Besides the smoking ban and economic downtown the cafe owners are also blaming changing eating habits, especially of younger people. They say the French are becoming more like the Americans and British, eating on the go, not lingering as much as they used to, not using the cafe as a social space, and not drinking alcohol in moderate amounts at any time of day but instead binge drinking at night. Sad.

Parisians must keep up their cafe society. It's one of the main reasons I go to Paris! We won't be able to establish this scene in the U.S. -- we are too far gone. Perhaps once they all get over the shock of not being able to smoke there, they will come back. I'll still be there though.

I was wondering. In Paris, if a cafe does not object to a patron smoking, what is the penalty?

Smoking penalties are up to 450 Euros to the smoker, and 750 Euros to the cafe if the cafe does not try to enforce the ban.

I remember reading almost an identical story after the dotcom bubble burst. And yet when I was last in Paris almost a year ago, I had no problems finding a cafe anywhere in the city (even around that most hated corner of modernity, La Defense). Rather than the beginning of a trend, I would call this the start of a cyclical re-occurence. Boom and bust, adapt and re-adjust, that's what capitalist economies are made of (even though sometimes certain elements of France deny they live in one...)