NEW York is bidding to reverse its plummeting violent crime figures by not letting anybody smoke.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg extended the city’s smoking ban to parks insisting outdoor tobacco fumes were preventing people from enjoying the exhaust emissions from more than 300 square miles of gridlocked traffic.
But tourism experts say the move will also resurrect the authentic New York atmosphere portrayed in much loved Hollywood classics such as Mean Streets, Bada Bing and Fuck You.
An entire industry once existed based on t-shirts saying ‘I went to New York and all I got was this lousy bullet in the face’ but in the last 10 years more than 40% of tourists have gone home completely unwounded.
Locals have blamed the bullet-free trend on the pernicious influence of Friends and everyone feeling sorry for them after 9-11.
But many now hope that millions of neurotic, nicotine-deprived lunatics forced to live stacked on top of each other will bring back the fucked-up Taxi Driver levels of social interaction, but without lots of annoying tobacco smoke.
New York cabbie Tom Logan said: “Ordinarily I would recommend the cultural highlights and reasonably-priced restaurants in our fair city but after pulling a 12-hour shift without a smoke I’ll probably just spray the entrance to the Waldorf with machine-gun fire and then drive this motherfucker straight off the Brooklyn Bridge.”
New York’s anti-smoking laws are some of the strictest in America, though there is a loophole in the legislation to allow the public smoking of crack.
