Kian Northcotefreelance writer |
Smirting |
| Dating craze liberates smokers By kian Northcote Casual Sex and cigarettes - the devil’s vices they maybe, but thanks
to Ireland’s smoking ban you can have both; for smirting has arrived,
and with a growth rate that rivals some East-Asian countries, world domination
is surely just around the corner. Ireland, January 2004. The ban on smoking in bars, pubs and restaurants has just come into effect; anti-smoking campaigners should be allowing themselves a collective ‘joy-killing’ slap on the back. After all, isn’t this the first step into a brave-new-world? A world without nicotine-stained fingers and peppermint-breath, a world without clothes that - after a few hours down the pub – smell like a bonfire. That was the theory, but to the despair of ‘Do gooders’ everywhere, it’s all gone horribly wrong. Smoking is cool again, and worse than that, it’s helping people get laid too. Welcome to the world of smirting – smoking and flirting – the trend that has taken Ireland by storm; liberating the repressed whilst breathing smoke into the collective face of political correctness – a deed that may well be repeated in the UK once the same laws on lighting-up have been fully implemented. Fast-forward to the present and the streets of Dublin are awash with folks lounging around outside the city’s vast array of pubs and clubs: drinking, gossiping about work and home-life, moaning about the boss or Ireland’s poor display in the rugby, and smoking - lots of it in fact - and flirting to. Banned from poisoning the lungs of the more health-conscious-clubber, smokers are now free to mingle outside of Dublin’s nightspots. Watch closely and you’ll see them chatting each other up in between each carefully composed drag, using their post-ban predicament as the perfect icebreaker; and it’s so much easier than trying to pull in a crowded club. For a start you’ve already got something in common with everyone else around you, so there’s no none of those long and painful pauses as you search desperately for some kind of shared familiarity. ‘It’s brilliant,’ says David Conlon, 24, speaking in The Observer, and a regular Smirter in Dublin’s Temple-Bar area. ‘You spend your time going in and out from the bars to the outside areas and that’s a great way to get meeting people. There is definitely more pulling, just because you’re inevitably chatting to way more girls during a night.’ It’s not taken long for the local bars and pubs to cotton onto Smirting’s potential, and the race is on to provide the best possible facilities. ‘Smirting has come along way since those early days,’ says Caroline Murphy – Portal Manager at Dublinks.com. ‘Many Irish pubs have built very comfortable outdoor smoking shelters
with chairs, tables, heaters and televisions. In fact, some people never
go inside at all,’ she laughs. ‘I have mates who weren’t really smokers at all,’ says Conlon. ‘But they’d go outside and say ‘can I crash a cigarette off you,’ and everything would just take off from there.’ It’s enough to make the anti-smoking lobby choke on their chewing gum; it seems they’ve not only made smoking cool again, but they’ve also inadvertently removed some of those dirty little hang-ups that convinced many of us to stop in the first place. ‘I used to hate it when you’d sit around in a pub and it
was smoky and you’d come home at night with your clothes stinking,’
sighs Conlon. ‘But now you just pop out for a quick cigarette, meet
some quality people and have a laugh;’ the words egg and face spring
to mind. |
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