First, Bruno, who believes deeply in this great country, and is sure that all of these hookah bar owners can still be successful, if they only change the fundamental nature of their business:
"It's going to put the hookah out of business, not the bar," Bruno said. "If he (the owner) has a nice atmosphere and a good clientele, he can stay in business."Sure, he can, Tom. And I suppose if they take your law license
tomorrow you will, overnight, become a best-selling author. Not too likely, in either case.
Then we have Ken "I Want to Be Like Chicago" Pirok, who believes, like so many who live here, that we are a bunch of yokels who need to think and act more like the big city folk.
"A lot of people want us to remain a small town like we were 25 years ago," he said. "Everything we do fits together: establishing a (tax increment finance) district downtown, having a smoking ban and providing economic development funds to the (UI) research park. The long-term goal is to become bigger and more sophisticated and becoming a forward-looking city that will support a world-class university."Whether he knows it or not, Pirok has just pissed all over the small bar owners in the City of Champaign, and those who would patronize them.
Pirok's Message:
1. Being a small town is bad (being a 'big town' is good?)
2. Smoking in public places inhibits economic growth. (Someone should tell Charlotte or Raleigh-Durham, NC, which continue to experience exponential growth).
3. Champaign should aspire to be "sophisticated." (Like Paris, France?)
4. The act of imposing a smoking ban makes C-U "forward-looking," and will enable the cities to support a "world-class university." (Wow, I thought that C-U had been that way all along).
The real answer is that the Gang of Five got sucked in by political correctness, the concerted efforts of a few, and a desire (born out of a basic inferiority complex, I guess) to jump on the bandwagon).
I think that next they are going to make the metric system mandatory for all City of Champaign employees, to "catch up" with Europe.
