Please check out ChopStix!

I just found out that Keep St. Louis Free friend County Councilman Hazel Erby has a son and daughter-in-law now in the restaurant business. Louis and Salina Erby opened an Asian restaurant, ChopStix, last April. Their restaurant is located at 8021 West Florissant, Ste B, previously Northland Shopping Center. They are on the strip with U. S. Cellular, the Police Substation, and Congressman Clay's office, facing Schnucks and Target.

ChopStix has been nominated for "Best Chinese Restaurant in St. Louis" by the Riverfront Times. They will also be featured on Great Day St. Louis, on Channel 4 around the 23rd of this month. After my wife and I have dinner at ChopStix, hopefully this week, we will go to www.riverfronttimes.com and click on the big red box on the top left corner that says “voting best of 2008”.

Hazel Erby has proven a great friend of St. Louis bars and restaurants. It is great that her children are now in the restaurant business! Keep St. Louis Free needs to promote and support ChopStix as much as possible. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

rBar's decision to allow smoking with air filtration registers in Wisconsin.

From the Ban the Ban Wisconsin blog:

"Keep in mind that Corey Lawson (and member of the Smoke-Free St. Louis Coalition) had initially opened “rBar” as a non-smoking establishment, and had to close it because of lack of business.

Also, a source in St. Louis has informed us that Corey is admitting that he is installing air filtration technology to address the health risks of secondhand smoke in his bar. In other words, this member of the Smoke-Free St. Louis Coalition believes that modern air filtration (like the ones sold at Marth Brothers) does indeed filter out the “dangerous” chemicals in secondhand smoke.

We’ve also heard rumblings that the American Cancer Society is getting nervous because air filtration is becoming well-known and supported, and the St. Louis press is turning on the anti-smoking movement. Nervous? Why? If air filtration works, shouldn’t the ACS be supporting the installation of these air-cleaners?

If you’re from St. Louis, please support Corey’s new bar, “AM Lounge”, and let us know how how his air filtration system is working. We’d love to hear from you, especially if you’re a non-smoker."

http://banthebanwisconsin.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/big-news-update-on-rbar-in-st-louis/

Kuneman: 40 Secondhand Smoke Studies Find No Risk!

A great West County Journal post by Keep St. Louis Free spokesman David Kuneman:

Over 40 studies on Pub Med, which is the National Library of Medicine's online database, find no harm from SHS. One, published by Lawrence Garfinkel, who at the time was the Vice President of Epidemiology and Statistics for the American Cancer Society, found no risk. It was a huge study conducted over a 20-year time span. It is the type called a cohort study. Those kind identify huge groups of volunteers (all healthy) who describe their SHS exposure, and then the researchers recontact those individuals over time, to see if more of the exposed group got sick than the control group. Those kind of studies rarely find any risk from SHS. The kind the antismokers conduct ask nonsmokers who are sick and those who are not sick about their SHS exposure. If more who rate themselves as heavily exposed are sick than those who are ligthly exposed, then they claim SHS is risky. This type is easy to cherry pick because the researcher knows the outcome ahead of time. Since these researchers need to please their funding sources, which are the antismoking groups, that's why they can mislead you, and the media, by claiming most studies provide as you stated "overwhelming evidence". What is missed here, is that the quality of your evidence is low- ours is high.

http://westcountyjournal.stltoday.com/articles/2008/08/26/news/sj2tn20080826-0827web-smoke0.ii1.txt

Kuneman on Repace and ventilation

I know air filtration experts read this blog everyday. I wish they would also read this post on David Kuneman's web page carefully and, if possible, comment. Kuneman points out that ventilation, even according Repace data, reduces smoke to a level which would not pose a hazard.

http://kuneman.smokersclub.com/ASHRAE.html

AM Lounge will feature air filtration.

Corey Lawson tells me that his new place, AM Lounge, will have "smoke eaters throughout the venue to filter smoke and toxins." Any St. Louis bar that invests in the air filtration technology that allows everyone to have a good time is worth checking out. I hope every St. Louisan who reads this blog will stop by AM Lounge as soon as it opens.

Flagship Smoke-Free St. Louis City bar sinks. rBar renames and allows smoking.

The Forest Park Southeast bar rBar, which closed a few weeks ago, was a member of the Smoke-Free St. Louis coalition. Corey Lawson, who was one of the owners, said rBar supported the coalition because it was something that appealed to the people in their 20s who frequented rBar.

Lawson also said he would support an indoor-smoking ban in St. Louis city. “If I had it my way, it would be ‘no smoking’ just because of the work conditions,” said Lawson. “No one likes to work twelve hours a night in smoke. But you have to do it — it’s business.”

Lawson’s bar will reopen as AM Lounge, a late-night lounge and nightclub that will be open from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. The new concept, Lawson said, doesn’t work as a smoke-free environment.

“What we’ve learned in the last two years is that when you have earlier hours [as rBar did], the non-smoking is very important to people,” said Lawson. But, he said, people who don’t usually smoke often like to do so when they’re out drinking late at night.

http://www.westendword.com/NC/0/1039.html

Top County Libertarian expects to win fight against any St. Louis smoking ban.

"Over the last few years, Bill Hannegan has always been in the thick of the fight to protect the rights of citizens and business owners, and Libertarians have always stood with him in that fight. I expect that Libertarians will fight shoulder to shoulder with Keep St. Louis Free against the latest smoking ban proposal -- and I expect that we'll win."

Tom Knapp, chair of St. Louis County Libertarian Central Committee, just made this statement.
The next meeting of the St. Louis Libertarian Party happens soon and I will be there to report on the smoking ban situation.