Go to a bar and not light up a cigarette? Manhattan has had a summer shocker with the mayor's proposal to choke the smoke.
I have met them at close of day, coming with vivid faces from the tower blocks of Manhattan, lingering awhile to light up and inhale deeply before plunging into the subway depths.
They are the harassed smokers of New York whose lives are being changed utterly by Michael Bloomberg.
The city's new mayor is making August a taxing month for lovers of tobacco. He started by doubling the $1.50 tax on a packet, so 20 cigarettes today cost $7, double the US national average. This has hit social conventions. The person who tries to bum a smoke at a party gets weird looks. Taking a cigarette from someone's almost-empty pack is like inviting yourself to dinner and then staying the night, fumed Tim Geary in the New York Times, who suggests smoking vacations to France.
Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, or CLASH, turned up to protest at the signing of Bloomberg's new tax bill in the form of police officer Audrey Silk from Brooklyn's 67th Precinct. She wore a tee-shirt saying "Smoking Section" across the front. What if she started a campaign to tax the peanut butter and bacon he likes so much because it might kill him, she asked the mayor.
But Bloomberg, who thinks smoking is "stupid", has little to fear. A CLASH meeting in the Ashford Arms pub in Marine Park, Brooklyn, attracted just four people: Audrey, Deb (65), Deb's husband Irv (73), and Irv's sister Marlene (68), according to Herb Allen of the New Yorker. Irv didn't light up because he had emphysema and quit 30 years ago.
Now Bloomberg has really shocked New York smokers by asking the city council to prohibit lighting up in all bars and restaurants, and this time he might have more than Audrey and her gang of four to worry about.
A year ago when city council speaker Peter Vallone ran for mayor and proposed a similar ban, full-page ads appeared in the city's Irish newspapers and magazines accusing him of an economic attack on Irish-Americans, who, as is well known, own a lot of bars and restaurants in the city. The bar owners are again organising.
As things stand, it is already difficult for addicts to indulge their habit in New York's public places. Smoking is banned in all private offices with three or more people, and in all public buildings. When guests come to dine, smokers gratefully head for our tiny balcony, and not to admire the view. Even private homes are risk zones: a 13-year-old recently sued his mother, complaining about her smoking in the apartment.
In the new terminal used by Aer Lingus at Kennedy Airport smoking is only permitted in a bar where patrons must buy a drink before lighting up, so a single smoke costs travellers several bucks.
Cigarettes have long ago been banished from city restaurants that do not have drinks-only bar counters; smokers must seek out restaurants with indoor bars, or with pavement tables where one in four will have ash trays, or places with less than 35 seats which are exempt.
If Bloomberg has his way they may have to turn to a concoction known as Nico Water, advertised as "a convenient nicotine beverage for when you can't or don't want to smoke". He is being urged to go further by the anti-smoking lobby. Joe Cherner, president of anti-smoking group SmokeFree Educational Services, wants smoking banned in parks and on beaches, too.
The opposition hope to make Bloomberg butt out, however. By and large New Yorkers aren't as strung up about health as Californians and the Big Apple has thousands of bars where lighting up over a drink is part of the culture. There could be public disobedience, just like in prohibition days.
Already Bloomberg's new tax is being circumvented. New Yorkers can log on to Indiansmokesonline.com, which is a cut-price tobacco store in Salamanca on an upstate Indian reservation where taxes are not collected, and have cheap cigarettes delivered.
Or they can drive to the Original Poospatuck Smoke Shop and Trading Post near Mastic on Long Island, located on a 55-acre patch of sovereign territory left to the Unkechaug Nation of Indians in the 17th century, and stock up there.
They can then casually offer cigarettes around at a party - and make a really big impression as a high roller in recession-hit New York.