Suddenly, at midnight last night, Carson Street on the South Side wasn't nearly as level as it used to be.

That's because the Allegheny County smoking ban that went into effect made it illegal to light up a cigarette in the bigger bars while some smaller bars -- those with fewer than 10 employees that make less than 10 percent of their revenue through food sales -- were able to get an exemption.

	Bill Wade, Post-Gazette Dee's Cafe ower Bill Martin has a waiver for his bar on the South Side for the county ban on smoking. Click photo for larger image.

"The owner told me we have to comply, at midnight we have to pull the ashtrays," said Mike Festa, a bartender at Jack's, one of the city's more popular big bars on the South Side. "At five till 12, we're going to shut the jukeboxes off and tell everybody, 'You're not allowed to smoke no more.' "

It was a prospect, he said, he wasn't looking forward to facing.

"I'm going to have to ask them to leave very nicely and if they don't leave, we're going to have to call the police," he said of confronting smokers who defy the ban. "I'll be calling 911 every 30 seconds."

Few bar owners have expressed happiness with the smoking ban.

Even Bill Martin, who owns Dee's Cafe, which is among the 53 bars and clubs that were posted on the Health Department's Web site last night as having been granted waivers to the smoking ban, remains adamantly opposed to it.

"Everybody that comes in here smokes cigarettes. We get nonsmokers, but that's their choice at the door," said Mr. Martin, who has owned Dee's for 28 years and is opposed the ban on principle. "We're exercising freedom of choice. They have the choice not to come in."

And while smokers will still be able to light up in his bar, he expressed sympathy for those coming under the ban.

"They have to consider what the South Side is. It's bar after bar after bar," he said. "And who's going to police this? The bar? We can't keep people from peeing on the street."

Valentina Perri, 27, of the South Side, a customer at The Smiling Moose, has been smoking since she was 14. She didn't realize the ban was only hours away and didn't know what she would do if and when she suddenly couldn't smoke.

"It's going to be horrible to have to go outside every couple of minutes to grab a cigarette," she said. "I mean, you're sitting there with your friends, you're having a conversation and things are going good. That's part of the reason you're sitting in a bar, so you can have that whole social interaction. Now, if you have to stop and go outside to have a cigarette, it kind of breaks things up."

Miss Perri said she has been to bars that promoted smoke-free Saturdays, and she ended up leaving. She's likely, she said, to head for the smaller bars where smoking is permitted.

"Ultimately, it might just mean taking all my friends to my house, where we can sit around and smoke and not have to worry about it," she said.

But Stacie Steenson, day manager at The Smiling Moose, said she can't imagine how the county is going to make the ban work.

"This is what people come here for," she said. "It's after work, they're smoking, they're drinking. That's what people come here for. Look around here. Everybody in here right now has a butt in their hand. I'd say 95 percent of my customers smoke."

Jason Shank, a manager at 1311, a bar on the other side of Carson Street, said he'd been asking regulars what they thought. Most of the customers, he said, indicated the ban wouldn't stop them from coming.

His bar, like The Smiling Moose, applied for but has not yet received a waiver on the smoking ban.

"We're going to pull the ashtrays and enforce it until we get the go-ahead. We're going to enforce it, because it's not worth it to us to take that chance," Mr. Shank said.

"It will hurt us, definitely, if some bars enforce it and some don't. But our customers don't come in here just to smoke. There's more to going out than just smoking."