Posted on 01/09/2008 11:57:35 AM PST by ml/nj
The agitators met a few blocks from the target at a secret location, so as not to call attention to the devices in their bags.
They synchronized their watches. They reviewed the well-rehearsed game plan: If their bags were searched, the first operative, known as “Researcher 1 (female),” would say the device was for an asthma condition. If she was not allowed into the event with the device, she would activate Plan B: go to the ladies’ room and strap it to her body.
The man behind the subterfuge (Researcher 2, male) was Ryan David Kennedy, 34, a scrappy Canadian graduate student with crooked glasses who is studying the impact of tobacco on air quality.
He crossed the border at Buffalo on Monday morning and on Tuesday crashed the giant cigar party and trade show sponsored by the publisher of Cigar Aficionado magazine at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.
A nonsmoking vegetarian posing as a cigar lover, Mr. Kennedy was nervous. Canadians are, for the most part, known to be earnest, demure and very law-abiding.
“I think I’m being watched,” he said before the event, known as the Big Smoke, which drew hundreds of cigar lovers and peddlers into a ballroom on the hotel’s sixth floor. He said he strongly believed his room at the Marriott had been searched.
Mr. Kennedy, who holds a master’s degree in environmental science from the University of Waterloo in Ontario and is working on a doctorate in psychology there, soon found himself in the belly of decadence. The ballroom was swarming with stogies — Bolivar, Ashton, Don Tomas and a dozen other brands — whiskey, tequila and exotic dancers.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ML/NJ
I would say to them what pro-abortions say to pro-lifers, If you don’t like cigars don’t smoke them!
You know, as long as I refuse to participate in their state-run health insurance program, who are they to tell me how to die?
Seriously.
They should force him to hold a cigar. When he limply takes it in one weak-wristed, flabby, pasty white hand, you know you’ve got a liberal.
He should do a study on how long it would take someone to get a lung transplant in Canada. There was a thread about this earlier. I think open heart surgery is a several month wait.
Mr. Kennedy,... is working on a doctorate in psychology
The paranoiac with the messianic complex is working on his doctorate in psychology.
So a couple grad students use a university slush fund to pay for a weekend in New York, including expensive tickets to a swanky party, in exchange for collecting evidence that in a room full of cigar smokers, the air contains cigar smoke.
The only ones I feel bad for here are the fools who donate money to that university. They got suckered.
More nanny state whiners who don’t give a darn who’s freedoms they trample. If it’s not “for the children” its all about their “right” to clean air wherever they happen to stick their unwelcome head. I mean, they have to pay to get into this, so they paid to go to a cigar party. They could choose not to go, so they shouldn’t expect a smoke free environment for their sensitive little selves. sheesh
That and the whole “James Bond” attitude, like they are really in some danger aspect of it really is pathetic.
IBTCOP (In Before The Captain Obvious Pic)
ML/NJ
ML/NJ
I went to a Big Smoke in DC with a friend a few years back. It was great fun.You get bombarded with free cigars and liquor. Outside the ballroom was the big lobby and it went all the way up to the top floor(20 floors or so). It was so smoky in that lobby you could barely see the ceiling. I remember commenting to my buddy that I could never spend the night in this hotel with this event going on. And I love premium cigars.
Huh? Except for this guy, I guess....
Don't forget the company "representatives" in their classy long skirts! I've been to two Big Smokes. (both a long time ago)
ML/NJ
ML/NJ
I just received an invitation to go to CI’s CigarFest in May. Plenty of time to work on a suitable disguise to thwart these “00” moron types.
And the NYT wonders why their readership is going down the tubes.
Perhaps writing articles about vegetarian professors with agendas, that invade an event that is voluntary, that people actually PAY BIG MONEY to attend, and then take the angle that how dare the city allow this with all their smoking regulations.
Yeah, go ahead and keep publishing tripe like this, NYT. Your days are numbered.
Based on raw data it's a fact that cigar smokers live longer than non-cigar smokers. This might be due more to wealth than the health benefits of cigars but who knows for sure.
Paranoia is clue number 1 for drug abuse. He’s probably smoking a different kind of cigar.
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