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Inside, with a cigarette in his left hand and a beer in his right, Raker is enjoying each drag of his stoge, because he knows it's a last hurrah of sorts. When Raker returns to The Big Hunt after winter break, he'll have to smoke that cigarette on the street, ending D.C. smokers' happy tradition of smoking in their favorite bars.
"Smoking while drinking - it's really great. It goes together," Raker said as he lights up a Marlboro Blend 27. Like many other smokers who enjoy social smoking, Raker said the habit is an integral way to occupy his hands and mouth in social situations where, without a cigarette, one might feel strained to find something to say or do.
"It's the combination of having something to do with your hands and this great buzz that comes with it," he said. "After the ban, I don't know, I'll probably smoke slightly fewer cigarettes just because it will become a hassle. I might play with my worry beads instead," he adds, pulling out a string of playful-looking beads he bought in Greece, that are meant to occupy restless hands.
Starting in January, when students return to campus to begin their spring semester, the old romanticized stigma of the smoke-filled bar will become a thing of District's past.
Last January, the D.C. City Council almost unanimously passed the smoking ban, applying it to all restaurants, bars and nightclubs in the city, in an effort to increase public awareness on the effects of secondhand smoke and to make D.C.'s indoor atmospheres a little cleaner.
Raker, who has asthma, said he will probably benefit from the ban in the long run.
"Smoking itself is not necessarily worth it. With asthma, and after smoking for four years, my lungs are crap," he said. "But I plan to quit, and that's my personal choice that the government should have no role in."
