We Didn't Know Smoking Was So Meta

By Jocelyn Geboy in News on Mar 21, 2006 7:01PM

It's not like we haven't talked about Marshall McGearty here. It's in our city. But McGearty has gotten plenty of press... and now press *about* the press.

First, the New York Times did an article in January (in archive, you must pay for whole article). Then yesterday, the Washington Post ran an article about Marshall McGearty. And to top off the weird circle of circles, Wonkette ran a post comparing the Times piece to the Post piece. Okay?

For a place that a bunch of people seem to think is doomed to fail, it's sure getting a lot of noise. However, we all know that any publicity is good publicity. But we think the bad stuff is undeserved.

We just had a year smober, but we are also horribly addicted to hype. We had been hearing so much about Marshall McGearty (really?) that even though we don't smoke, we had to go check it out. We were in love. The decor was great. Very luxurious and casual at the same time. How could that be, you ask?

Well, it was like you were at your rich friend's house who was able to spend money on nice things, but you weren't afraid to sit down and really enjoy yourself. Talk or read a book or play a game or write in your journal. Have a drink or a coffee or smoke some cigs. We'll be honest. Our smobriety was in slight peril, because we just wanted to lean back, have a chai tea and smoke a peach cigarette.

The thing that was noticeable (or wasn't) was that there wasn't any real smokiness. At the end of the evening, we got to chatting with an employee. We asked some questions. He said that the whole thing was fronted by RJR (we had been clueless) and that it was the only one of its kind in the country (we had no idea). He also told us that all of the air, front to back, was entirely recirculated every six minutes by a half-million dollar filtration system specially designed for them by two guys from NASA. Sweet. No wonder we weren't all teary eyed and feeling gross.

It was time to go home. It was midnight, and even though they had a liquor license until 2 am, they didn't want to create a bar atmosphere. Besides, that might tip the majority of their sales from tobacco into liquor, and they couldn't have that. We've read all the articles and just aren't sure that this concept is so doomed to failure. We don't even smoke, and we are interested in going back. We don't think we want to write about it anymore, though.