Vesper Club is smokin' mad
The private dining club, which moved this fall across the street, is facing a smoking ban.
Vesper Club is smokin' mad
Michael Klein, Philly.com
Has time caught up with the Vesper Club?
The old-guard Philly dining club was rousted from its Center City building a few months ago. It found a home across Sydenham Street, at the Racquet Club. It is now a tenant. The two clubs have separate dining facilities but share a bar.
This relationship does not seem to be working out. Vesper officials say that on Sept. 27, three weeks after they moved in, the Racquet Club instituted a smoking ban.
"They called it temporary," Vesper treasurer Ed Rhodes told me. But he is not sure about that.
The Vesper, as the club notified members in an email, is "under attack."
In its old quarters, the Vesper was one of the city's last bastions of quasipublic smoking. That the Vesper is chafing at a smoking ban carries some irony; in 1901, founders chartered it as a private Mummers club to allow it to circumvent the city's "blue" laws that banned alcohol sales on Sundays and Election Days. It became a private dining club in 1941, and more recently was granted a city exemption from smoking restrictions.
In the email, club officers say they understood that they would need to make some adjustments in their new quarters - "some positive and some not so positive. We packed up our kitchen, our furniture, and our staff and made the move across the street to our new home. All was well with the Racquet Club and the Vesper Club. Then without notice, without consideration, the Board of the Racquet Club of Philadelphia attacked the very fiber and tradition of the Vesper Club and unilaterally passed a smoke-free environment policy. This action has placed our club in a very tenuous financial position. Therefore, improved cash flow and member usage of the club is critical to our survival."
The email urges members to show their support for the club, which wants to regain its financial footing, by renewing their memberships and by patronizing the club.
The Vesper may be on the move again. Its old building (above) is on the market.
A Racquet Club rep was not immediately available for comment.
so it started out to circumvent the laws, and did for a long time. now they can't (because of a landlord situation.) am i missing something that makes it ironic?- Rules against smoking are not arbitrary infringements on constitutional rights. For one thing, there is no constitutional right to smoke (or any other right to do so). For another, even if there were such a right, smoking is a fatal habit that endangers the smoker and anyone who comes within range of the smoke he or she produces. This fact alone would subsume a constitutional right to smoke (if there were one, which there is not). If the owners and sharers of a shared facility do not want to suffer at the hands of those who engage in the disgusting and fatal habit of smoking, if the owners and sharers do not want to suffer with the mess and stink that smokers produce, surely that right goes with their ownership of the real estate involved.
The Vesper Club members should be grateful that someone is trying to protect them from themselves, even though the motive for the Racquet Club is to protect themselves. If a Racquet Club member wants to use club facilities and not to have to deal with the stink and mess, surely his (or her, are there any women members?) rights should govern.— BarbaraM - People die whether they smoke or don't smoke. There are many elderly people smoking. Smoking is not a fatal habit. It is an expensive habit.— agreed
- Wouldn't it make just as much sense to urge the members NOT to renew their memberships until this problem has been solved? They moved there in the expectation that they would continue to be allowed the freedom to smoke without being thrown out by the dumpsters to do it.
Vespers: Google "V.Gen5H" and print out "The Lies Behind The Smoking Bans" link at the top for your club members: maybe it'll help them get the ban reversed.
- MJM— Michael J. McFadden - sounds like a downlow club to me.— Captain Terrific
- The Vesper is a great place. I am a non smoker but I respect what they have had and want to continue. Let's lay off those that smoke please. The US had legal dope smoking states now, so let's not knock on those that may like an Ashton after a good meal, while we allow people to hit the bong while driving now.
As to what happened at the new place, I am hopeful that it all will get worked out. I chalk it up to growing pains, somewhat.— Poppys
