Text and Photographs by Stephen Harmon
Perhaps it was the evocative scenes of smoke-filled nightclubs and pool halls I saw in black-and-white movies as a kid. Perhaps it was the fact that I started smoking before I was a teenager and did not stop until I was twenty-eight. Perhaps it was the fact that my father smoked three packs a day most of his life. Whatever the reason, I was always fascinated by the way a person looks lighting a cigarette, smoking a cigarette, holding a cigarette, or letting it dangle from their lips. I love the way men make love to their cigars.
The war against cancer-causing cigarettes started in the 1960s without much success, so that in the 1970s and 1980s there were still many, many smokers on the streets of the Upper West Side and all over the city. I was able to preserve the look of these people through candid photos and direct portraits (as in the first photo), and at the same time indulge my fascination and capture the look of the UWS where I was encountering the smokers. Here are a few of many, many photos from those vanished times.
Stephen Harmon is a longtime Upper West Sider, a retired lawyer, and a world-class photographer whose work is displayed in many of the city’s museums, including The Museum of the City of New York, The Brooklyn Museum, The New-York Historical Society, and The New York Public Library.
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We all smoked and in he movies, even the good girls smoked.
Not all, by a long shot.
No, actually, we all *didn’t*. Some of us just suffered silently (COUGH! COUGH!) through the stink caused by those of you who did.
Outstanding stuff!
I was a smoker on the UWS during the ‘seventies and ‘eighties, and the gentrification of many of our neighborhoods coincided, not coincidentally, with the disappearance of these street scenes with cigarettes. I love these photos and think back to Jean Paul Belmonte, in another city, looking at a movie poster of a screen idol, cigarette dangling from both pairs of lips, murmuring “Bogie.”
I continue to be astonished at how the tobacco cartels have turned this addictive, disease-causing (and anti-social) habit into a cultural requirement. How many illnesses, how many deaths, did Belmondo (not “Belmonte”) cause with his dangling cigarette?
How many pre-teens — like our beloved photog Mr. Harmon (and thank you for this continuing gallery) — were seduced into this deadly addiction by those artificial cultural icons?
And will it ever end?
Now every young person vapes non-stop while staring at their phones for hours on end (also quite anti-social).
Truly fabulous photos!
What a gifted photographer and what a gift you bring to us with these memories of the UWS.
Where are the pipes? I recall seeing some men (and a very few women) smoking pipes in earlier eras. Our neighborhood is older than the cigarette era, which expanded with World War I (soldiers provided with cigarettes) and the Jazz Era of the 1920s. And people from pipe-smoking cultures like Ireland settled here. Photos of pipe smokers please!
Yes, let’s further romanticize individuals’ decisions to poison their own lungs and pollute the air for everyone around them! How charming! How attractive!
Or, um, maybe let’s not. Smoking — anything — is a foul habit for anyone around you, especially those who haven’t volunteered to immerse in your exhaust. Let’s not encourage it.
Please.
There are some excellent shots in here.
Chilling to think that these people were all addicted to a substance that was doing its best to kill them, though.
The photos are great, as usual. The smoking was disgusting, especially if you were in a restaurant sitting to next a table of smokers or, even worse, in the middle of tables with smokers. Thankfully, I believe Bloomberg put an end to that. If I’m incorrect, I’m sure someone will chime in.
Ahoy! Actually, what got the ball rolling was L.L. 1988/002, signed into law January 7, 1988, by Ed Koch and taking effect April 6. Enacted after seven years of debate (odd how public health can be so controversial…), it concerned smoking in enclosed public places. I’ll be happy to claim some small credit for its passage, having relentless and vociferously objected to smoking in my presence for nearly a decade by that time. Wrote the NYT a few months later, “The law has been accepted, according to health experts, public officials, smokers and nonsmokers, because it reflects these widespread changes in attitude, which have left many smokers ashamed of their habit and compliant to the wishes of nonsmokers.”
Next came the NYC Smoke-Free Air Act, signed into law January 10, 1995, by none other than America’s Mayor. It limited smoking to designated “smoking” areas in several public spaces and commercial buildings. NYC Smoke-Free commented, “These policies go a long way in lowering smoking rates and protecting non-smokers. In 1991, 88% of non-smokers had measurable levels of cotinine in their bodies, a product formed after nicotine enters the body and used as a biomarker for secondhand smoke exposure. By 2012, that number had fallen to 25% of non-smokers.”
Still more recently, the Smoke Free Air Act (SFAA) of 2002 protects the health of NYC workers against the harmful effects of second-hand smoke by making virtually all workplaces smoke-free, and the New York State Clean Indoor Air Act (CIAA) of 2004 imposed State restrictions on smoking indoors.
May the march of civilization long continue!
If you want to thank an individual for seeding the activist anti-smoking movement, thank Professor John Banzhaf and Action on Smoking and Health (“ASH”), the not-for-profit he started in 1967. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Banzhaf .
Some of you, especially those who survived the oppressive tobacco cloud of the 1960s and ’70s, may remember when the FCC required television stations to present anti-smoking public service messages to balance against the romantic cigarette commercials that were everywhere. That was Banzhaf.
Remember when airlines were finally required to set aside seats for non-smokers, at around the same time? That was also Banzhaf (working with Ralph Nader). There were no non-smoking sections of anything, anywhere, at the time. Banzhaf got legitimacy for the breathing needs of non-smokers.
New York City did a lot to further the protections of air-breathers, as nicely described by ecm above. But it was Banzhaf who first demanded — and got — the attention of regulators.
Thank you for posting. Banzhaf does indeed deserve our eternal gratitude for his heroic work at the national level. My focus was confined merely to local legislation. (If L.L. 1988/002 had come along a few years earlier, I would likely have remained longer at a handful of jobs….)
Great pictures– Where was ” Clifford’s Lounge” ? Great awning , great signage – Would have loved to have had a drink there.
Beyond doubt, it was at 151 West 72nd Street. The business above is Nelson’s School of Self-Defense.
There was a Clifford’s Lounge in Brooklyn.
Ah, the good old days of freedom to smoke.
Those days are still with us, stan. What has changed is that we no longer so readily confuse the right to harm oneself with a license to harm random bystanders. Freedom, except perhaps on the proverbial desert island, carries responsibility.
So nicely said!
Ah, the good *new* days of freedom to walk down the street, to eat in a restaurant, to enjoy life *without* being overwhelmed by someone else’s smoke.
As was said long ago, but largely ignored by those addicted, “your right to smoke ends at my nose”.
Wow you really want to hit people over the head. People are reminiscing about a period where they had a good time. You might want to go on a campaign now about second hand weed smoke
Interesting that the photos are mostly men smoking. There were certainly plenty female smokers in thsoe years. I was one of them for a very long time
Great pictures and memories. everybody smoked and read newspapers. And men over a certain age wore hats.
Good God, how awful. I still remember those awful asthma inducing stinks. People even smoked at work, perhaps especially at work. I remember how delighted companies were when smoking was banned inside – no smoking saved them zillions of dollars in upkeep and fire prevention. Aside from the heath impairments! Smoking killed a close friend of mine – cancer. I find nothing remotely interesting about smokers era – today it is a shock to see a person actually smoking, as one sometimes does on the street. Good bye to a revolting and killing (literally) habit – addiction would be more like it.
Outstanding!
When I am walking behind a smoker now it’s all I can do not to buttonhole them and say “haven’t you heard of vaping?”
Great photos, much appreciated!
Sometimes I miss smoking so much!
I remember stepping into one of the OTB (off-track betting) parlors, and nearly every patron (all fedora-donning older men) was puffing on a cigar, betting form in hand while watching the horse races on the B&W TVs.
Reflected in the GOWANS window one sees the Astor Apartments across Broadway — and the photographer.
This decade you can get photos of everyone smoking pot even the 13 year old children. Pot today smells worse then cigarette smoke, the whole city smells like a skunk.
Thank good ness I never smoked, I would have been an addict in an instant. But I would have had that cool, cinematic flare. Great pix!!!
Cell Phones are the new smoking.
Holding a phone up to someone to show them something is the new blowing smoke in someone’s face.
Be sure to get lots of equally great pictures for 40 years from now!
In the photo of the gent in black suit & cap, behind him one catches a glimpse of Skouras Finest (only the “FINEST” is visible), the fruit & vegetable market at the intersection’s SW corner that lasted until ~2006. Anyone else remember it? And down Broadway from there a few paces was Dina/Universal News, a magazine Mecca (which also carried cigarettes, alas) back in the heyday of print.
Skouras sold fresh-squeezed orange juice over the sidewalk counter. Hard to forget!
Non smoker now for years and still a little embarrassed for self righteous, smug comments made in an effort, I suppose, to remain superior. Good heavens. Time to move on to carnivore bashing and fat shaming?
How do I get in touch with the photographer. I would love to see more and buy work by him. Thank you
Ahhh the memories…….There is a woman that lives in my building and Years ago I remember her lighting up in the elevator-a very small elevator at that !!!!! The Unmitigated Gall of an addicted Smoker.
Another great post, thank you!