Clear the Air

And: "I have more time to date now."

But if JR's has lost the high-frequency loyalty of Semmes and the like, the bar has made up for it with a new -- or maybe old -- breed of customer.

"We're seeing customers we haven't seen in a while," Abbas Alwazir says. "They've been coming back, and they walk in and say, 'Oh, my God. I haven't been in here for two, three, four years.' They'd liked the atmosphere, but they didn't come because it was smoky."

Alwazir, who has worked behind the bar at JR's for two years, was opposed to the ban. For 11 years, he'd been a pack-a-day smoker, and it seemed a pain to have to take a break and go outside for a cig.

"I didn't want the change, and customer-wise I thought we'd take a hit," Alwazir says. Now, 3 1/2 months later, he has cut down to half a pack and has changed his mind about the ban. It's economics. "When I started counting out my tips, they were the same, maybe even a little higher."

Which might make Brian Jones want to start looking for a new gig. He has been bartending down the street at the Fox & Hounds for nine years, and he's loyal to the place, but loyalty hasn't been very lucrative of late: He says his tips have dropped off by half since January.

And it's not even that there are fewer people in the bar -- it's just that they're different people.

"The old clientele would come in and stay for the night. The new clientele doesn't stay as long; they definitely don't tip as much. They come in and have one or two glasses of wine before dinner," Jones says, balancing four glasses and a couple of plates at happy hour in the neighborhood bar. "One of our regulars would be worth five of these new customers."

That is not to say he doesn't appreciate the patronage of folks like Vivian Acosta, who is sitting outside with two friends, with a glass of wine and goose bumps on her legs. Acosta is a social smoker who has mixed feelings about the ban. On one hand, it has been kind of a drag to go outside and freeze every time she wants a cigarette, but on the other, it has made her cut down, which is good, and has actually opened up some new imbibing options for her group.

"There were bars that I definitely wouldn't go to before, because they were so smoky. And now I'll go there," agrees Acosta's friend Kristy Bible, who only worries that alfresco eating will be ruined this spring because smokers will be monopolizing outdoor patios all over town.

That's just fine with Marc Eber at My Brother's Place, tucked off Constitution Avenue NW just before the Capitol. Better the puffers go anywhere else than this bar, which "always smells like beer," but at least doesn't smell like day-old ash and beer anymore. Last winter, Eber, who has been bartending there for 2 1/2 years, got bronchitis three times. Once it turned into pneumonia. This year he has barely had a cold, and it doesn't seem like the ban has stopped anyone from coming in for the bar's $15 "all you can drink" special on Saturday nights.

"People can just step outside," he says flatly. "It's a social thing, too, because all the smokers can band together and talk about how much they hate the smoking ban, maybe."