Smirting
Sinds het aantal steden en staten in de VS dat rookverboden voor de horeca heeft ingesteld toeneemt, is er een nieuw woord in zwang geraakt: Smirting. Het woord verwijst naar de opkomende gewoonte om met rokers, die gedwongen buiten staan te roken, te flirten.
Op deze manier worden, volgens dit artikel, veel nieuwe contacten opgedaan en nieuwe relaties geboren. En rokers beginnen steeds meer onderling te spreken over wat hun in hun rol als roker overkomt.
“They are defiant and angry, they don’t buy the second-hand smoke argument, and want to share this grudge with someone else.”
Hoe rokend Amerika van de nood een deugd maakt…. En misschien wel een machtige tegenbeweging op gang begint te komen…
Single Americans who don’t like hunting for dates online have a new venue to meet a mate face to face: outside bars. With the introduction of stringent smoking laws in many states across the country – including Delaware, New York and California – and in 1,675 municipalities, smokers are being forced onto the streets, and in some cases, into the arms of a loving partner.
The old pick-up line “Do you have a light?” remains a common icebreaker outside bars and nightclubs. In San Diego, Los Angeles, New York and other cities, some of the 46.2 million American smokers, who comprise 22.8 percent of the population, can be found loitering on sidewalks, cigarettes in hand, chatting and often checking out potential partners.
A new term has appeared among daters to describe the outdoors smoking and flirting phenomenon: Smirting.
“I could pick up more chicks smoking outside than staying inside,” said Matt Nucci, drawing on a Parliament cigarette. “It’s like when you’re at college, you stand outside the library and get to talk to people,” said the 31-year-old toy designer in front of a bar in Manhattan’s East Village.
A bond instantly forms among this exiled community, said Pepper Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington in Seattle. “They are defiant and angry, they don’t buy the second-hand smoke argument, and want to share this grudge with someone else.”
