BBC 6music news reported this evening that KOKO, Camden Town’s premiere indie-club-gig place and home of Club NME, is planning to introduce smoking rations for those undisciplined weaklings who’ve been unwilling or unable to kick the filthy habit by 1 July.
Under a new scheme, on club nights only (we assume gigs present too many security issues) those wishing to smoke will be generously granted 7 minute fag breaks outside - but none of this indelible black stamp on the back of your hand business. No. Re-entry will be subject to fingerprinting. Yup.
Whilst applauding the establishment's creative thinking around accommodating the smoking clientele we can’t help feeling that this may be unnecessarily draconian. Have the staff been watching too much CSI? Images of smokers emerging from the sweat-box, dusted for prints and clocked into battery-style smoking pens only to be ejected a strict 7 minutes later and verified by handscan before being allowed back to the dancefloor seem ludicrous, surely?
A representative of the nearby and altogether more chilled out Dublin Castle was heard to suggest that such measures might “annoy” people. We're pretty sure they’re right but await further confirmation before sending in our guinea pig and passing judgement.
Image courtesy of DrunkenMonkey's Flickrstream.
