Metro

14 cig havens still smoking 10 years after Bloomberg’s ban

Here’s smoke in your eye, Nanny Bloomberg!

The city’s smoking ban may be more than a decade old, but at the 14 bars and clubs where lighting up is still legal, patrons happily puff like it’s 1999 — and fume about the ban-happy mayor.

“It’s our right!” declared Vietnam vet Richard Velez, 63, at the Bay Ridge American Legion hall in Brooklyn. “Who the hell is this one individual to come in and micromanage my life?”

Velez said he’d give Mayor Bloomberg a tall salute if he dared step foot in his club.

“I’d blow smoke in his face,” he huffed. “I can’t stand the jerk.”

Vets said they had an inalienable right to puff away.

“I’m 74 years of age, and I want to have a cigarette when I have my beer,” Bill Keegan said.

Since the ban was enacted in 2003, the number of smoker havens has remained “fairly consistent,” says the city Health Department, which exempted just seven establishments in its first year.

Bars that allow smokers need to have been in existence by Dec. 31, 2001, and at least 10 percent of their revenue must derive from tobacco or tobacco-related products. Veteran and fraternal groups are also exempt, provided they submit the paperwork.

Former smoker Gene Burch made sure members and their guests had the right to smoke inside American Legion Post 1424 in Forest Hills, Queens, which won its exemption in 2005.

“Some of us fought in wars. Why shouldn’t we have the right to smoke?” the Vietnam vet said.

In Sunset Park, Brooklyn, the feeling was mutual.

“The mayor should start cleaning up the homeless again and stop worrying about people’s private lives!” said Joan Nelson, social director of Sporting Club Gjøa, a Norwegian soccer club founded in 1911.

“It’s an inconvenience to have to go outside,” she said. “It’s also an insult to leave the room. I’m paying. I enjoy being able to sit here, have a cigarette and have a drink, too.”

About half of the members smoke in the club, which has an ionizer and two air-filtration devices.

“We are about to install a new one because, lately, it has been brought up that we’ve had an increase in smokers,” Nelson said.

Some smokers are finding ways into the fraternal organizations, which require sponsorships or other conditions for entry.

“As a smoker, I miss lighting up at the end of my meal,” said Mario Alonso, a construction worker who has been ducking into the Maltese Club in Astoria after work for the past year.

“Smokers are apt to find a location they can light up and do everything everyone else does.”

DEFIANT: Peter Kreemajer, Bill Keegan and Richard Velez at the Bay Ridge American Legion hall.

DEFIANT: Peter Kreemajer, Bill Keegan and Richard Velez at the Bay Ridge American Legion hall. (J.C. Rice)