Gracie Mahoney Cassidy dressed in her patriotic best Saturday night, from the beaded American flag earrings to the strappy red sandals on her feet. On the bar next to her GPC Ultras and chilled Manhattan sat a stars-and-stripes baseball cap.
Cassidy picked up the cap and placed it at a jaunty angle atop perfectly coiffed white hair.
"It's the end of my liberty," she declared in a gravelly voice, leaning toward her husband as he lit her next cigarette.
Cassidy picked her red-white-and-blue ensemble with forethought, choosing to send a message about liberty, freedom and personal rights on the night when smokers lost the privilege to legally light up inside Anchorage bars.
Bernie Bradley, owner of the Bradley House, where the 70-something Cassidy met her husband four years ago, wore black for the occasion.
The look suited the mood, which as the clock ticked down to midnight vacillated from mournful to playful to whaddaya-gonna-do-about-it?
"It's the end of an era," a woman at the bar said.
And the beginning of air everyone can breathe.
As Saturday gave way to Sunday, smokers enjoyed their last gasp inside bars and bingo parlors across the city. A ban approved overwhelmingly by voters earlier this year will send them outdoors the next time they get a nicotine fit while knocking back a Budweiser.
Midway through the evening at the Bradley House, a bugler played taps while Bradley walked solemnly to the door, an American flag cradled in one arm.
She tore down the sign that had been posted ever since the city's restaurants went smoke-free in 2001, the sign saying the Bradley House is a smoking establishment -- something it could do because it's designated as a bar, not a restaurant, even though it's actually both.
Now a souvenir, the sign made the rounds at the bar as customers signed it. "June 30, 2007," one of them wrote. "In memory of our lost rights."
Later, people gathered outside near a new cedar building decorated with a big red ribbon. They applauded as Bradley cut the ribbon and opened the door, revealing a room where smokers can take shelter when it's cold and wet.
"After today you're gonna have to go out to a shack?" a nonsmoker asked Cassidy.
"Yep," she said.
"I'll come visit you there," he said.
Back inside the bar, Cheryl Contreras, caught up in the spirit of things, borrowed a Marlboro Light from a friend.
"This is my first cigarette in, like, 30 years," she said. "They put this ban in and made me smoke again. How healthy is that?"
Contreras voted against the ban even though she quit smoking when she was 24. Her friend Joelle Donovan would have voted against it too, except she's Canadian.
"That's why I'm becoming an American," Donovan said. "I want a voice. Laws like this scare me."
But as smoke drifted into the restaurant's towering ceiling, there was as much acceptance as anger.
"I'm 83 and I went through a lot of crap in my life," Gracie's husband, Bud, said. "I can get used to anything."
As an homage to what is being lost, diners were offered a complimentary cigarette or a piece of Nicorette gum at the end of their meals. A corner table offered a variety of cigars and pipe tobacco for sale.
Bud and Gracie each had a cigar, although Gracie prefers Mores, the long, slender brown cigarettes designed with women in mind. She likes them because when she's dancing, she can leave one in an ashtray and it will extinguish itself. A regular cigarette will burn all the way down.
"When I smoke these, I can dance four times and still have a cigarette," she said. "With the others, I dance once and have no cigarette."
As the hours wore on, Gracie and Bud left to go dancing and the late-crowd smokers replaced the early-crowd smokers. As the midnight ban neared, a man grumbled.
"June 30, 2007. The day Anchorage turned commie," he said.
With about 15 minutes to go, a woman bought a round for the house. She put down her cigarette and raised her cocktail glass. "Happy smoking ban!" she said, unenthusiastically.
At 11:55, bar manager Chuck Edwards got on the microphone.
"We have to stop you in five minutes. We're not happy about it, and if you're not happy about it, talk to Dan Coffey and Dick Traini," he said, referring to the Anchorage Assembly members who spearheaded the ban.
At midnight, about 15 people remained at the bar, all but three of them smoking.
"Hey folks," Edwards said, "I'm smoking a Cuban cigar, and if I have to put it out, you have to put yours out too."
After a few lighthearted boos, everyone snuffed their cigarettes into ashtrays destined to become artifacts, and a woman pondered which pleasure will be the next to go.
"Can I still drink?" she wondered.
Beth Bragg's opinion column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Her e-mail address is bbragg@adn.com.
