This couple must really like Brooklyn heights alot or crazy!!

Bloomberg will use this as an example of how great those tiny apartments will be in Manhattan. Hell, there's not enough room in there for a 32 ounce sugary drink.

+1 for you

Because they're not smart enough to realize that some stores will start offering BOGO of the smaller drinks but just charge more for it. They've been trying to stop people from smoking for four decades and still haven't made a dent.

Smoking cessation is one of my favorite public health efforts, and I love that Bloomberg and DOH have taken such a strong position on it.

armchair_warrior said:

Me thinks they should go see other hoods. way too small and way too much money. 240 fing 40ty sq feet!!!! for 1500 a month!!!

http://shine.yahoo.com/decorating/couple-lives-240-square-foot-apartment-213500626.html

While most people dream of having more space and complain about being overwhelmed by clutter, one Brooklyn couple has found a way to live comfortably in just 240 square feet -- a space smaller than a one-car garage.

Writer and photographer Erin Boyle, 28, and her fiance, biologist James Casey, 30, share a 240-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn Heights, which they described to the New York Post as "dungeon-esque."

"Our last apartment was in Providence, Rhode Island," Boyle told Yahoo! Shine in an interview. "It was probably around 1,000 square feet, though I admit, I never took a tape measure to it."

They moved to Brooklyn in June 2011, and their main living space -- which includes their kitchen, dining table, and living room -- is a mere 140 square feet. The $1,500-a-month studio also has tiny bathroom off to one side, a 4-square-foot closet in the hallway, and a sleeping loft built over the kitchen; a curtained-off closet is tucked beneath the steep staircase to the 10-by-6-and-a-half-foot loft, which is barely big enough for a double bed and a single dresser and impossible to stand upright in.

http://shine.yahoo.com/decorating/couple-lives-240-square-foot-apartment-213500626.html

This is not that far off, from people willing to walk up 6 flights of stairs with groceries/laundry, people willing to live in a basement apartment with no natural light and one tiny window, or to become a roommate and pay 900 to sleep in the livingroom of an apartment, all so that they can say the live in: Chelsea, Upper West Side, Williamsburg, Park Slope... you name the TONY type neighborhood.

PragmaticGuy said:

Re: the smoking graph that was posted. Yes, adult smoking has gone down by 33% but according to the graph it's attributable to the tax increases, not education. So, it's the cost factor not people caring about their own health that's causing this. Now, some people may say that the reason doesn't matter, just that the desired effect is happening. Well, adult smoking may be coming down in NYC but I see more teens doing it. I started smoking when I was 16 and quit when I was 23 because my then fiance asked me to. But, without that motivation I'd probably still be doing it. And lots of people don't have that motivation so even though there are less smokers I don't see Philip Morris going out of business anytime soon.

I think you're confusing causality with concurrency, implying more than just correlation on a timeline.

The tax dates on the map indicate when they were implemented, nothing more. There are separate articles out there showing the great success of all those tv spots and other advertising and advocacy. You know, all those disgusting ads showing dead and blackened lungs and the tragic ads showing people who now breathe and talk through their necks due to throat cancer, and the challenges they face in daily life.

Also, your experience is merely anecdotal of what you perceive as having noticed and in no way indicative of the wider trend across the state or US. I can post a teens decline graph too, if you want.

For my part anecdotally, I see wayyy less smoking, including folks who have quit, folks who smoke much less and folks who never want to pick it up.

But again, that's just my experience.