BLOOMINGTON - Today is the last day to light up in restaurants and taverns in the Twin Cities due to an indoor, public-place smoking ban.

Sort of.

Restaurant and tavern owners in Bloomington had until Friday to request a temporary exemption while making plans to build, expand or renovate outdoor patio areas. The exemption lasts until the approved project is completed or until July 1, whichever comes first.

The town of Normal has a similar ban also starting Monday, but with no exemptions, as does unincorporated McLean County.

Patrons expressed diverse opinions Saturday at two pubs in downtown Normal, which town officials are now calling uptown.

"It will feel really strange," said Matt Mills of Normal, a smoker who sat inside Maggie Miley's, an Irish-style pub.

"It seems to me a tavern would be one place where you could light a cigarette," said Mills, who thinks the ban will not dissuade smokers. "Most smokers will go outside."

Maggie Miley's has a smoking and nonsmoking area, so Mills noted that nonsmokers already have a choice.

Others seemed unopposed to a ban on indoor smoking.

"That's OK - I don't smoke in my house anyway," said Kelly Hatzer, a smoker from Joliet who is trying to quit.

She was at Pub II with her husband, Scott, on Saturday. Normally, she doesn't smoke inside but did so because they spent a couple of hours there.

"How about it sucks - its kinda sums it up," said Star Prochnow as she sat with her friend, Mike Edwards, at Maguire's Bar & Grill in downtown Bloomington. Both are smokers.

"Where is it going to stop? It's just the idea our rights are being taken away," Prochnow said.

Edwards is worried about litter from cigarette butts and drinks being carried outside, which could create headaches for business owners.

"They shouldn't tell Mike how to run his business," said customer Scott Brittin, Bloomington, referring to Mike Hill and his wife, Rachelle, who own Maguire's.

The Hills are both nonsmokers and agree with Brittin. They are worried about the ban's effect on their business, which is landlocked with no parking lot to convert into a beer garden.

"This business pays our livelihood," said Rachelle Hill. Mike Hill said since the smoking ban went in effect in Springfield in August, tavern business there is down 40 percent in the city's downtown. But business is up dramatically in the rural areas, he said, and without buses or taxis, people drink and drive.

With 17 bars in downtown Bloomington with a capacity of 5,000, that adds up to a lot of people going outside to smoke on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, Mike Hill said. That means more noise and litter and the worry of open alcohol outside, he said.

Hill said he'd rather see Bloomington police arresting serious criminals instead of monitoring indoor smoking.

"We might as well hire Wackenhut," Hill said, referring to the private security services company.