“Where’s the fun gone in this city?” I overheard a guy groaning in my deli last week. “If they’re going to ban smoking in bars, can they at least put the cocaine back in Coca-Cola?”

“If I’d wanted to live somewhere uptight,” he added, “I would have moved to L.A.”

I couldn’t help but agree.

Why is this hedonistic city – whose unofficial motto is “anything goes” – even considering a proposal to ban smoking in bars and possibly parks?

When I transferred to New York almost two years ago, I fell in love with the city’s open-minded attitude, especially compared to London.

Here I could rollerblade down Fifth Avenue in a pink hula skirt and no one would sneer. Here, my gay girlfriends can kiss in the street and no one raises an eyebrow. Here, I’m not treated like a suspicious impostor when I walk into an unfamiliar bar.

“New York is so liberating,” I often boast to my English friends back home. Now I’m not so sure.

I don’t even smoke, and many of my friends, facing their 30s, have given it up.

But there’s still something deeply depressing about living in such a cool, vibrant, spontaneous place, and then being hit over the head with uptight, killjoy rules.

The other night I was in an open-air bar, Braque, in the West Village. It was a balmy Friday evening, and four friends and I were drinking Coronas, watching the world go by.

Classic New York down-time.

My friend Josh chuckled at someone’s joke, took a content swig of his beer and lit up a Lucky Strike.

“Sorry, no smoking,” said a stern waiter, interrupting our conversation.

Josh got up, bottle in hand, to take the cigarette outside.

“Sorry, no drinks can leave the bar,” insisted the waiter.

It was the beginning of the weekend – and suddenly we were back in high school.

These days, I often find myself in restaurants where you can’t even light up at the bar. So instead of being able to enjoy a long, easygoing meal with smoker friends, they all start itching to get out the door as soon as we’ve finished our entrees.

I don’t blame my pals for their addiction – why should I? It’s legal.

Instead, I feel angry about being exposed to other people’s judgment about the ways people choose to enjoy themselves.

Sure, I know all the arguments about passive smoking. But nobody can deny there are plenty of smoke-free havens in New York.

And if we really cared about our lungs (not to mention the health of the rest of the planet), why aren’t we putting all our energy into reducing the poison of car fuel emissions?

My fury at the uptightness of anti-smoking rules makes me think enviously of places like Spain and France, where people chain-smoke practically everywhere.

I always get a thrill when I arrive at a Spanish airport and see people lighting up as they wait for their luggage.

You feel as if you’ve been transported to a place where people have better things to do than police each other’s behavior.

My parents always told me it isn’t cool to smoke.

Forgive me, Mom and Dad, but thanks to draconian Mayor Bloomberg, now I think it is.