A quick and dirty survey of the smoke-free landscape produced only three cigarette machines  one in Manhattan and two in Queens  that date back to the technology of the century past, with the levers that are pulled to bring forth a pack of cigarettes. Are there perhaps more than three? It is hard to say without inspecting every single bar. But if so, the New York City Department of Finance, which requires licenses for cigarette machines, does not know about them.

Image John McAleese, the owner of J. Mac’s on West 57th Street, two (uphill) blocks from the nearest deli. “If my customers leave at night for cigarettes,” he said, “they never come back.” Credit... Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

For the old machines still in use, life has gone on without pause or fanfare since the ban. There is one in J. Mac’s, an old bar in the old Hell’s Kitchen named for its 68-year-old Irish owner, an old man in this racket, John McAleese. “You can’t buy cigarettes around here,” he said from the bar, which is near the Hudson River, almost two blocks  all uphill  from the nearest deli on 10th Avenue. “If my customers leave at night for cigarettes, they never come back.”

His machine sold all the popular brands  Marlboros, Newports, Parliaments  for $9 a pack, lower than the price at most bodegas, until the Legislature raised the cigarette tax last month.

Now the cost is $11. The machine sits in a corner of the tiny bar, under a stack of phone books and an odd statue of a Chinese warrior clutching an American flag. The machine is practically part of the bar; it is hard to tell where its back panel ends and the wall begins.

A vendor maintains the machine. “I’ve been trying to get him to replace some parts on it,” Mr. McAleese griped. “There’s a plate on the top that’s missing, and a crack in the glass where it says ‘Cigarettes.’ The repairman did that.”