In a scant four years, the anti-smoking ordinances that have rocked the St. Louis bar and restaurant scene will become not just tremors but temblors. That’s when the full impact of the law will go into effect, and smoking will no longer be permitted inside any bar or restaurant in St. Louis City, period.
It’s fine and good to study the effects of secondhand smoke and be concerned for our health; it’s also reasonable to wonder which businesses may not survive this blanket prohibition come 2016.
In the meantime, the restaurant and pub owners of St. Louis have had a full year to reckon with the smoking ban in establishments that generate most of their sales in food, and occupy a certain threshold of square footage. Consensus is not to be found – some restaurant/bar owners have reaped the benefits, some are struggling to make it work, and others figure it’s a wash, with fewer smokers coming in, but new, oxygen-loving diners making up it.
HAVE ANOTHER HIT…OF FRESH AIR
At West County gathering spot Satchmo’s, owner Chris Melton said “we had a non-smoking section, but other than that, it used to be pretty smoky here. At first, the ban clearly impacted my happy hour and my late evenings -- smokers just stopped coming in. But eventually it gave a real positive impact to my food and dinner sales. Frankly, I’m very, very pleased. Most of the smokers have filtered back [no pun intended], and they stand on the patio.”
The man singlehandedly responsible for a great proportion of the fun to be had in this town, Joe Edwards was upbeat about the ban, and he said it’s worked out great for his properties. At the Pin-Up Bowl (www.pinupbowl.com), he said, “bowlers are happy about not having the smell of smoke in their clothes and hair, and one remarkable change has been a lot more kids’ birthday parties getting booked there. The smokers do come, they just step outside.”
“And at Blueberry Hill," he added, “people seem to be enjoying live music in the Duck Room with fewer complaints, and the new, screened-in smoking porch has been popular.”
Just down the street, the dining and concert experiences at Cicero’s have transformed in the last year, said assistant general manager Brian Colon.
“Before January of 2011, you could smoke at the bar, in the downstairs cocktail area, in part of the dining area, and in the concert areas,” said Colon. “Surprisingly, it [the ban] has worked out pretty well. We were worried because a majority of our ownership and the managers smoke, too. We weren’t sure how the regular clientele was going to respond. But we were surprised by how many people apparently hadn’t been coming in to eat because of the smoke, and they all seemed to say, ‘Finally!” and started coming in again. Also, with cocktails and beverages the palate is important, but not as much as it is with food. The smells that come through the restaurant now are more enticing without the smoking smells, and everything looks better too.”
Rock and roll can go hand-in-hand with cigarettes (and other smokables). How is it for all those (young) smokers who can’t light up while they rock out now? “Concertgoers wait for set changes, and there are 15- to 20-minute breaks then when they can go outside in the back,” Colon said. The resultant crowd that swells in the free parking lot behind the Loop during those set changes can be formidable, and in the winter, they can freeze their butts off (pun intended) back there, he acknowledged. It’s a common dilemma for smokers: during the St. Louis winter, the creature comfort of smoking often must be indulged outdoors, in relative discomfort.
Like Cicero’s, popular hangout (and St. Louis Blues’ fan fave) O.B. Clark’s had been known as a smoky venue – no longer.
“The ban has helped us,” said ‘Michelle the Famous Bartender,’ as she prefers to be known. “We have lots more children and families now, and they stay longer.”
City Diner has a motto: “Never a dull moment.” For habitués of the coffee, booze, chili, and pancake palace, it’s an apt phrase to describe the late-night scene of grinning kids coming down after clubbing, pink-haired hipsters, snuggling couples, 12-steppers, night owls, and South Grand nomads.
Has this welcoming, quirky joint lost some of its luster along with its smokers?
“It has changed the structure a little bit here,” admitted City Diner owner Peter Spoto. “On the weekends we noticed the smokers tend to get up late, after 11 a.m., so we held the back area for them. Now we can seat more people in a more timely manner. I know that there are some hardcore smokers I haven’t seen as often anymore, and then there’s the people who just go outside to smoke. It’s been a plus for us, overall – we’ve been able to seat people better on the weekends, and that’s the bulk of our business.”
Dan Eschbacher of Novak’s Bar & Grill in the Grove is a happy camper. “It [the smoking ban] has been great!” he said. “Business is up and we’ve had many people return to the bar scene because of it.”
One of his employees at Novak’s, Shane Mullen, said, “I enjoy working here more, and I’m a smoker, even. It just feels good to be inside the bar now.”
Kevin Brennan of CWE Scotch-and-cigar haven Brennan’s said the smoking ban gave him all the excuse he needed to close his pleasantly rough smoking space in the cellar, and open the “Zino Platinum Lounge,” an upper-level room that caters to cigar smokers (and features DJs who play music on vinyl, exclusively), sponsored by a major tobacco company.
“We had to close that downstairs area because of the new laws,” said Brennan. “We had a problem with smoke leaking up to the upper floors.”
The refined Lounge has effectively turned stank and dank into swank and bank.
Similarly, Absolutli Goosed co-owner Staci Stift says the temple of martini-worship doesn’t actually serve any food, so they could allow smoking if they chose, but they’ve elected to go with the flow and make the joint no-smoking.
“Virtually all of [the] South Grand [Boulevard pubs] have joined the ban,” she said. “A few people were really pissed off that we didn’t have to do it, but we did, anyway. But we have gotten a whole different crowd because they’re glad there’s no smoke in a small bar like ours. It’s mixed, but I think we’ve gained more than we’ve lost – and the employees are happy their clothes don’t smell like smoke.”
QUE SERA SERA
Before 2011, the South Side’s Blackthorn Pub was known for vintage video games, loud rock, deep-dish pizza, and a smoky interior. You’d think the smoking ban would have sent many of the drinkers away, and owner Dave Difani reported that’s true, to be sure, but there have been compensations.
“Every business owner is concerned with this [smoking ban], given that it’s been tried in other areas and statistically, business has gone up. In California, in New York, everywhere, business tends to improve, so I felt it would improve the business, but it is a gamble,” he said. “At this point, we’re looking at a slight increase on weekends and a slight decrease during the week. We’re probably losing the weekday drinker and smoker to other places. So it’s kind of a wash. Between the two, we’re doing about what we’ve always done. But in just a few years, the smoking ban will be universal, and we will gain back the weekday drinker who has no choice. We would love to build a biergarten that would allow smoking in the back, but the neighborhood was adamant about not allowing me to do it.”
The sole remaining Growlers, in South County (after the Creve Coeur location closed last year), used to be known as a pub with a great beer selection, and a special section for cigar smokers. The latter has faded into yesterdays’ hazy dreams, but, claims General Manager Penny Gluesenkamp, it hardly matters to the bottom line.
“We used to allow cigar smoking on a large [semi-enclosed] patio in the back corner,” she said. “We lost some of those customers but gained others, so it about evens out.”
GIVE ME LIBERTY
At BB's Jazz, Blues, and Soups, the music may come before the food on the marquee, but there’s enough dough generated from food sales that smoking has been disallowed. “In the long run, we’ve lost a little business,” said BB’s co-owner John May, “and I thought we would probably offset that with people who’d stopped coming previously because of the smoking, but, I don’t know why, people who said they would come back if it were a non-smoking venue let me down.”
“I’ve watched people go to other places here in the Broadway Triangle, so to speak, that still have smoking,” he added. “This year we’re looking at doing something with awnings, expanding for the smokers. Part of music and bar culture is that people smoke, and we should be given choices, and we were given none.”
“It [the ban] has turned off a lot of the drinking crowd,” reported Mark Aiazzi, owner of Hill landmark (and “Home of the Frozen Fishbowl”) Rigazzi’s. “The regulars, most of them smoke, so instead of coming in four times a week they dropped down to two, and found other places where they could smoke for the other two. This has hurt us more than helped us. We used to have hospital workers come in big groups. That’s a high-stress job, and those people like to drink and smoke, and drop hundreds of dollars; now we don’t get them so much.”
Like many others, Clementine's owner Gary Reed says the financial challenge created by the ban is a concern, but the restrictions on personal choice are just as galling.
“This is an issue with passionate views on both sides,” Reed said. “You’ve got your hardcore smokers and hardcore nonsmokers. To quote Rodney King, ‘why can’t we all just get along?’Can’t we be considerate of each other without an edict? I still think it should be the choice of the proprietors.”
“Clementine’s is a gay bar,” he added, “and per capita, more gay people smoke than others, but I think our business has managed to remain about the same.”
When the ban was enacted a year ago, the Tin Can’s Mike Headrick was one of the angriest bar owners with whom we spoke. A year down the road, not much ahs changed.
“I still think the way they went about it, with us not getting to vote, and just parroting what the County did, was terrible,” he said. “One thing they could have considered was to let us allow smoking and to pay a special tax for it—like a Sunday license. The government could have kept the money and done something productive with it.”
Just a hop down Morganford Road from the Tin Can, Three Monkeys’ co-owner Stephanie Demma said, “it [the ban] has been good for our lunch and dinner business, but not so much for the late-night business, because they can walk two blocks up the street and go to a bar that allows smoking. I feel it should be mandatory for all, without all of the exemptions. It’s an uneven playing field in this neighborhood now.”
Morgan Le Fay's owner Lisa Keller, a smoker, reported that her joint has received one of those coveted exemptions to the ban, but she’s still opposed to it, for reasons of the local economy and civil liberties both.
“We’ve seen a slight increase in business,” she said, “and I have some new regulars because they’ve had to stop going to some other places they used to enjoy. But it didn’t have to be like this. You change the radio station when you don’t like the song. Now, you have people just buying a six-pack and going to each others’ houses to avoid the hassles. If they would have legislated this differently, they could have created a boon for smoke-eater-machine business, and the companies who install them, and electricians. It could have helped cause an economic boom, and kept businesses alive, but instead we have exemptions given to political cronies and donors. We didn’t have to go there.”
“The law is a screwed-up mess because some bars you can smoke in, and some you can’t,” agreed Tom Tucker of the Tucker’s Place family of bar and grills. “In four years at least it’ll be an even playing field, but I’m against the ban one-hundred percent. If you go to Florida or Illinois, at least everyone is playing with the same set of rules. It’s not like that in St. Louis City or County – it’s unfairness on top of unfairness.”
DIRE PREDICTIONS
The cigar-friendly Famous Bar on Chippewa Street (their motto: “Smoking and Drinking for 15 Years!”) has benefited from increased business from the persecuted smoker, but that matters not, said owner Mark Gray.
“We have noticed a slight increase in business, and I look at that as cigarette smokers having very few places they can go and have a cocktail now,” he said, “plus we are also one of very few places that have live music and allow smoking, because we meet the square-footage requirements, we’re under 2,000 square feet.”
“But I think in four years, the ban is going to be devastating for me as a small neighborhood bar,” added. “If I have twenty or forty people standing outside smoking the neighbors are going to try to shut me down. I’m going to have to change the whole format of this place to survive. I’m gonna have to serve food and change the hours -- and for fifteen years cigars have been a part of my whole business plan and my identity, and I’m being told that can no longer exist, I can no longer exist. You don’t have to walk in if you don’t like smoking.”
“The whole thing left me with quite a bad taste in my mouth, because the public never got to vote on it,” he went on. “In a democracy, that’s completely wrong. We had no say whatsoever, and it makes me concerned what they’re gonna arbitrarily throw at us next.”
“And,” he added, tellingly, “there are so many places that are fudging their food numbers for exemptions, everybody knows that.”
Speaking of government, Ken Ortmann isn’t just the manager of venerable Soulard pub The Cat’s Meow (and his wife, Pat Ortmann, is nominally the owner), he’s the Alderman for the City’s Ninth Ward.
“I’ve gotten a lot of calls from people about other establishments that didn’t get the exemption,” he said. “The unfair thing about the smoking ban is the sunset clause, so at the end of five years all of St. Louis will be non-smoking except casinos. The Cat’s Meow is one of the old neighborhood bars. We don’t have a kitchen, we have eight beers in a bucket for $15, which will last the whole ball game. It’s a nice place to have a drink and a cigarette.”
