By Ethen Lieser
 A middle-aged, grizzly-bearded man enters the Korean bar on the edge of San Francisco’s Tenderloin. He orders a drink, and then, as if by natural instinct, he flips open a pack of cigarettes. He lights up. The bartender, a woman around 30, reaches under the bar and grabs an ashtray. She sets it next to him.
Moments later, a young man enters the bar.
“You can smoke in here?” he asks the bearded man, looking as surprised as a deer in headlights.
The bearded man just shrugs and points his cigarette into the air, as if to say, “Well, I’m doing it.”
A smile spreads over the young man’s face. He lights up. The bartender lights up.
“If the bartenders smoke, then everyone in the bar can smoke,” says Steve “Kiwi” Richards, who does not smoke, but is a regular at several Korean bars.
Two guys and a bartender smoking a cigarette — the scene seems as harmless as double-parking in Chinatown. After all, it’s a bar, where patrons probably assume they have a right to smoke.
In reality, it’s illegal, with a $77 fine attached to it. For a bar that gets caught a second time, it’s a $136 fine. A third time, $250.
“If they continue to smoke in the bars, they will get hit with an unfair business practice suit,” says Tom Rivard, who is a senior environmental health inspector for the state of California. There have been six lawsuits of this kind, Rivard says, costing an average of $6,000 for each bar.
California banned smoking in most indoor workplaces in 1995, and all workplaces — and bars — in 1998. The state law was adopted to protect the health of bar and workers, and nonsmokers. Casinos, bars on American Indian Reservations and owner-operated businesses with no employees are the only establishments exempt from the law.
While most workplaces are following the law, some bars are still taking a rebel stance. AsianWeek visited five San Francisco bars catering largely to Asian American clientele, and four had patrons openly smoking.
“We get very few complaints about smoking in the workplace now,” Rivard says. “But bars are definitely more difficult.” To keep better tabs on local drinking holes, Rivard looks to the general public for assistance.
“We are complaint-driven,” he says. “There just isn’t enough staff to go around every night and check every bar.”
One Korean bar, located near Polk and Geary streets in San Francisco, already learned the hard way.
“We were reported by a customer and got warned,” the bartender says, who did not want to be identified. “It’s serious if you get caught again.” A smoker herself, she lights up outside these days.
Warnings aside, any bar patron should be able to see what is right and wrong. Signs are stamped on doors, reading: “No Smoking.” Enter the bar, and the customer will get barraged with more signs: “No Smoking.” Go to the bathroom: “No Smoking.”
But for many Asian Americans, smoking in Korean bars is culturally natural. Says Peter Kim, a graduate student from Seoul: “It’s like, if you’re going to eat bread, you’re going to drink water,” implying that cigarettes and drinking go hand in hand.
“It’s also the images of actors and musicians in Korea,” he says. “They look cool doing it, so everybody else wants to do it.”
What would happen if bars in Korea banned smoking? “Not very many people would go,” he smiles.
If you would like to file a complaint about bars that allow smoking, call 415-437-4655.
Reach Ethen Lieser at elieser@asianweek.com. |
