BAR PATRONS FUME OVER SMOKING LAW

Drinks Left Inside As They Puff Away

"No Smoking'' signs were tacked up in bars all over California yesterday,
and hard-core smokers nursing a scotch or a beer were so angry that if they
had been allowed to light up, the smoke would have been coming out of their
ears.

Patrons of Bay Area bars railed against the new state law that bans smoking
in bars -- the toughest such law in the nation -- and there were mad
mutterings about the loss of a comfortable refuge and the need to repeal
the law.

In bar after bar, it was pretty much the same scene -- a few drinkers
bellying up to the plank for a New Year's Day hair of the dog. And outside
on the sidewalk, a few more moping about, their martinis and manhattans
momentarily abandoned as they puffed away and groused about the new rule to
anyone who cared to listen.

``This is the most ridiculous law I've ever seen,'' said ``Piano Bob''
Dwyer, as he smoked a cigarette outside the Saloon, a North Beach bar said
to be the oldest tavern in San Francisco. ``This is a bar. What do you do
in a bar? You drink and smoke. This is why we don't stay home and smoke --
it smells up the house. We come here to congregate -- and to smoke and
drink. ``This is our playroom. It's smelled this way since 1861, and it'll
smell this way for another 50 years.''

Inside, bartender Ann Marie LePage was succinct in her opinion of the new
statute: ``It bites.''

LePage said that in the first day of the new smoking ban, customers were
cooperative, shuffling out to Grant Avenue for the occasional smoke,
although a few people absent-mindedly lit up and she had to remind them,
politely, to go outside.

A few blocks north, at Gino & Carlo, owner Frank Rossi said there were ``no
problems, nobody yelled and screamed'' when the ``No Smoking'' signs went up.

But some customers clearly weren't happy.

Outside the front door, Sherry Hart sucked on her cigarette and said:
``This is the only place I can smoke. It feels like high school. It's a
total drag.''

Bar owners like Bill Colburn, of the Lost & Found Saloon on Grant Avenue,
said that while a few patrons might stay away because of the no-smoking
ban, most of the regulars will stay on.

``I think I'll survive,'' Colburn said. ``In this neighborhood, a lot of
the local people come here. Some even call this their living room.''

In the East Bay, things were not much different.

At the corner of Piedmont and MacArthur avenues, Ron Mason, who has been
frequenting Egbert Souse's bar for 35 years, put down his brandy and soda
on the long wooden bar now devoid of ashtrays and stalked outside to light up.

``I'd rather be sitting in there,'' he said, nodding back at the bar as he
puffed away. ``This is an invasion of privacy, this law. I can't smoke in
there. I can't bring the drink out here. If you're going to ban tobacco,
then ban it totally, like heroin. Then we can all get it a lot easier.''

For many, the smoking ban was an involuntary aid to cutting back on their
habits.

At The Graduate, a bar near the intersection of College and Claremont
avenues in Oakland, carpenter Steve Lage was tucking into his first of the
day.

``Normally,'' he sighed, ``I'd be sitting here smoking'' as well as
drinking. He said he was going to step out to the sidewalk for a smoke
pretty soon -- a confirmed smoker can only go cold turkey so long -- but
like many of the regulars in Bay Area bars, he says he really misses the
living-room atmosphere of his favorite watering hole.

``This is one of the last bastions of civilized living,'' he said, glancing
around the small tavern. ``I like to be able to smoke at a bar, accompanied
by my favorite beverage.'' Which, of this New Year's morn, was a screwdriver.

Customers, by and large, felt that they should be able to do what they want
in a tavern. Indeed, many said they were in their neighborhood bars four or
five times a week and considered them a comfortable adjunct to their lives.

But the law was designed less for the customers and more for the employees
who are there eight or 10 hours a day and have to suck up all that
secondhand smoke. Still, many employees said the smoke did not annoy them
and suggested, instead, that there be smoking and nonsmoking bars so
patrons could choose.

``It doesn't bother me,'' bartender Pia Butler, at The Graduate, said of
the clouds of smoke that used to swirl around her. ``I think the whole
thing should be up to the bar owner.''

At that moment, Graduate owner Javad Parsa came in, looked around at the
entire place, its far wall quite visible now that there wasn't a curtain of
smoke in front of it. ``I like it,'' he said. ``The place is cleaner.''

It may be cleaner and the view may be clearer, but your basic saloon
habitue, the man who knows that a bar is a bar is a bar, and nothing else,
doesn't really care if you can see from one end to the other, and doesn't
really care if you might add 35.2 months to your life by not inhaling all
that smoke.

Listen to Jim Richardson, as he stands outside the Saloon in San Francisco,
and blares out a farewell:

``This ain't no health spa, man.''

©1998 San Francisco Chronicle