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"You can't smoke that in here," says Aimee, a young waitress at Ha Shalom, an Israeli restaurant in West Rogers Park. "You have to take that outside." The patron, half ignoring her, offers to finish his cigarette and not light another. Firmly, but politely, Aimee explains, "If you want to pay the $500 ticket go ahead, otherwise take it outside."
By next week the city of Chicago will have lived through two months of a smoking ban. The law has all Chicago restaurants without a substantial bar (the law lets establishments deriving 65 percent of their revenue from the sale of alcohol wait until 2008 to comply) observe a smoke free atmosphere. Some long time smokers are still getting the hang of it.
"I don't outright tell customers that we're a non-smoking establishment, at this point I figure that there has been enough media coverage of it," Aimee explains, adding that for a lot of the restaurant's foreign customers who may not have read about the ban, they were confused when the law first went into effect, believing she was making it up.
Aimee says that a lot of long-time regulars, many of whom she's known since she was a little girl, were upset about the changes at the beginning. "Just give me an ashtray and let me finish my one cigarette, no one will know," many have pleaded, despite the restaurant having discarded all ashtrays soon after the ban went into effect. "Well, I can't smoke in here and my parents own the place, so you can't smoke in here either," Aimee counters.
Many who opposed the ban, a majority restaurateurs, complained that such a law would hurt business, driving patrons into the suburbs where they could smoke in peace.
For Ha Shalom, Aimee admits that some of the old community atmosphere has been lost, but the new law affords other people the opportunity to enjoy the restaurant. She says that, before the law, many were not able to tolerate the atmosphere. "The smoke was just too much for them. We have such a small place," she says. "So it has really evened out. I thought that business would be a lot more adversely affected, but I haven't seen that much of a drastic change."
As for the old regulars, "these people just don't stay as long," observes Aimee "They just order food, eat and leave. As opposed to staying all afternoon, playing backgammon for up to three hours while smoking cigarettes and drinking cup after cup of coffee."
Dolores, a Chicago school teacher, has been thrilled since the ban has passed. For her, the new law just makes sense. "For people with allergies, asthma or bronchitis, being exposed to second-hand smoke can make adverse health conditions even worse," she exclaims.
Dolores was moved by the television and radio spots run last year in support of the ban that featured a non-smoking waitress who contracted lung cancer because of the second-hand smoke in her job— part of a convincing ad campaign put out by the organization, Smoke-Free Chicago. "Sounds like a good argument to me," she agrees.
Visiting other parts of the country (she notes southern Indiana), Dolores has observed restaurants that aren't even required to have no-smoking sections. "You don't realize how good you have it until you visit these places," she says, admitting that Chicagoans will take some time adjusting, "They did it in California and New York. Chicago is just going to have to learn to change. Smoke before you enter a restaurant and after you get out in your car."
Before assuming that smokers have no place left to go, consider the success of a Ukrainian Village storefront soon to be relocating to a larger space on Chicago Avenue. At Guess Hookah, a tobacco novelty shop and smoking lounge named after the ornate Middle Eastern water pipes it showcases, smoking still remains legal under the city ordinance. "I was pretty happy to hear about the smoking ban, because we're exempt from it," says John, the owner. Because they don't serve food, he was able to fill out a city waiver to have this special exemption status.
Although he welcomes competition, John expresses concern for several restaurants still in clear violation of the smoking ban. "They don't even have liquor licenses but there is still hookah smoking every night," he observes. "Basically, [city officials] are not enforcing the law," says John. "I think they're going to let them get comfortable with it and then send out a slew of inspectors to get a half million dollars in fines in a weekend," he warns, possibly revealing a covert revenue generating strategy for the city.
A clear revenue generator, a new county cigarette tax that began last week, adds $1 to the price of a pack and $10 more on a carton. The tax is just one more recent deterrent to the city's smoking population.
However, don't complain to John about the rise in cigarette costs, he is seeing even less money from sales. Although the new tax does not affect him too much— cigarette sales are merely an incidental part of his business— John explains that he already received a low profit margin from the sale of tobacco (about 8 to 9 percent per pack) before the tax. The new tax took his sales figure down to 6 percent. "It just costs me a lot more to have them sit on the shelf," says John. "I've got a worse margin and more tied up sitting in it."
But is the new tax getting people to quit? He says that customers who used to buy them still buy them, they just pay more for them. "Anyone with a car heads to Indiana or the suburbs to get it. Basically, I think [the price hike] has created a black market for it," says John.
Back at Ha Shalom, Aimee expresses her feelings to the city's smoking deterrents. "I think if you go after anybody when it comes to tobacco you should go after R.J. Reynolds. You should go after the tobacco industry, rather than telling people what they can and cannot do."
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