The Wake

It’s still dark, it’s still jazzy, but since the smoking ban went into effect at 12:01 a.m. March 31, the Artist’s Quarter is oddly clean. The ban was signed by Mayor Chris Coleman almost a year after his predecessor Randy Kelly vetoed a similar bill. The fight to stay smoking wasn’t as fierce this time around, but there were still many dissenters.

“It’s a jazz club, you should be able to smoke,” Dave Horst, bartender at the once smoky Artist’s Quarter, says. In the weeks after the revised smoking ban went into effect, the smokers of St. Paul have found new places to smoke.

“I smoke at home, on my balcony,” Lauren Bartley says. Bartley and people like her are doing just the thing St. Paul bar owners fear most, and what many have experienced. St. Paul bars have seen a drastic change in business since the ban went into effect.

“There are a lot fewer people, especially on the weekends,” Joe Young says. As a bartender at Gabe’s By The Park, Young was used to a packed, smoky bar at game time and through the weekend. Gabe’s, situated between St. Paul and Minneapolis, was one of the 16 small bars that fought against the ban to the bitter end. The establishments that fought the hardest were those who depended on people commuting from Minneapolis or other surrounding suburbs, many of whom have stopped coming.

In one respect, Gabe’s has come out ahead of many of the local bars. Unlike the smaller local pubs and hidden venues, Gabe’s hasn’t lost its regulars. “They said they would leave, but ended up staying,” Young says, raising his glass to a crowd of elderly golfers down the bar. Not everyone was so lucky. The Turf Club, one of St. Paul’s oldest bars, has lost many of its regulars.

“It’s mostly the working folks that have stopped showing up,” Dave Ricker says. “The people who get off work and want to relax with a beer and a cigarette have probably just gone home.” Ricker, a veteran bartender at the Turf Club, has also seen a sharp decline during the venue’s many concerts. Before the ban, concertgoers would show up for the whole show and smoke and drink to their heart’s content. Now patrons trickle in for the bands they want to see, slashing their bar tabs and the club’s profits.

Ricker agrees that the ban is good for public health; it has even helped him cut back on his own smoking. And Ricker, like most bartenders, servers and owners has seen the statistics and the good that smoking bans created in places like California, where the number of smokers has dropped 32.5 percent since 1988. If the ban were merely a question of health, it would have passed ages ago, but it’s not, he says. A broader question of a city’s character and quality of life can’t be measured by statistics.

“The people who pushed for this bill don’t care about small bars turning into Applebee’s,” Ricker says. Corporate places like Old Chicago and TGI Friday’s, with their razor-thin profit margins and huge budgets for perks like heat lamps, continue with business as usual.

Though Dave Thune, author of the ban, says bar owners will receive grant money to update their establishments, many are still skeptical that the money will do any good. The law states that sidewalk seating and patios must leave three feet for walkers to pass. But places like the Turf Club situated along old streets and small sidewalks have little hope of putting their grant money to use.

“It depends on the City Council,” Ricker says. “We’ve hardly got the space now.” Even if council members O.K. a few chairs in front of the club, it will be up to patrons to sit alongside noisy traffic and thick exhaust.

For the sake of fairness, most people prefer a statewide ban. According to a survey done by the Artist’s Quarter, 69 percent of respondents agreed that a blanket ban is necessary. “It’s not fair that [the ban] changes at every border,” says Kim Erickson, a waitress and bartender. “When you’re dealing with a huge metro area, it must be universal.” Thune and proponents of the ban say that once the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul show that the ban works and that people want it, the rest of the state will follow. But until then, profits are being spread dangerously thin for small bars under the current ban.

Regardless of the health issues and a preference for a statewide ban, smokers and non-smokers alike think there should be a place to smoke besides the great outdoors. “I don’t know what the answer is,” Erickson says, “but people who drink have bars, fat people have McDonald’s—smokers should have a place too.”