Content from our friends over at Dallas Voice
Friday, August 15, 2008
Proposed Dallas smoking ban a sticky issue for gay bars
Ben Briscoe/Dallas Voice
Jack Warner, Jim Percha and Bob Sandoval enjoy a smoke at Illusions this week. The bar at Throckmorton and Maple is the only Dallas Tavern Guild member club without a patio.
Gays are 40 to 70 percent more likely to smoke cigarettes than straight people, studies have shown.
However, the LGBT community is also disproportionately affected by HIV, meaning it’s more vulnerable to the negative health impacts of secondhand smoke.
At the same time, bars and clubs traditionally have played a huge role in gay culture.
Given all this, it’s no surprise that a proposed ban on smoking inside their businesses is an extra-sticky issue for members of the Dallas Tavern Guild.
“We don’t have one single club where either every customer smokes or no customer smokes,” said Michael Doughman, executive director of the Tavern Guild, an association of 20 local gay and lesbian bars. “It’s money out of their cash register either way they go, and that’s why they don’t want to be the one to make the statement.”
Although Tavern Guild members are reluctant to take a position on the proposed ban, they did decide Aug. 7 to set up a three-person committee charged with drafting a list of the association’s concerns. After it’s finalized in the next few weeks, Doughman said members will submit the list individually to their representatives on the Dallas City Council.
Although the full council is expected to take up the proposed ban by the end of the year, it has yet to be publicly discussed by the quality of life and government services committee.
“There are just a myriad of things that have no focus at this point, and we have no idea what the committee is writing, but we’re going to submit the issues that we think are important to us and would definitely impact our business,” Doughman said. “There’s just a laundry list of things we discussed.”
At the top of the Tavern Guild’s list is ensuring that outdoor patios are exempt from the ordinance. Only one bar that’s a member of the Tavern Guild, Illusions, is known to lack a patio.
Other concerns include minimizing the distance from entrances and exits within which smoking is prohibited, allowing the sale of cigarettes by bars, and ensuring that the ordinance is uniformly enforced.
Doughman said it’s likely that if all of the Tavern Guild’s issues are addressed, a majority of members will support the proposed ban. Still, despite pressure from city officials to do so, the Tavern Guild may not make a formal endorsement.
It’s an issue of semantics that stems at least partly from the Tavern Guild’s decision to back a similar proposal five years ago. The decision angered members who opposed the ban — which was eventually scaled back to include only restaurants — causing a rift within the association.
“It’s not appropriate for me to lump all of my members into a blanket statement,” Doughman said, adding that he doesn’t plan to identify which members support the proposal.
Alan Pierce, co-owner of the Round-Up Saloon and treasurer of the Tavern Guild, is heading up the committee formed by the association last week. Asked whether he supports the ban, Pierce would only say that he’s “open to it.” However, he added that he believes the ban is inevitable because a majority of council members have expressed their support.
“I think we’re all convinced that it’s probably going to happen,” Pierce said. “If it has to happen, we want to be on the inside track and have some say in the writing of the laws to help protect our smoking customers.”
Eddie Bonner, the owner of Illusions, is fighting the ban because he fears it would put him out of business. Bonner said there’s no room to add a patio at his four-year-old establishment on Maple Avenue, where he estimates that 90 percent of customers smoke.
Nevertheless, Bonner said he plans to work with the Tavern Guild.
“My position really hasn’t changed any as far as being adamantly opposed to the whole thing, but this will at least give me an opportunity to have my concerns presented through an organization of other bars,” Bonner said. “It may carry a little bit more weight than speaking on my own behalf.”
Pegasus News content partner - Dallas Voice
The community newspaper for gay & lesbian Dallas.
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snowboard9, says:
These gay bars need to get with the program. Every major city has a no smoking law in place - including gay mecca San Francisco. They have survived. gays will find a way to deal with their nicotine addiction by going outside. It's as simple as that. Unfortunately, bar owners know that nicotine addicts are also alcohol addicts so they are pandering to them. The bottom line is gays will go to the bars if all the bars comply - like San Francisco, New York , etc etc.
My friends and I refuse to be locked up in a smoke filled bubble on weekends. We do not go to the bars for this purpose and I submit more customers will come out, not fewer.
Anonymous
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Robert Kelly, says:
snowboard9, the numbers don't bear you out on more customers coming out.
Hey- i have a novel idea! how about we let business owners decide how the f^ck they want to run their business, then customers can decide where they want to go? Crazy huh?
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
snowboard9, says:
I have an even better idea. How about we eliminate indoor smoking in public places like the rest of the country and let all businesses deal with the new terms applied the same? Crazy Huh?
Anonymous
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Robert Kelly, says:
Crazy as hell that you want to tell someone else what to do with their business. Why don't you do what you want with your business and let me do what I want with mine? Why not live and let live. Why not vote with your pocketbook instead of pulling this crappy "government knows best" stuff.
Why don't you just buy all the businesses and you can do what you want with them. That's capitalism at its finest! This on the other hand reeks of creeping socialism. And by the way, I have no problem with eliminating all smoking in public places, as long as you define public as government owned.
By the way, I'm not a smoker.
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Scott Doyle, says:
Why not live and let live.
Because it's our nature not to follow this thinking. Hence social order dating back as far as written record was kept (and likely much farther).
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
xdavidwattsx, says:
Cause if we lived and let live and didn't tell business what to do, cars still wouldn't have seatbelts, businesses wouldn't have fire exits (or enough exits), businesses wouldn't have smoke alarms or sprinklers, nutritional info wouldn't be on food packaging and cigarettes would have advertising that said they were good for you.
Somewhere along the way we figured out that public safety is slightly more important than the bottom line.
Anonymous
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
DC, says:
SB9 - I'm with you on that. We've had to bring out the flatulent feline a couple of times around here. However, you sometimes just need to remember that this is Dallas so it's about -10 years on the 'grown up' cities in this regard.
In the meantime, expect the jug band crew to start giving you the "why don't you just organically breed with a vegan gay whale for Jesus in Korea" talk.
Anonymous
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
John McClelland, says:
Well for one thing, vegan whales would be bad as they would eat all of the algae we might need for ethanol production.
As for smoking bans-- I have said before. I do not smoke. But I do not believe in government banning smoking in bars.
In this case, Dallas bars are making a lot of money on smoking clientele, especially from cigarette machines. That is why they want the status quo. That is why the smoking ban failed in Dallas before, and why it failed in the state house on 2007. They may or may not lose nonsmoking customers just because there is a lot of smoke in the bar. Snowboard9's business is lost, but there are just as many who turn a blind eye to it (especially when your eyes start burning from the smoke, you do seem blind).
But that is Snowboard9's decision not to patronize that establishment. If everyone chose not to patronize the establishment because of too much smoke, then the bar would consider a non smoking policy. And then the Dallas City Council could spend more time on other things... like maybe filling pot holes.
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
snowboard9, says:
Kelly, I admire how smoking anywhere proponents hide behind the 'live and let live' banner. It doesn't work everywhere.
Unfortunately, smoking is a health hazard if you hadn't checked with your government - never mind it stinks. Therefore, people demand government act - and evidently they are. That's what they get paid for.
Don't like it? Create private and not public accessible businesses. There you can smoke, get naked and do drugs as far as I care. In fact a bath house is an example of "live and let live" that works. I don't care how backwards Dallas is relative to other cities. If I'm out in public, I don't need to inhale that crap and evidently the government agrees. Too bad for your, good for me. Get over it.
Anonymous
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
DC, says:
Here's the soundtrack for you:
Anonymous
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Robert Kelly, says:
You have to be 21 to enter bars, and show ID. Kids are not allowed You are a grown ass man( or woman) and should be able to decide whose business you do( or don't) want to patronize.
I don't check with my government for crap.
I guess you must believe that the government was right until 1967 with their anti-miscegenation and sodemy(illegal until 2002 in Texas) laws; which too were considered to be for the public good.
Next thing you know, our government will be telling 100 year old businesses on Ross Ave that they can't stay there anymore, for the "public good". I say screw em all.
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
WhitneyTM, says:
I disapprove of what you smoke, but I will defend to the death your right to smoke it.
Voltaire
(or something like that)
Anonymous
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Rick Yost, says:
Robert Kelly- You are correct sir.
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
ch0, says:
Smoking makes you cool.
Anonymous
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Scott Doyle, says:
Yes, "screw 'em all" attitude certainly helps matters.
Despite inefficiency and occasional abuse of power, I'd rather have a crappy government than none at all. Pretty closed-minded to think we don't benefit from it. It's fallible because it's run by humans.
Unless you'd like to inject AI robots who'll likely enslave us, you're gonna have to deal with it. Might as well move past your apathy and do something constructive.
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Robert Kelly, says:
If the government in Dallas would just do their job, ie: pick up garbage, fill potholes- and quit jacking with all this other stuff- i would be a lot happier.
Hell, I was on a couple of boards when I lived in Arlington. I don't participate in Dallas because I don't see the good it does here. I reserve my philanthropic time for causes in which I can make a positive impact. And while I hope for the best here in Dallas, I haven't seen improvement in a long, long time.
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Clay213, says:
That damn pesky board of health telling businesses what to do! If they want to serve food in a rat infested filthy restaurant they should be able to let their customers decide!
Anonymous
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Jason Rice, says:
Scott, AI robots aren't that bad. Sheesh they could be corporate puppets and demagogues. Now THAT would be interesting.
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
xdavidwattsx, says:
I'm with clay. People complain about government making sound public safety decisions until they realize how many they take for granted.
Doesn't really matter, though. If entire countries like Ireland who live and die by the pub can ban smoking then the rest of us can. Day by day more countries, states and cities are banning it. If it doesn't happen this year in Dallas it will happen soon enough.
Smoke em while you got em cause your days are numbered.
Anonymous
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Rick Yost, says:
Power does corrupt doesn't it?
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Clay213, says:
Blame it all on Ralph Nader
Anonymous
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Robert Kelly, says:
Absolutely Rick. Absolutely.
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Rick Yost, says:
Once normally rational individuals feel the empowerment of like-minded folks behind them, they suddenly have a worthy cause to shove down the throats of the rest of us- thus giving them a feeling of personal empowerment. Feeling the utter lack of control over most of their own lives, any instance where they can directly or indirectly have control over what another person can or cannot do is exhilarating.
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Clay213, says:
Uhm, OK.
Anonymous
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
xdavidwattsx, says:
Suck it, smokers!
Kinda like that?
Anonymous
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
will, says:
Let's see, smoking is now actually banned in Irish pubs and in Paris. Thats right, even the Parisians and Dublin pubs do not allow smoking in bars now. And look at business bar sales studies in SF and NY which went into effect in 1999 and 2003. Sales were unchanged. Dallas truely is 10 years behind.
Anonymous
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Pavel Lishin, says:
I've changed my mind, guys. I'm switching philosophies to the live and let live crowd. I'm gonna go celebrate my new way of life by inviting some middle schoolers over to help me finish off these two bottles of vodka, and then maybe go for a drive.
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Pavel Lishin, says:
Seriously, though - there are differences when discussing philosophic ideals, and the actual implementation of those ideals. I'm all for not letting the government interfere in my personal life, but at the same time (to quote Larry Niven), "Anarchy isn't stable."
This kind of stuff has to be decided on a case by case basis. In this specific case, I'm all for banning smoking.
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Robert Kelly, says:
pavel, let one of the 5th graders drive.
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Pavel Lishin, says:
Dude, that would be irresponsible. She doesn't even have her driver's license yet.
Verified
1 year, 3 months agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal