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. | 
