El Rio, Zeitgeist and more push back on new SF bar ordinance
May 8-A new ordinance proposed by San Francisco District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar aims to ban smoking on bar patios, and some local venues aren't happy about the plan.
The new initiative still has to pass an approval by the Land Use and Transportation Committee later this month for it to then be potentially proposed to the full Board of Supervisors.
Several bar owners said that it puts an undue burden on their businesses and that the supervisor's office didn't do the necessary community outreach. In reaction, 13 Bay Area bars, including the Stud, Mothership and Horsies Market & Saloon, have crafted a petition opposing the ban. It's estimated that approximately 50 bars would be affected by the change. The petition has racked up 1,488 signatures as of Friday morning.
Christin Evans is a co-founder of the advocacy group Small Business Forward and the owner of Booksmith, as well as neighboring bar Alembic. She said that she wasn't informed about the legislation in a timely manner and that Melgar's office didn't appropriately reach out to businesses for comment. That lack of collaborative approach led the Small Business Commission to unanimously vote against the legislation, Evans said.
"There's supposed to be a level of good faith engagement and conversations, and I just don't think that's happened in this case," Evans told SFGATE.
Lynne Angel, the co-owner of El Rio, shared similar sentiments. "It's disappointing that no one from Supervisor Melgar's office reached out to us to discuss the proposed legislation before it was introduced. It's punishing enough to try to run a small business in this city," Angel said.
Under current regulations, businesses that operate as restaurants are not allowed to have smoking on their patios. As a result, Casements is one example of a bar that doesn't allow smoking, but the owner has still put her bar's name on the petition opposing the legislation.
"Taking away that choice is the problem," owner Gillian Fitzgerald said. "We're just drastically affecting the entire culture of bars as a third space every time we tack on these things."
Zeitgeist is another bar that would feel a heavy burden from the regulation.
"The impact on my business would be direct and immediate," Zeitgeist owner Lara Burmeister wrote in an email to SFGATE. "My staff would be required to enforce this change rather than focus on the work that actually serves our customers and drives revenue - creating friction that affects both the employee experience and the customer relationship."
Burnmeister said that over the past 10 days, the bar surveyed 1,577 customers and found that 89% stated they prefer allowing the ability to smoke on the patio.
The legislation follows similar regulations banning smoking on patios enacted by Oakland, San Jose and more than 100 other cities across California. The San Francisco ordinance cites a 2022 study by UC San Francisco researchers that measured air quality to be in the "unhealthy" air quality range in six out of nine patios visited. In addition to banning all patio smoking, it would also enforce compliance with other state smoking laws, including in some hotels (up to 25% of rooms), owner-operated bars that have no employees and bars with historically compliant semi-enclosed smoking rooms.
Some local businesses have grandfathered exemptions. However Melgar's office stated that these exemptions are already superseded by state law, meaning these businesses are operating illegally. The Occidental Cigar Club is one business that would be substantially affected, as it would need to choose between allowing smoking and selling alcohol to comply with state laws.
An amendment is planned to allow nine months for the city's Department of Health to engage operators to help with implementation. Regardless of the process of implementation, Evans fears some businesses, like Occidental, would not survive the regulations.
"The concern for some of the bars is existential," Evans said.
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