The first sign that this place is different is in the front: arriving customers will not walk in front of other bars to greet their exiled smoker's gloves. Here, those people are inside.
The Karma Lounge bar offers the breath of New York nightlife circa 2002, right down to ashtrays and burning cigarettes. All the seats are low, with red velvet and dim lights. It is the only place left in the city: a leisure block in the East Village where smokers can light up indoors-this is legal.
Although the city’s bar smoking ban started in 2003 has triggered an explosion of similar laws around the world, there are still many places where it can be inhaled with varying degrees of surreptitiousness and legality. According to the Ministry of Health and Mental Hygiene, the high-end Seven Club Tobacco Bars (mainly cigars) are not subject to the ban, as well as velvet rope celebrity gathering places that illegally allow customers to smoke. Then there is a smoking area, a small dark place where the bartender just takes out the ashtray at a certain time.
But Karma Lounge occupies a unique niche market. It opened as a hookah bar in 1999 and can be exempt from cigar bars because it serves alcohol and at least 10% of its revenue comes from tobacco products before the 2001 deadline.
Today, the bar on First Avenue between Third Street and Fourth Street is a convincing indicator of how much New York has changed in the seven years since the start of the ban, when smokers angrily thought they Treat violations of the ban as an attack on their citizens. free. Although a big sign on the front door says "Smoking is allowed," it was not the main temptation for those who sipped cocktails and poured beer last week.
"I know everyone-it's like a toast to me," said 50-year-old chef Andre Evans (Andre Evans), who lives nearby and ordered dozens of red prayers on Thursday afternoon, just to help. "I come in, I sit down, all the bartenders know what I drink," he continued. "Most of the regulars here, we are like an ordinary group, we all get along very well."
Mr. Evans said that even if he couldn't smoke, he would stop, just like several other customers sitting under the twinkling lights of two big TVs above the bar, he said he would not go to a cigar bar to indulge his habits.
Josie Rodriguez, 34, is an administrative assistant. She lives on the opposite side of First Avenue and sits on a stool next door. She summed up the reason and mentioned a small cigar she and her brother-in-law had visited. Shop: "It smells really unpleasant."
"Yeah, unlike this place, it smells like smoke," Mr. Evans interjected, smiling.
Some regulars do not even smoke, such as the 57-year-old contractor John Garbarini (John Garbarini), who hopes that his first movie role will be the murderous mouse mutant in the 2006 horror film "Mulberry Street" (Mulberry Street) . He just liked this place, he said, and then came in for a nice drink, casual conversation, free WiFi, and the opportunity to play crosswords with one of the mainly young female bartenders.
It's not that there is no heavy smoking. Whether it's people holding Newports, Camel Lights and American Spirits in a bar, or a group of newcomers trying hookahs, or a couple smoking cigars in front, there are paintings of semi-naked women in high heels smoking on the bed. Brick wall.
In fact, general manager William Watkins is considering installing a more sophisticated ventilation system to eliminate odors.
"There were indeed a lot of people coming in, and then immediately turned around and walked back," Mr. Watkins said. "Even if it is weak, it still discourages many people."
He said that the bar’s tobacco business is booming, selling cigarettes and about 20 types of hookahs, which are flavored tobacco smoked through water pipes. It is illegal to smoke tobacco in other hookah cafes, said Elliott S. Marcus, deputy director of the Health Bureau, but officials have encountered difficulties in law enforcement because the owners often say their products They are made from herbs and it takes time and effort to prove that they are tobacco.
Overall, Karma Lounge is surprisingly low-key for its rare smoking privileges, preferring to use its Facebook page to post its special events held in the basement performance space. They are an eclectic group, including weekly gay nights, hip-hop dance parties, comedy performances and regular meetings with the BDSM crowd. (Recently, invitations have been issued to those who play with restraint and discipline, dominance and obedience, or sadism and masochism, with the words: "We also have coat checks now.")
This is part of the reason why this place is different from other smoking areas in the city.
"Cigar smokers are often very picky about their cigars," Mr. Watkins said, "until you don't light a cigar with a match, but use a piece of wood, because you don't want any sulfur to contaminate your cigar.
"The cigar box and other things in the cigar bar, your single malt whiskey and expensive Scotch whiskey, etc., are often more high-end. I think we just chose a different route: a place where anyone can come and enjoy themselves. No matter where you are from."