Minnesota Bars Beat Smoking Ban

Minnesota Bars Beat Smoking Ban

By GREGG AAMOT
Associated Press Writer

Posted: Mar. 6 3:22 p.m.
Updated: Mar. 6 10:10 p.m.

MAPLEWOOD, Minn. - All the world's a stage at some of Minnesota's bars. A
new state ban on smoking in restaurants and other nightspots contains an
exception for performers in theatrical productions. So some bars are getting
around the ban by printing up playbills, encouraging customers to come in
costume, and pronouncing them "actors."

The customers are playing right along, merrily puffing away - and sometimes
speaking in funny accents and doing a little improvisation, too.

The state Health Department is threatening to bring the curtain down on
these sham productions. But for now, it's on with the show.

At The Rock, a hard-rock and heavy-metal bar in suburban St. Paul, the
"actors" during "theater night" do little more than sit around, drink, smoke
and listen to the earsplitting music.

"They're playing themselves before October 1. You know, before there was a
smoking ban," owner Brian Bauman explained. Shaping the words in the air
with his hands, like a producer envisioning the marquee, he said: "We call
the production, `Before the Ban!'"

The smoking ban, passed by the Legislature last year, allows actors to light
up in character during theatrical performances as long as patrons are
notified in advance.

About 30 bars in Minnesota have been exploiting the loophole by staging the
faux theater productions and pronouncing cigarettes props, according to an
anti-smoking group.

"It's too bad they didn't put as much effort into protecting their employees
from smoking," grumbled Jeanne Weigum, executive director of the Association
for Nonsmokers.

The Health Department this week vowed to begin cracking down on theater
nights with fines of as much as $10,000.

"The law was enacted to protect Minnesotans from the serious health effects
of secondhand smoke," Minnesota Health Commissioner Sanne Magnan said. "It
is time for the curtain to fall on these theatrics."

At The Rock earlier this week, a black stage curtain covered part of the
entrance, and a sign next to it with an arrow read, "Stage Entrance." Along
the opposite wall, below a sign saying "Props Dept.," was a stack of the
only props needed: black ashtrays.

At the door was a printed playbill for that night's program, with a list of
names of the people portraying bartenders and security guards. Playing the
owner: "Brian."

Courtney Conk paid $1 for a button that said "Act Now" and pinned it to her
shirt. That made her an actor for the night, entitling her to smoke. She
turned in an understated, minimalist performance, sitting with cigarette in
hand and talking to a bass player with the band.

"I thought it was funny that they found a loophole," Conk said. "I'm more of
an activist-actor tonight, you could say. I think it's kind of this way of
saying what we think about the ban."

While The Rock asks nothing of its actors by way of creativity, a few other
bars have been a little more theatrical.

At Barnacles Resort and Campground along Lake Mille Lacs, a "traveling
tobacco troupe" dressed in medieval costume on the first theater night. Mark
Benjamin, a lawyer who pushed bars to exploit the loophole, wore tights, a
feathered cap and black boots.

"Hey, I'm a child of the '60s. I can do a little improv," he said. His
improv amounted to speaking in medieval character to other patrons.

In Hill City, Mike's Uptown owner Lisa Anderson has been offering theater
night once a week. The bar had a Mardi Gras theme last Saturday, attracting
about 30 patrons, most of them in costume.

"I was dressed in a Victorian dress with the old fluffy thing that weighs
500 pounds," she said. "We had some fairies and some pirates and a group of
girls - I'm not sure what they were, but they had big boas and flashy
makeup."

Though there were no skits, Anderson said some people "start talking with
different accents." She added: "It's turned into the funnest thing I can
imagine."

One bar on northern Minnesota's Iron Range, the Queen City Sports Place,
calls its nightly smokefest "The Tobacco Monologues."

Proving anew there's no business like show business, Anderson said her
theater-night receipts have averaged $2,000 - up from $500 right after the
ban kicked in. Similarly, Bauman said revenue at The Rock dropped off 30
percent after the ban took effect, then shot back up to normal once the bar
began allowing smoking again.

He and other bar owners said they plan to continue putting on theater
nights.

"There's no question we were struggling," he said. "And we are extremely
nervous that this is going to go away, and we will be back to the way it
was."



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