CHICAGO (AFX) - Max Moss was walking through his new neighborhood when he looked in a shop window and saw people drinking coffee, working on computers and doing something that took him by surprise: These people were smoking.
Coming up on a year since smoking was banned in just about all public places, the smoke still hasn't cleared in Chicago. At least not in the shop on a busy street in the trendy Wicker Park neighborhood.
'It is a sanctuary,' said Moss, 25, who heard all about the ban when he moved to Chicago from Las Vegas recently. 'For those of us who are smokers, it's really nice having a place where we can be inside and smoke, especially with the Chicago winters.'
Opened the very day the City Council approved the ban, Marshall McGearty Tobacco Lounge offers smokers a place to buy cigarettes and smoke them with a beer, cup of coffee or muffin, or as they type away on their computers.
The lounge -- touted by its owner as the only one of its kind in the country -- looks exactly like the kind of smoky scene the City Council hoped to extinguish when it passed the ordinance last December.
But to the chagrin of the City Council, the city's law department says it's all perfectly legal.
While smokers are being told to put out cigarettes all over the city, they're still lighting up here because the lounge, owned by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., opened as a 'retail tobacco store.'
If that sounds like a cigar store or smoke shop, in Chicago it simply means that Marshall McGearty can sell cigarettes and customers can smoke them as long as 65 percent of sales come from tobacco and tobacco-related accessories such as ash trays.
Technically, this place satisfies the ordinance as well as a cluttered shop lined with pipes, tobacco and cigars, an old man behind the counter poring over a racing form with an unlit cigar stuck in his mouth -- only it looks like something entirely different.
With its dark wood, bright paintings hanging from an exposed brick wall, gleaming floor made of recycled Indonesian hardwood railroad ties, fireplace and sleek furniture, this place could be any other wine bar or upscale lounge.
Behind the bar, bottles of liquor line a wall. A brightly lit display case is filled with bottles of wine, beer and imported water, behind which a server can grab a pastry or explain that the coffee is a special Costa Rican blend.
Then there are the cigarettes. In their own display case, next to vintage ash trays, thick glass jars are filled with finely cut tobacco with names like 'The Empress,' 'Malawi Kings,' and 'Aegeans.' Exotic-looking contraptions can turn the tobacco into $9-a-pack cigarettes.
The way the tobacco is sold and discussed also evokes a wine bar, from the tobacconist who allows customers to breathe in the tobacco's aroma to the glossy brochures that lovingly describe blends 'infused with peach essence,' 'swirling with floral notes' or that leave smokers with a 'pleasant warming sensation that lingers on the lips.' There are even tobacco tastings.
'The whole idea of Marshall McGearty is about giving smokers a premium brand and introduce them to the rarest tobacco,' said Stephanie Salkow, a senior marketing director at R.J. Reynolds, who said the idea predates the ban and the lounge was not a reaction to it. 'Elevate the smoking experience.'
In other words, try to lift smoking -- a much-maligned habit -- to an indulgence akin to a snifter of brandy or fine cigar. And in the process, provide a haven for smokers at a time when more cities and towns across the country are enacting their own bans.
'We call it a smoker's paradise,' Salkow said.
Critics say the lounge does something else: Sidestep an ordinance enacted to save lives.
'People are dying,' said Ed Smith, the city alderman who sponsored the ordinance. 'This (business) gives them a chance to die.'
What's more, anti-smoking advocates worry the lounge sends a dangerous message.
'These places are an effort to glamorize smoking,' said Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, saying the lounge is an effort to create 'the exact kind of attractive place young people go to.'
Sandra Prufer, who was smoking and typing on her computer one recent night, sees Myers' point. 'It's a cool place and what they're trying to do is promote a kind of connoisseurship ...' she said.
But at the same time, 'Smokers are running out of places where they can have a cigarette and a coffee and meet friends,' she said.
Other customers -- some of whom don't smoke -- say the lounge isn't pretending to be anything other than a comfortable place for smokers.
'It seems to me if you were not a smoker you would choose to go to the coffee shop down the street that's nonsmoking, also has good coffee and a nice atmosphere,' said Moss.
Word is spreading among smokers who like the idea of a quiet place where they can work on their computers for hours at a time.
'Everyone I know that's a smoker, I tell them about this place,' said Artie Jordan, 24, who recently moved to another neighborhood but still comes in twice a week.
A big reason, customers say, is that, not only are a growing number of cities and towns around the country implementing smoking bans, but in Chicago many restaurants and bars aren't waiting until the July 1, 2008 deadline to comply with the ordinance.
Salkow, of R.J. Reynolds, said the company plans to open another lounge next year in its hometown of Winston-Salem, N.C., but has no plans to open more elsewhere. Still, her words don't suggest R.J. Reynolds wants to stop at two.
'People have come to us, saying, 'Open in our cities,'' she said. 'We think we are doing (something) for communities, giving smokers places to go.'
In Chicago, Alderman Smith promises to look for a way to close the smoking lounge. It might have blown a smoke ring through what he sees as a loophole in the ordinance, but after the November election, when he has more time, he promises: 'The same two teams that played then are going to play again tomorrow.'
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