Bar Owners

While the last cigarette won't go out in a Baltimore bar for two more months, some city bar owners have been hard at work, looking for ways to follow the statewide ban without forcing smokers - some of their most loyal customers - out onto the street. From Fells Point to Mount Vernon, club owners are investing in expensive gas heaters, installing weatherproof tents and refurbishing decks and patios for year-round use. Although others are taking a wait-and-see approach, they know it will be anything but business as usual when the ban takes effect in February.

The Block.The mere mention of the two words conjures up images of shadows melding in dimly lighted corners of strip bars long accused of cloaking prostitution and drugs.But last month, three Block bars agreed to pay $5,400 in fines for a series of infractions -- the least of which included: "dancer removing top to expose breasts." In addition, the number of cases against Block bars heard by the city's Board of Liquor Licenses has almost doubled in the past year, with fines rising by 71 percent to $26,000, the most in recent memory.

LOS ANGELES -- The regulars at the Studio Lounge in Hollywood are cabbies, retired government employees, old soldiers. The white-haired guy at the end of the bar, Jim Fults, served in Korea.They are much more likely to be Republicans than rebels. But that was before the politicians decided that as of Jan. 1, smoking in virtually every bar, nightclub and hotel lobby in California is illegal."This is still America," Fults said as he defiantly lighted his third cigarette in five minutes Thursday, the first day of the new year and the new law, the toughest anti-smoking measure in the United States.

A coalition of Fells Point bar and restaurant owners yesterday urged a task force studying the city's night life to reject a proposal to establish a designated entertainment zone with later closing times if the same privilege is not extended to Fells Point.The first meeting of the Night Life Task Force, which is studying ways to enliven Baltimore's late-night entertainment offerings, attracted about a dozen speakers representing bar and nightclub owners, residents' groups and merchants' associations.

Legislation gaining support in Annapolis would allow Baltimore's liquor board to clamp down on bars that are a nuisance to neighbors.The city's House delegation voted yesterday to support a bill that would allow the board to reduce the hours and days of operation of bars that receive complaints from neighbors. The full Senate has passed a similar measure.Del. Maggie L. McIntosh, a Baltimore Democrat, introduced the bill in response to complaints about noise and violence around some neighborhood bars during early morning hours.

For dozens of residents and business owners who came to Annapolis from Southeast Baltimore yesterday, the dirty word of the day was "mega-bars."They attended a hearing before the city's Senate delegation, and asked for relief from what they say is a weekly deluge of suburbanites drinking, vandalizing and urinating in their communities.Representatives of many waterfront neighborhoods testified in favor of a Senate bill, sponsored by Baltimore Democrat state Sen. Perry Sfikas, that would ban large, new bars along the waterfront in Southeast Baltimore.

The city liquor board voted yesterday to indefinitely suspend the license of the New 32nd Street Plaza, a North Baltimore nightclub that has long disturbed neighbors who complained of beatings, shootings and even a slaying in the area.The three-member board voted 2-1 for the suspension, preventing the bar's owners from bringing alcoholic beverages onto the premises in the 400 block of E. 32nd St.The board also said the two owners who hold the license, James Scroggins and Rhonda Williams, "were not fit" to hold a liquor license in Baltimore.

An accountant who handled tax payments for most of the bar owners on The Block was charged yesterday with theft and tax evasion for allegedly stealing more than $200,000 from his clients, the attorney general's office said.Leslie Pototsky, 62, of the 2300 block of Sugarcone Road in Pikesville was charged in a criminal information filed in Baltimore County Circuit Court with systematically taking money his clients entrusted to him for tax payments and instead depositing the money in his bank account.

A bill to ban more mega-bars from opening in Southeast Baltimore cleared a key hurdle yesterday, winning approval from the city's Senate delegation.The city's 10 senators approved the measure unanimously after weakening it slightly.Even with the changes, the bill's sponsor, Sen. Perry Sfikas, D-Baltimore, said the measure will effectively stop the proliferation of large bars in the Fells Point and Canton areas."It does prevent any more large organizations along the lines of a Bohager's," Mr. Sfikas said, referring to one of the area's largest bar-restaurants.

THERE'S NO NEED to rush to retool a new anti-smoking law in Howard County that apparently has a flaw that would allow most bars to remain as smoky as they wish. Supporters wanted a law that would require a bar owner to designate part of his establishment for smokers and a separate part for people who want to protect themselves from the effects of burning tobacco. However, since the law does not include specifications on the size of a nonsmoking area, it could be interpreted as allowing bar owners to reserve as little space as possible for nonsmokers.

The Baltimore City Council voted Monday to allow bars and restaurants in some of the city's trendiest neighborhoods to hire bands, singers and other performers, overturning a decades-old prohibition that City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake says has stifled nightlife in town. "This is an opportunity in lean times for establishments to expand the entertainment they are able to offer," she said after the measure passed by voice vote. "It also makes us more marketable as a city."

Police Maj. Scott L. Bloodsworth stands on Charles Street in Federal Hill as the crowd of revelers swells. It's Friday, just before midnight, and already many patrons have had too much to drink. Outside Noble's Bar, a giddy young woman screams and runs into the open arms of a friend, sending both crashing to the pavement. Bloodsworth, who commands the Southern District, watches his officers watch the partyers. He has officers strategically placed along Charles and Cross streets, on blocks dominated by the biggest and most popular taverns, and near a bank machine and a parking garage.

It has been nearly a year since Baltimore's police commissioner prohibited bar owners from hiring off-duty officers to help keep order, and in the weeks and months that followed the ban, some proprietors in Federal Hill complained that nuisance crimes spiked. In the spring, tavern owners banded together to form the Federal Hill Hospitality Association, and they're collectively contributing to a pool to hire six off-duty city officers to police the neighborhood during peak hours. It's the reaction the city's police commissioner wanted when he urged bar owners to take more responsibility but didn't want his officers tethered to bars like private doormen.

Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer and a majority of the City Council appear poised to lift restrictions on the number of bars that can stay open until 2 a.m. in the city's Historic District, a move sure to upset nearby residents who already feel besieged by drunken rowdies from the 45 city taverns - most of them in the downtown area - that now have that privilege. This is a perennial fight, one that's probably been going on since George Washington was hoisting tankards in the capital city, and those who buy homes in the Historic District need to accept that night life has been a part of Annapolis much longer than they have.

A moment after a visitor walked out of the Oasis strip club on The Block and turned to shake hands with the owner, a city police officer walked by and sternly warned, "Can't stand out here, gentlemen." Up the street, another officer holding a nightstick stared down a clump of patrons who had just emerged from another club. "No loitering in The Block," he told them. "Find someplace to be." At 1 a.m., the seedy, once-famed burlesque strip that is East Baltimore Street turns into a mini-police state.

At the end of a particularly spirited night, one in which nearly 90 percent of the more than 60 patrons packed inside the Southside Saloon would puff away hour after hour on cigarettes, owner Stuart Satosky would make it all of about two steps inside his South Baltimore home before the stench would hit his wife, who demanded the immediate removal of his smoke-filled clothes. "I'd have to put them in another room," said Satosky, a nonsmoker who has owned the bar in the 400 block of E. Fort Ave. for eight years.

While the last cigarette won't go out in a Baltimore bar for two more months, some city bar owners have been hard at work, looking for ways to follow the statewide ban without forcing smokers - some of their most loyal customers - out onto the street. From Fells Point to Mount Vernon, club owners are investing in expensive gas heaters, installing weatherproof tents and refurbishing decks and patios for year-round use. Although others are taking a wait-and-see approach, they know it will be anything but business as usual when the ban takes effect in February.

By passing a smoking ban that covers bars and restaurants Monday night, the Baltimore City Council put the question where it belongs: in Annapolis. Getting the smoke out of drinking establishments is the right step; doing it statewide is the only fair way to go about it. Bar owners and friendly officeholders have been most vocal over the years in opposing smoking bans both in Baltimore and statewide. They say they don't want to lose business. The specific argument in Baltimore that a city ban would force drinkers to take their business to the suburbs was not very convincing, because that's not what has happened in other cities - but if that's what the proprietors and their allies truly believe, then they should come out four-square for a state law that would put every jurisdiction in Maryland on an even footing.

In the strongest words she has used on the issue, Baltimore City Council President Sheila Dixon said yesterday she could support a local ban on smoking in restaurants and bars -- staking out a position that might become significant if she becomes mayor next year. Dixon, a longtime advocate on health issues, stopped short of vowing to vote for a ban. But she said that she does not believe smoking prohibitions affect the economy -- a chief claim made by opponents -- and suggested legislation could be crafted to appease the diametrically opposed advocates on both sides of the issue.

When a band of neighbors accompanied by four liquor board inspectors visited Retta's, bar manager George Tanner said he didn't know what to expect. But after a brief tour of the Northeast Baltimore establishment, the inspectors handed Tanner a list of items that he must fix, including clearing debris from a fire exit. And irate neighbors told him they were fed up with the mess his patrons were making in streets and alleys. It wasn't much fun for Tanner, who said he was manning the bar for his wife and sister-in-law.