By Brian Davis–
When I came out in 1981, the first queer space I went to was a bar in San Francisco. Like every other bar in those days, it was full of cigarette smoke, as was the bar’s patio where I would escape to cool off. Although I hated the smoke, I kept going there because I wanted to find community and someone to love.
Times have changed a lot. There are more queer-friendly spaces that aren’t bars, most people look for love online now, and smoking inside bars is now illegal in California. However, bar patios in San Francisco and Oakland remain as smoky as ever.
Our LGBTQ Minus Tobacco project gathered air quality measurements on San Francisco and Oakland bar patios in 2022. We found that “Unhealthy” air by EPA standards is common, and one bar in SF even had consistent readings in the “Hazardous” range.
While it is possible for bar patrons to avoid bars with smoky patios—and many do for that very reason—bar workers at patio bars don’t have that choice. Sometimes even the workers who are able to stay inside the bar can’t get away from it. A former bartender at a San Francisco gay bar once told me that the bar where he worked kept filling up with smoke from the patio. He ultimately decided to quit, but it wasn’t an easy decision. He told me that he didn’t want to lose the community he had there, and of course it meant giving up a steady job, but he knew that his health depended on it.
Something else that has changed since 1981 is there aren’t as many queer bars as there used to be. The reasons for this are many—gentrification, greater queer acceptance, online hookups, straight incursion, the pandemic—but smoke-free bar spaces is not one of them. When California bar interiors went smoke-free in 1998, bar revenues increased, and bar workers kept their jobs. Data from two decades shows that smoke-free air laws don’t have an impact on restaurant and bar employment.
Last year, we surveyed 221 SF bar goers. Over 70% of those who smoke and vape said they would support a city law requiring all bar patios to be smoke (and vape) free. Of all respondents, 57% said they would go to bars with patios more often if they were smoke-free. Only 9% said they would go less often. At SF Pride this year, we asked the same question to 56 more people who could tell us the names of specific patio bars in SF they go to. 36% would go more often, 45% would go as often, 18% would go less often, and 2% would stop going. So, it is reasonable to assume that patio bars will gain at least as many customers as they lose, and again, decades of research bears this out.
Still, during these economically uncertain times, it is understandable that many of the patio bar owners and staff we have spoken to are not supportive of a possible law requiring all patios to be smoke-free. They think their regular customers who smoke will stop going there and they are not confident that non-smoking customers will replace them.
These concerns leave several things out of consideration. First of all, smoke-free bar patio policies, like those in over 50 other Bay Area cities (including some cities with gay bars—like San Jose, where Splash is still going strong) apply to all of the bars in the city. So, no one will go to another bar with a smoking patio as none will exist. People go to particular bars because they like the staff, décor, drinks, music, shows, clientele, social environment, etc. so most of them will likely take a smoke break on the sidewalk and come back in to enjoy the things they go there for.
Another thing to bear in mind is that most smokers (about 70%) want to quit. LGBTQ+ smokers have told researchers that smoke-free outdoor spaces have helped inspire them to make quit attempts and that “No Smoking” signs, especially if they contain information on quit smoking resources, also move them in that direction. Tobacco is public health enemy number one, killing 480,000 people in the U.S. every year (38,000 of them from secondhand smoke exposure), and LGBTQ+ folks use tobacco products significantly more than others due to the stress caused by the discrimination that we face.
Many LGBTQ+ people can’t go to bars with patios because of smoking. Two gay men who used to volunteer with us have cystic fibrosis, requiring them to stay away from places where smoking takes place. They got involved in our work because they wanted to be able to enjoy queer outdoor spaces.
All of us who work on this project have personally experienced the vital importance of queer bar spaces to our communities. As marriage equality activists for decades, my husband and I shared our stories, celebrated victories, and mourned losses together with our community in gay bars. We don’t want these spaces to go away. What we want is for them to be welcoming to everyone, including smokers, who return after taking a smoke break—or maybe get inspired to quit by the signs sending the message that we support your struggle to quit and are there to provide resources to help you reach that goal.
One of our project’s volunteers, a gay man, died from lung cancer last year at age 66 after a lifetime of smoking. He had quit recently, but it was too late. What would have happened if, when he first walked into a gay bar, it hadn’t been a smoking environment—a place where smoking was the norm and one way to meet someone was to ask for a light? Would he have been a smoker? How many lives could have been saved if bar interiors had been smoke-free earlier? How many more lives could be saved now, either by protecting workers and patrons from secondhand smoke exposure, or by inspiring smokers to quit, if bar patios were smoke-free?
To find out more about LGBTQ Minus Tobacco, visit our website at www.lgbtqminustobacco.org
Brian Davis is the Project Director of LGBTQ Minus Tobacco.
Published on July 27, 2023
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