But residents weighed concerns at a community board meeting
Hunts Point’s first hookah bar is set to open on Southern Boulevard in August.
But some members of Community Board 2 have reservations about the opening of the new lounge. At a meeting in late June, the board voted to support Pulse Hookah Bar and Lounge’s liquor license application for beer and wine in a tight vote, with 14 favoring, nine opposing, and two abstentions.
At the same meeting, the board voted to approve liquor licenses for two conventional bars, La Quisqueya Bar Restaurant Corp and El Castillo Restaurant, with little ado. While those bars will be allowed to remain open until 4 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, Pulse will be required to close two hours earlier.
In addition, the new lounge will be required to have three licensed security guards on staff. Patrons will have to be 21 to enter, even though the legal age for smoking hookah in the state is 18.
The hookah is a water pipe in which a tobacco mixture called shisha is heated by charcoal, then passes through a water-filled chamber and smoked through a tube and mouthpiece. The recreational activity has gained popularity in US cities over the past decade, but was first brought over from the middle east in the 1950s.
The Center for Disease Control reports that sheesha, the ingredient used in hookah mixtures, produces smoke that can lead to the same respiratory diseases caused by cigarette smoking, and the charcoal produces high carbon monoxide levels. Hookah smokers inhale more than cigarette smokers, exposing them to more nicotine.
But Harry and Khaleem Khan, brothers who moved to the US from Pakistan decades ago and plan to open the new lounge, argue smoking hookah is less harmful than tobacco, and contend that the mixtures smoked in the city’s lounges have been tobacco-free since the city implemented an indoor smoking ban in 2003. They say the close vote and the board’s added stipulations were rooted more in cultural bias than safety or health concerns.
“Every bar over here, every Spanish hotel, I know them, you ask them, they get beer and wine license approval in one day,” said Harry Khan, 36, who has operated a hookah bar in Washington DC for 17 years and now lives in the Bronx. He points out hookah is an old cultural tradition. “Why were they delaying us, just because we’re not Spanish?”
But Board 2’s District Manager Rafael Salamanca denied that board members unfairly singled out the new lounge on cultural grounds. Along with concerns expressed by members of the board’s health committee, he said, some are concerned about the lounge’s location near the intersection of Southern Boulevard and Aldus Street, where crime is high. On June 26th, a murder was committed on Hoe Avenue, one block away.
In an email, board member Charlie Samboy echoed Salamanca’s concern.
“Aldus Street is notorious for violence and crime. Southern Boulevard is a very desolate street after dark,” Samboy wrote. “I believe that combination is going to place a burden on the police department and simply be a nuisance to the residents of those buildings.”
The Khans, who operate a pizza shop and a smoke shop in the building where the lounge will open, disagree with the crime worries.
“We have been over here since January and I don’t have any problem,” said Harry Khan. “It’s only how you treat the people. People are not bad. If you are good with them, giving respect to them, they will give you respect.”
Board member Joyce Campbell-Culler worries about the equipment used in hookah smoking, saying “those pipes remind me of crack pipes,” that young people will be exposed to, but she dismissed the idea that the board is biased.
“I don’t mind learning about people’s cultures, but I don’t think that is a good practice,” she said.
Harry Khan says the lounge will provide convenient access for hookah smokers, who until now have had to travel to lounges in other boroughs.
Despite board members’ insistence on establishing some restrictions, most residents in the area support the new lounge, Salamanca said. A 21-year-old employee at the 10 Ten Smoke Shop, who declined to give her name, said the new lounge shouldn’t raise concerns.
“Everybody has the freedom to decide to smoke. We have our own choices, so I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” she said. “It’s not like it’s illegal.”
Harry Khan hopes the lounge will become a center for socializing.
“If it goes well, in the future, I want to intermingle the Spanish community with our community,” he said. “We are living over here in one country, under one roof. Are we separated because of the language or something like that?”