Clock ticking on Daphne restaurant smoking

DAPHNE -- Customers have smoked cigarettes at the site of Manci's Antique Club just about every day for at least 84 years.

In a little more than three months, smoking at the Daphne landmark -- a "museum" which serves food and boasts one of the world's largest Jim Beam decanter collections -- will be against the law.

"That doesn't seem right, does it? Jim Beam, but no smoking," said Alex Manci, 62, owner and grandson of founder Frank Manci.  As he worked behind the bar on Thursday, handing fresh beers to patrons, Manci said most of his customers are smokers, and the smoking ban passed by the City Council last week will hurt his business, at least temporarily.

"It'll probably be a year before folks get adjusted to it and people who don't smoke start coming in," Manci said. "Can I make it a year? We'll see."

Though smoking has long been part of many restaurants' identities in Daphne, some owners and operators last week said they felt that going non-smoking was inevitable as one Baldwin community after another enacted the ban in recent years.

One Daphne eatery even voluntarily went smoke-free six weeks ago.

"We felt it was probably going to pass this time, so we went ahead and did it," said Kris Conlon, owner of Guido's Restaurant, which is next door to Manci's.

Conlon said he is philosophically opposed to such government restrictions, but said he's also aware that second-hand smoke is harmful. His 8-year-old son has asthma, and his family eats at non-smoking restaurants, he said.

"It's hard to say you're a family-style restaurant when you've got five guys at the bar chugging away at Marlboros," Conlon said. "So we decided to do it ourselves, regardless of what the city did."

At first, when the bartender told customers not to light up, some got mad and left. But those same people "came right back the next weekend," he said.

Since California mandated smoke-free public spaces in 1998, and New York state did the came in 2003, many other states and municipalities have followed suit.

A statewide opinion poll sponsored by the American Cancer Society released in January found overwhelming support for a ban on workplace smoking. Nine out of 10 respondents said people shouldn't be exposed to secondhand smoke in the workplace, and 78 percent supported a statewide ban.

 Last year, state Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, D-Mobile, introduced a bill in the Legislature that would impose a statewide smoking ban on bars, restaurants and other businesses. The bill did not go through, but Figures has vowed to continue the fight.

Daphne's "air quality" ordinance, passed last week by the City Council, will go into effect 90 days after the newspaper publication of the required legal notice, which will likely happen within two weeks, city officials said. Mayor Fred Small had not yet signed the ordinance Friday, said City Clerk David Cohen.

The ordinance passed 6-1 on Feb. 18. It bans smoking in all Daphne restaurants while it allows smoking in bars, private clubs, tobacco shops and in designated smoking rooms in hotels, city officials said.

A bar is defined as a business for which alcohol represents 60 percent of gross receipts. There are only a few full-fledged bars in Daphne, city officials said.

The measure prohibits smoking within 20 feet of an establishment where smoking is banned. Individuals will be $50 per violation, plus court costs, and businesses will be fined $100 for a first infraction, $200 for a second, then $500 for each subsequent infraction. A business could ultimately lose its city business license.

The City Council held two advertised public hearings on the issue -- Jan. 7 and Jan. 21.

The second was scheduled when Council President Greg Burnam -- the smoking ban's outspoken opponent -- pointed out that the original public hearing had been scheduled for the night of the BCS national championship football game, when restaurant and bar owners likely would be too distracted to attend.

"I didn't go to the public hearings because it would have been wasted time. They were going to pass it anyway," Manci said. "There was only one councilman against it."

Jimmy Canaan, a regular at Manci's who smokes, said he wasn't sure whether he'll come there anymore once it's smoke-free. But a man sitting two seats away from Canaan had different feelings when he finished eating as Canaan lit up a smoke.

"Hey Alex, can I get the check? The smoke in here's killing me," said the man, who identified himself only as Ed.