After Jan. 1, Worth hookah bars a pipe dream
[Asif Parvez enjoys a smoke at Friends Cafe and Lounge in Worth. [SouthtownStar photo: Art Vassy
Relaxing trance music is piped through the speakers while the sweet, spicy aroma of flavored tobacco wafts through the maroon room and past the hanging lamps and ornate hookah pipes situated on clean glass tables.
Come January, the Friends Cafe and Lounge in Worth will be history. Likewise for the Havana Cafe and Hookah Lounge and a pair of local cigar lounges.
The extinction of smoker-friendly businesses comes after the Worth Village Board voted last week to expand the state’s indoor smoking ban to include those establishments whose only purpose is to welcome smokers.
Effective Jan. 1, 2008, smoking was banned in public places throughout Illinois. But the law provided an exemption for businesses such as cigar lounges and hookah lounges where people gathered specifically to smoke.
Citing federal anti-smoking initiatives in their new “Indoor Clean Air Policy” ordinance, Worth officials concluded that smoking is bad for smokers. Likewise for those exposed to dangerous secondhand smoke.
But Friends Cafe owner Ala Alsherbini insists the new law isn’t about the good people of Worth or their health. He says it’s a power play by Worth politicians to extinguish his business for good.
Alsherbini, 30, and village officials have sparred over the cafe at 11015 S. Harlem Ave. for months.
Worth Police Chief John Carpino said his department has responded to “copious” amounts of calls to the cafe after neighbors lodged complaints about litter, loud music and fighting in the cafe’s parking lot.
Mayor Randy Keller said he’s driven by “many times” to find people drinking in the parking lot.
Village officials ordered the business closed in August, but it wa later reopened after Alsherbini agreed to close the cafe hours earlier each night.
But Alsherbini hasn’t lived up to his end of the bargain, officials said. There are people inside the cafe when it’s supposed to be closed, customers trashing the parking lot and a crowd of loiterers waiting to get inside, all of which has drawn scrutiny from the police.
For Alsherbini, the extra attention amounts to harassment.
He said former Mayor Ed Guzdziol never had this many issues with the cafe.
Contacted last week, Guzdziol credited Alsherbini for his entrepreneurship and called the local hookah cafes successful niche businesses.
Now, Alsherbini wonders why police patrol the parking lot like some sort of rowdy tavern when he only serves tobacco, coffee and juice.
He also wants to know why he’s the object of every complaint for every passing driver’s loud stereo and the action of every single patron, especially when they’re not even inside the cafe.
He believes he’s being picked on because the politicians don’t like his Palestinian heritage.
Officials counter that allegation, saying there are plenty other Arab-owned businesses in town that inspire “nothing but complements” from customers and politicians alike.
Regardless, just months after Keller, a former Worth trustee was voted into the mayor’s seat, the village board voted 5 to 0 to stamp out smoking in local tobacco-centered businesses.
Alsherbini “just doesn’t get it,” Keller said. “You’ve got to take action.”
Asked whether that “action” could be construed as retribution, Keller insisted the ban “has nothing to do with his violations.
“It’s not like we just decided to pass this,” Keller said. “We’ve talked about this for the past three months.”
The ban takes effect Jan. 1. While other tobacco-oriented shops in town can alter their menu and tobacco stores can continue selling cigars, snuff and cigarettes, the new law will make hookah lounges — whose sole function is to provide a place for people to smoke — obsolete.
“They can’t say, ‘We discriminate,’ so they have to put it this way,” Alsherbini said. “I’m sure it’s not about smoking.”
