By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Rey Limos studies a shot at Hawaiian Brian's Billiards. Although
he is still allowed to smoke there, the City Council will decide tomorrow
whether smoking should be banned in workplaces —
including pool halls and bowling alleys.

---

Smoking ban to include
pool parlors, bowling

Council is poised to approve
a workplace ban tomorrow

By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Star-Bulletin

Rey Limos leaned over the pool table and eyed the billiard balls, peering through the smoke from the cigarette dangling from his lip.

Limos, a 43-year-old Liliha accountant, doesn't want the City Council telling him he can't smoke while shooting pool at Hawaiian Brian's.

"They take up everything," Limos said. "Maybe, pretty soon, our government will be like China."

The Council is poised to pass a workplace smoking ban tomorrow. Restaurants, nightclubs, hotel rooms and private homes or clubs are exempt. Nearly every other indoor facility would be smoke-free.

Operators and most patrons of billiard rooms and bowling alleys aren't happy.

Richard Akimoto, general manager of Hawaiian Brian's, said he's spent some $50,000 on smoke filters trying to push cigarette smoke out of his establishment.

"We try to make it as comfortable as possible," Akimoto said.

Akimoto and others seek a compromise, perhaps of separating smoking and nonsmoking sections. The Council hasn't heeded concerns raised by pool hall and bowling alley operators.

Councilman Mufi Hannemann last month suggested that most bowling alleys and pool halls have restaurants, bars or both which would still be allowed to set aside a section for smokers.

While it appeared most at Hawaiian Brian's supported the smokers or were indifferent to the issue, there were others who supported the ban.

Kalani Villarin, a 23-year-old student from Pearl City, said he knows his sister makes it a point to find bowling alleys that have nonsmoking sections.

He also dislikes the image of a pool player always having a cigarette in hand.

"Maybe it's time to change the stereotype," he said.

Akimoto insists half his adult clientele smokes and that a smoking ban could result in major changes at Hawaiian Brian's. "We don't want to have liquor inside here but (the Council) is going to force us to do it," he said.

Warren Masui, general manager for the Velvet Touch, another pool hall, thinks including pool rooms and not restaurants and bars is "asinine."

Most of his workers, he said, smoke and want to be around smokers. Velvet Touch also has vents that suck air outside the premises. "It's not like some places where you can see the fog," Masui said.

Health experts say that only by separately enclosing a nonsmoking area and giving it a separate air-conditioning and exhaust system can there be separation between smokers and nonsmokers.

That point doesn't sell well at Stadium Bowl-O-Drome, where smoking is not allowed in the seating area next to the lanes or on the lanes themselves. There is a smoking area away from the lanes.

Owner Eddie Kinzie and manager Edwin Lum say the division satisfies most. "There are a lot of smokers here," Kinzie said. "The old bucks don't want to quit for nothing."

Lum said they went nonsmoking once several years back. It lasted for a day because of all the complaints.