They say this business owner is blowing smoke.
Neighbors are demanding the state come down on a Fifth Avenue hookah bar for breaking its agreement to keep its doors closed while patrons cheef on shisha. Owners of Chill Corp. near 78th Street agreed in writing to keep smoke from wafting into nearby homes and businesses as a stipulation in the lounge’s state-issued liquor license, but the puff peddlers aren’t holding up their end of the bargain and that has neighbors fuming.
“I’m worried about my wife — she’s six months pregnant — and my daughter once she’s born,” said 78th Street resident John Greco. “We set up her baby room right in the back room near their back yard.”
Bar owner Joseph Seikali signed an agreement with Community Board 10 last year promising to keep the spot’s doors shut when he’s open for business as a condition of getting an alcohol license from the State Liquor Authority.
“All doors shall remain shut (including front sidewalk and rear trap doors to basement),” the agreement states.
But Seikali admitted he keeps a sidewalk cellar door open during business hours because he and his employees work in the cellar and need fresh air. And the front doors were open while a patron puffed away when this paper dropped by around 6 pm on April 19.
Seikali dismissed the apparent breach and claimed he closes doors when more patrons show up.
“Once we get going, I shut the door and I have a whole ventilation system — I have to,” Seikali said.
But neighbors say Seikali is full of hot air, and Greco claims the restaurateur routinely keeps doors open as late as 9 pm when the bar is in full swing and said he can smell hookah smoke in his bedroom, around the corner from the bar on 78th Street, and across Fifth Avenue.
Seikali only serves non-tobacco shisha, he said.
But the plant-based hookah-fuel still produces smoke containing carbon monoxide and “other toxic agents known to increase the risks for smoking-related cancers, heart disease, and lung disease,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Council’s health committee is currently hearing a bill sponsored by Councilman Vincent Gentile (D–Bay Ridge) to add non-tobacco shisha to the city’s Smoke-Free Air Act, restrict its sale to people under 21, and ban it at establishments making less than half of their money off its sale. Existing hookah bars making the majority of their money off shisha sales would be grandfathered in.
The community board is sending a letter to the state notifying it of neighbors complaints against Chill Corp., according to the board’s district manager.
