Tuesday night, Feb. 1, was business as usual at the Wild Hare. The band’s bass lines were buzzing through the walls, the dancers were grooving to the beat, and Red Stripe bottles were being raised by young men fond of saying, “Yah, mon.”
The only thing missing was the hazy cloud of cigarette smoke that has become a fixture of Chicago’s live music club scene.
That’s because last month, the reggae bar started a novel experiment: to make Tuesday nights smoke-free.
“None of the owners of the club smoke,” said Wild Hare co-owner and musician Zeleke Gessesse. “And we had a lot of complaints from non-smokers that they couldn’t take so much smoke. So last July we opened a no-smoking VIP room upstairs. People responded and said `thank you’ for it, so we decided to take it one step further with a no-smoking night.”
“I think it’s great,” says Sherie Fischer, 24, a telecommunication specialist from suburban Justice. “I hate it when the smoke gets into your hair and your clothes at the bars.”
Even smoker Horace Brown agreed. “It’s good because it is better for your lungs,” said Brown, a dance instructor from the West Side. “I can do one night a week. This way maybe I will live one day extra. Tomorrow morning I will wake up and maybe try it for two days.”
Whether or not the public’s response will prompt more club owners to try out smoke-free nights is unclear. But a growing trend of partnerships between clubs and cigarette companies makes that possibility seem less likely.
Unlike restaurants, which are under increasingly tight smoking restrictions (even if the controls are indifferently enforced in Chicago, as noted in Wednesday’s Tempo), bars and nightclubs enjoy a legally sanctioned double standard under the 1993 Clean Indoor Air Ordinance. Because the law specifically excludes them from the compliance imposed on restaurants, stores, offices and other public places, they remain the last bastion of unlimited smokesmanship.
The Wrigleyville-based Wild Hare, without a single ad for beer or cigarettes on its walls, is a rare bird in Chicago. Its owners (seven musicians and a professor) have consistently refused corporate sponsorships, making them free to do as these please without fear of jeopardizing funding.
“They approach us every year,” Gessesse says. “Marlboro and Camel come in with their offers, but we always refuse. It has been a long philosophical decision to remain an independent entertainment company. We don’t take any beer companies either. As you can see, there are no neon beer signs in our windows. There is a bit of principle in it. We don’t want to have ties.”
Most other club owners don’t want restrictive ties either, but recently, cigarette companies have made that choice more difficult with tempting sponsorship offers that can involve tens of thousands of dollars. The offers often require the clubs to hang brand signs, use branded bar supplies, allow the companies to market in the club and agree to sell the sponsoring brand exclusively. In exchange, the clubs receive large amounts of money for advertising and to put on special events.
For some who have never taken the money, the choice to remain smoke-free and unfettered is easy.
“I wouldn’t want their money,” says Joe Segal, owner of The Jazz Showcase, which has been smoke-free for more than 10 years. “I went smoke-free mostly out of self-defense, because I just couldn’t stand it anymore. But it has become really important to customers who came back to the club when they heard about the policy. It is especially important for our Sunday shows, when we have kids here.”
Still, for others, the recent influx of cigarette dollars to clubs comes as a windfall.
Tim Borden is the director of marketing for ALA Carte Entertainment, which owns 24 bars, clubs and restaurants, including Excalibur, Cadillac Ranch, Heartland, Moretti’s on Jackson, Alumni Clubs in Schaumburg, Aura, Leg Room and Deja Vu, all of which have cigarette sponsorships.
“We are getting sponsorship dollars, and they are buying the right to market in our clubs,” says Borden. “It benefits both sides. And the free advertising is also mutually beneficial.”
Over the past two years, this free advertising has become a huge presence in entertainment weeklies like the Chicago Reader, which regularly runs two to three full pages of ads bought by cigarette firms pushing clubs they sponsor. Despite the increasing number of rival clubs featured in the ads, which may dilute the edge the advertising gives individual nightspots, Metro and Double Door owner Joe Shanahan believes that the events the tobacco money enables bars to stage can be great opportunities for establishment and artist alike.
“It’s really pretty artist friendly,” says Shanahan, who has had deals with Camel in the past but whose clubs are currently sponsored by Marlboro. “When a band is between records or between tours, these [cigarette company] shows can be a great way for an artist to do a [one-night] fly-in date that pays sometimes two to three times what they would normally get for a gig.”
Club owner Nick Novich agrees and couldn’t be happier.
“We’ve been able to book some shows that would have been much too expensive otherwise,” says Novich, who owns The Note and Nick’s. “And lots of people turned out who otherwise would not have. . . . Maybe the only downside is that some individuals are exposed to smoke who don’t care to be, but that’s part and parcel of going out to a bar or nightclub.”
Beer and liquor companies have been sponsoring bars and shows for years, but this kind of aggressive sponsorship by tobacco is a relatively recent phenomenon. Most see this recent marketing strategy as a direct result of the tobacco industry’s increasingly limited advertising options elsewhere.
“The tobacco industry has been under increasing restrictions in terms of marketing,” says Bert Kremer, director of sponsorships for Brown & Williamson, which makes Lucky Strike. “Against that backdrop, the bars provide us an arena to access adult smokers in a relatively efficient manner.”
The sponsorships also tend to reach an elusive market.
“People who go to bars are perceived as hard to reach by traditional marketing,” Borden adds. “So these marketing groups go into what they call lifestyle marketing, by going directly to nightclub patrons. It’s being done by cigarette, movie and liquor companies.”
In addition to allowing cigarette manufacturers to market in their venue, many clubs will sell the company’s specialty products on site. These include Camel’s flavored cigarettes, which the company suggests can be paired with alcoholic beverages in much the same way as gourmet food. Table cards for the smokes recommend, for example, pairing “aromatic, mellow, spicy and subtle” Samsun with “a spicy zinfandel or a buttery chardonnay” while Twist is said to go well with “citrus-flavored vodka, tequila cocktails, a Weiss beer or citrus-based cordials”.
Accepting corporate sponsorships may seem like a natural move for big commercial nightclubs, but cigarette money also has drifted into some unexpected corners. Ukrainian Village indie rock club The Empty Bottle has partnered with Lucky Strike, and the progressive HotHouse is currently in negotiations for a tobacco sponsor.
“With all the corporate mergers, I have trouble making a distinction between cigarette sponsorships and others,” says HotHouse owner Marguerite Horberg. “Our [avant-garde presentations] are such a marginalized kind of thing that we can use any kind of extra help we can find. Sure, I have philosophical conflicts with it, but not necessarily with cigarette sponsorships per se. I have more problems with the trend of corporations’ acquiring clubs, which does a lot of different things to culture. This is one more of those contradictions for what it’s worth. So we are trying to get sponsorship. We’re not above it.”
As the sponsorship trend has gained wider and wider acceptance, The Illinois Coalition Against Tobacco has been watching with disappointment and suspicion about the companies’ motives.
“We don’t like the idea of tobacco companies’ buying their influence anywhere, whether they do it in convenience stores with Marlboro clocks or via coasters with a Camel logo,” coalition spokeswoman Janet Williams said. The tobacco industry “wants its product associated with youthfulness, fun, energy and good times when it is a product that can only be associated with death and disease. We also know they reach kids when the clubs have under-21 events and the signage and paraphernalia are still there. So ICAT has been concerned about these kinds of sponsorships. The companies say they don’t want to market to kids, but I don’t see them sponsoring events at senior adult centers.”
Even those who don’t care for cigarette companies’ motives and methods concede that the programs can produce some great shows.
“They give you a chunk of change to do a really special event that you otherwise couldn’t afford,” explains former Schubas and FitzGerald’s booker Anastasia Davies. “Like if you had a dream band that you wanted to come in, you could actually do it. And so it’s hard because you are promoting something that is terrible, but you are also bringing in good music.”
But just because a sponsored club wants to bring in an act for a cigarette show, it doesn’t mean the artist will do it.
“I always had to get approval from the artists before we could go ahead with the show,” says Davies, who now books music for the Chicago Park District. “Because some artists would hear `cigarette sponsor’ and say `forget it.'”
Bill FitzGerald, co-owner of FitzGerald’s, agrees that for some artists the sponsorship issue is sensitive, but says, “I’ll be honest with you, most artists want to know what’s in it for them.”
According to Shanahan, a lot can be in it for the performer — although he says he is not at liberty to divulge figures because of the confidentiality agreement that tobacco companies insist on. Still, he has run across bands like Luna who have refused to do cigarette-sponsored shows.
“They told me that it was just not something they wanted to do at that point in their career,” he says. “But other bands [who have done Marlboro Miles shows] like Soul Asylum, Big Head Todd and Smashmouth are smokers, and they don’t have a problem with it.”
What some artists do have a problem with is intrusive sponsor presence at the show. For instance, few ever allow anything like a brand banner over the stage.
“I’m here to protect the artist,” Shanahan says. “They might agree to do the show, but does that mean Dave Pirner [of Soul Asylum] or Todd Park Mohr [of Big Head Todd and the Monsters] are going to come out in a Marlboro T-shirt? I don’t think so. Well, maybe if it is dirty and ripped.
“I like to keep the promotional tables in the entrance with maybe a banner in the lobby at Metro and some unobtrusive signs,” he adds. “But especially with smaller clubs, you don’t want them to start looking like the Dan Ryan Expressway. I have good relationships with my sponsors, but I don’t allow anyone to steamroller over me.”
Still, even club owners who are fairly happy with their sponsorship deal have felt the push of the tobacco rep steamroller. Some complain of requests to install cigarette kiosks in their already-cramped clubs, and others bemoan overly aggressive marketing schemes.
“Nightclubs are creative ventures, and it’s difficult when the cigarette companies force them into exclusivity contracts,” says Mark Klemen, who is the owner of Funky Buddha Lounge, which has had cigarette deals with a few companies but is not currently signed. “I choose not to be signed, because I would rather not be at the mercy of someone’s marketing.”
Part of that marketing is signage, but it can also include allowing cigarette reps to “sample” the club. Sampling often involves passing out free cigarettes during special events (although Marlboro does not do it) but more often involves cigarette reps’ filtering through the crowd and talking up the brand. According to R.J. Reynolds spokeswoman Carole Crosslin, “they have friendly chats with adult smokers to promote brand loyalty and awareness that the brand is supporting their lifestyle interests.”
During a recent Camel-sponsored Mardi Gras show at Wicker Park’s The Note, music fans got to take in the festive rhythms of the Chicago Samba School for only $7. But in exchange for that discount, they were inundated with Camel advertising all over the bar. From the “Camel Sponsors Chicago Nightlife” banner on the stage to the posters, matches, table cards and registration booth (where you could exchange personal marketing information for a free pack of cigarettes), it was hard to forget who was sponsoring the event.
Still, those who let cigarette companies go even further can reap big rewards.
A Chicago source says that Crobar in Miami, a sister of Chicago’s Crobar, agreed to show continuous video ads for Camel against its walls, for which it received a reported $10,000. Camel’s maker, R. J. Reynolds, would not confirm or deny this, saying it was “proprietary information.”
A Crobar spokeswoman in Chicago, Natalie Larrick, said the Miami club manager told her, ” `We have so many events here. We might have used it but I can’t remember.’ “
A Chicago club owner claims he was offered $35,000 to transform one of his rooms into a huge neon green ad for Salem cigarettes, also made by Reynolds. He didn’t take it.
Although most club owners will not let companies invade their space so blatantly, some have found that the small signage trade-offs can create revenue for repairs and infrastructure improvements.
“We felt a little funny at first, but there is a lot we could do with the money in exchange for [allowing] one little neon sign and some napkins and things like that,” says FitzGerald, whose club is currently with Marlboro. “With the money we get to do this [and save in advertising], we could pay for a new furnace or an air-conditioner on the roof.”
While FitzGerald hopes to purchase his own ventilation equipment with some of the money saved, other club owners have actually had their smoke-reducing ventilation systems paid for directly by the cigarette companies.
Paying for ventilation systems “is definitely something we would consider doing for the clubs we sponsor,” says Kremer of Lucky Strike.
Crosslin insists that Reynolds does not pay for ventilation systems, but one Chicago club owner claims his club was recently the object of a tobacco-company bidding war, which included Reynolds,to pay for his new $50,000 ventilation system.
Companies are reluctant to release sponsorship figures or details on the restrictions they impose on bars, but one club worker, who declined to have his name published, estimated that sponsored clubs get anywhere from $2,000 to $15,000 in talent and promotional money per event. In addition, Camel, for example, gives its clubs two free cartons of cigarettes every week for use by employees.
“When I was at Schubas, I was still a smoker, but I smoked Marlboros,” says Davies of her time at the North Side club, which was sponsored by Camel but is now a Marlboro bar. “But the reps told me that I wasn’t allowed to show my pack while I was at the club, and I was like, `What country are we living in?”‘
These kinds of restrictions are the reason many clubs choose to go with Lucky Strike. Although that company asks for brand signage and that no one under 21 attends their events, it doesn’t demand exclusive over-the-counter sales or employee usage. One club owner applauded their club-friendly approach, calling the company “the best of three evils.”
Another problem clubs have encountered with sponsorship is the inability to present any family-friendly programs with the money. One club had to turn away families during the day last summer for one of its tented music festivals. Hideout co-owner Katie Tuten avoided a similar scene last fall when she opted not to take cigarette money for the club’s annual block party.
“We could have had substantial funding from a cigarette company for the party, but then we wouldn’t have been able to allow children,” she said of the event, which attracted quite a few tots. “We felt like it was way more important to have our friends’ kids here than to have the money.”
As cigarette firms keep infiltrating the Chicago market and more clubs become dependent on their dollars, these issues are going to come up more often. And as accepting sponsorships becomes more common, independents like the Wild Hare and The Jazz Showcase, with the flexibility to ban smoking on a regular basis, will become rarer.Segal feels that, in the end, the decision for a bar to go smoke free is not one to be based on money or atmosphere, but on health.
“I still get a few people who say, `How can you have a jazz club without smoking?'” he says. “I say to them, `What do you dig, the music or the cigarettes?’ I know I dig the music and my lungs.”
