Bay Ridge residents request better ventilation systems for local hookah lounges
Residents want to reduce second-hand smoke
Bay Ridge community board leaders are considering going door to door to neighborhood hookah lounges and asking owners to install better ventilation systems amid complaints about secondhand smoke.
“It’s wonderful to smell people’s cooking, but not tobacco and hookah smoke,” said Josephine Beckmann, district manager of Community Board 10, which includes Bay Ridge. “This is a big problem because you have many elderly people and asthmatics living” above hookah lounges.
Beckmann said the board has received many complaints about some of the nearly 20 hookah lounges that have popped up, primarily along bustling Third and Fifth avenues in recent years.
Neighbors say smoke often seeps into apartments above the lounges, which are among the few indoor establishments in the city where smoking is legal. Local hookah lounge owners contend they already have sufficient ventilators in place, and are in full compliance with city law.