Schaumburg hookah lounge gets license

Schaumburg Mayor Al Larson Tuesday cast a rare tie-breaking vote to grant the first entertainment license to a hookah lounge in the village.

Though it was only the newest of Schaumburg's six hookah lounges -- Arabian Nights -- that received the license to allow deejays and live bands to perform, the vote was seen as precedent-setting for all the rest.

For weeks, members of the village board have been torn over whether allowing even limited entertainment at a smoking establishment was a violation of the state's new public-smoking regulations.

Some argued they didn't see how they could continue to ban entertainment venues from allowing smoking if they could allow smoking establishments to have entertainment.

But Larson said his own feelings on the matter weren't so plagued by doubts over the state law's guidelines and protections.

"I thought adding some entertainment was relatively innocuous," Larson said after breaking the 3-3 stalemate.

The owners of Arabian Nights believed they were following the new law to the letter when they measured out 10 percent of their floor space for deejays, live bands and belly dancers to perform.

The new state law still allows smoking in establishments that devote 90 percent of their floor space and receive 80 percent of their revenue from tobacco sales.

As they sell little but the flavored tobacco for the hookahs, the owners felt they could use the tiny 10 percent of their floor space any other way they wanted -- and they wanted entertainment.

Though it had been an uphill fight, Arabian Nights co-owner Mena Abadir said he had a feeling at Tuesday's board meeting that things would go his way -- though not necessarily by way of a tie-breaking vote.

"I kind of felt it was going to happen," he said afterward. "The more they thought about it, the more it made sense to them."

Also interested in the outcome were Ahmed Khan and Fariz Burhanuddin of the nearly equally new Inferno Lounge.

Though it was not their own entertainment license on the line, Burhanuddin spoke passionately before the board about the entire cultural experience behind hookah lounges -- which he said are left cold and sterile places if made to be only about smoking itself.