The latest victims of the party crackdown in Miami Beach? Sidewalk hookah bars
Claudia Herman has owned D’Vine Hookah Lounge in Miami Beach for almost two decades. Her business depends on a steady stream of tourists and locals who want to indulge in flavored tobacco smoked from a water pipe and watch shoppers stroll along Lincoln Road.
But Herman’s business is in peril. In October, Miami Beach implemented a new system to regulate sidewalk cafes that bans hookah on public property, meaning shops like D’Vine can no longer serve it outdoors.
Several hookah bar owners on Lincoln Road now say they’re blameless victims of the city’s latest tactic aimed at cracking down on partying in South Beach.
“They’re killing my business,” Herman said, citing an 80% drop in revenue since the new rule took effect. “People come to South Beach to sit outside, to enjoy the weather. People don’t want to go inside.”
Business at D’Vine was slow on a recent weeknight, even as Lincoln Road buzzed with tourists in town for Miami Art Week. Only a handful of Herman’s more than 120 outdoor seats were occupied in the median area of the outdoor shopping mall, and inside, a young German couple smoking hookah were the lone patrons.
A few blocks west at Groovy’s Hookah Bar, outdoor couches were still adorned with hookah-themed throw pillows — one read, “Eat, sleep, hookah, repeat” — but the couches were empty around 8 p.m. Thursday.
“It drastically affected our business,” owner Erdem Aynali said of the new rules.
A handful of hookah smokers who stuck around the area Thursday said they were perplexed by the restrictions.
“The reasoning behind it, I completely don’t understand,” said Sasha Wagner, 41, a regular at Groovy’s and other hookah bars in the area.
Smoking hookah, Wagner said, “is not about people getting aggressive. It’s actually the opposite. You smoke hookah, you relax, chill with your friends.”
At 7 Spices, a Mediterranean restaurant and hookah lounge also on Lincoln Road, a couple visiting from West Palm Beach smoked hookah in a small indoor area and said they were surprised to learn they couldn’t do so outside.
“It was honestly shocking,” said Germena Hemai, 21, adding that hookah was commonplace where she grew up in Egypt. “The whole idea of having hookah is to be outside and kind of get fresh air. That’s the whole purpose of being in Miami, anyway.”
Hemai’s boyfriend, 29-year-old Josue Capellan, said he doesn’t associate hookah with hard partying.
“I never go to a hookah lounge where I’m like, ‘Wow, this is a rager,’ ” he said.
Sending more people to Ocean Drive?
Ramy Khudir, the owner of 7 Spices, said his revenue is down about 50% since the outdoor ban took effect. Aynali, of Groovy’s Hookah, said he has similarly lost about half his revenue.
The Lincoln Road owners say the new rules are not only hurting them but actually driving business to more raucous areas of South Beach like Collins Avenue and Ocean Drive. There, many hotels and bars feature privately-owned patios set back from the sidewalk, where the city can’t regulate their practices and hookah use continues.
Several Ocean Drive establishments had hookah pipes set up Thursday night, including the popular Clevelander Hotel and the Palace Bar, where music blared and patrons enjoyed an outdoor drag show.
At nearby Ocean’s Ten, a man smoking hookah with two friends told the Miami Herald he had visited D’Vine Hookah on Lincoln Road the night before but went home when he learned he couldn’t smoke outside.
The man, who asked to remain anonymous, said he typically prefers going to Lincoln Road for its shopping and more relaxed atmosphere but came to Ocean Drive instead because of the sidewalk cafe restrictions.
“Ocean Drive actually benefited from the hookah ban,” said Aynali, the Groovy’s owner.
Herman, the D’Vine owner, agreed.
“I told [city officials], ‘You’re creating a monster,’ ” she said.
City looks to ‘elevate’ outdoor spaces
Miami Beach officials have tried multiple approaches to regulate sidewalk cafes in recent years, saying they attract rowdy tourists and often employ unsavory business tactics like “hawking” to bring in customers and baking hidden tips and fees into food and drink prices.
The city has faced legal hurdles and backlash from business owners. Last year, Herman of D’Vine Hookah was one of several owners to sue the city over a permit-based sidewalk cafe system that a judge ultimately struck down last December.
City officials shifted course this year, devising a new system based on contract agreements with individual businesses that govern sidewalk cafes on the public right-of-way.
The new system took effect in October after a Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge rejected a legal challenge by a group of businesses. Each sidewalk cafe owner was required to sign a two-year contract to continue operating, and the city gained authority to shut down the operations without cause.
The agreements not only ban “vapor-generating devices” like hookah at sidewalk cafes but also restrict hawking, ban cocktails larger than 22 ounces, require workers to wear uniforms and demand transparency from restaurants that ask for tips beyond automatically-included amounts.
Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber, a leading proponent of the bans on hookah and big drinks, says it’s all part of an effort to change the city’s reputation as a hard-partying tourist destination and “elevate” its outdoor spaces.
In 2020, Gelber imposed a curfew after shots were fired at Voodoo, a nightclub and hookah lounge on Ocean Drive. The venue was temporarily ordered shut for violating COVID rules.
“If we wanted to change the feel of these outdoor spaces, we had to implement changes,” Gelber said. “We have to be serious about implementing them, even if it’s sometimes hard.”
At least one elected official, Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, is taking a different stance. Last month, she sponsored a proposal to let City Manager Alina Hudak make exceptions for hookah bars deemed to be good actors without a history of problems.
“Not all hookahs are created equal and not all hookahs create a circus,” Rosen Gonzalez said at a Nov. 16 meeting.
But Hudak said she has concerns about being asked to differentiate between “the good hookah lounge versus the bad hookah lounge.”
The proposal was referred to a Dec. 7 committee meeting for further discussion.
Only some owners paid increased fees
Last year, before Miami Beach banned hookah at sidewalk cafes entirely, it sought to discourage the practice by increasing permit fees from $27 to $125 per square foot for any business that continued to serve hookah or drinks over 22 ounces in sidewalk cafe areas.
Aynali, the Groovy’s owner, said he agreed to pay the increased amount, bumping his annual fees from less than $20,000 to more than $110,000.
But not all owners were forced to comply. Business owners who sued the city last year, including Herman of D’Vine Hookah, withheld the fees during the litigation, and were later allowed to pay the $27 rate as part of a deal to drop their legal battle. (Under the new system, all sidewalk cafe owners are now paying $32 per square foot.)
Aynali, who co-owns Groovy’s with his wife, said it amounted to him being punished for choosing not to sue the city — an odd situation that blew a hole in his budget and added to his mounting frustration.
“You knock me down, and now you kick me,” he said. “My life savings, and the future of my business, is melting away before my eyes.”
This story was originally published December 5, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
