219 Lounge joins smoke-free world

By DAVID GUNTER

Feature correspondent

SANDPOINT — Over the course of more than 85 years, a downtown watering hole like the 219 Lounge naturally becomes a hotbed of local tradition. Like the bar in “Cheers”, it has been the gathering place for generations of tipplers who show up for cocktails and company.

Working folks have always dropped in after they clock out — whether that meant wrapping up the 9 to 5 or hitting the Two-One-Niner in the morning when their graveyard shift was over — to have a cold one before heading home.

Given the times, the building has also had its share of folks lighting up a smoke as part of ritual visits that have been going on since at least 1930.

“I calculate that somewhere between 17 million and 36 million cigarettes have been smoked in the 219 during that time,” said Mel Dick, whose wife, Claudia, purchased the downtown fixture in 2006.

On Dec. 5, a major change takes place when the bar goes smoke-free. As part of the shift, the owners have scheduled a thorough scouring of the place, including a “fogging” process that is designed to alleviate much of the lingering olfactory legacy left behind by legions of smokers. According to Mel Dick, the procedure creates its own clouds of smoke — to the point where authorities need to be alerted in advance.

“You have to let the fire department know, otherwise, you’d swear it was burning down,” he said. “That should take out about 50 percent of the smoke smell.”

That’s only the start, as several other steps are required to fully remove a scent that has become, physically and metaphorically, part of the place.

“This is a process,” said Dick. “You go smoke-free, you spend time and effort getting out the smell that has literally permeated the walls, then you seal everything.

“We may have to take the carpet out; we may have to take the booths out,” he added. “We want to make it so that, after you come into the 219, you don’t feel like you have to go home and burn your clothes.”

The plan to crush out the butts would have been implemented sooner, but for the lack of a strategic agreement between two downtown bars that sit face-to-face on either side of First Avenue. Along with the 219, the A&P has also been a safe place for smokers to congregate. It wasn’t until both establishments agreed to move forward — and agreed to do so at exactly the same time — that anything could happen.

For the owners, it was both a matter of economic reality and job preservation, since the approximately eight to 10 employees at the 219 would have been adversely affected if the bar had decided to go smoke-free alone.

“That’s one reason we took so long,” said Dick. “If we had gone non-smoking and the place across the street didn’t, we would have lost customers — which means lost jobs.”

Original plans called for purging the smoke smell last June, but an uprising of social smokers who had lost their former havens at home and at work saw the 219 as a last bastion of public puffing. As the clientele progressively shifted to younger patrons, however, the pressure to change with the times finally won out.

“You’ve got this changing demographic view of smoking that’s happened over the last 20 years,” Dick said. “It has been a huge shift.”

Especially huge when you consider that the lounge operated mostly during the heyday of American cigarette smoking. Back in the early 1930s, customers might have come across the street for a drink after watching their favorite movie stars smoking — seemingly non-stop — on the big screen at the then-new Panida Theater. A decade later, thousands of sailors from Farragut Naval Base descended upon the town — and the 219 Lounge — sending even greater plumes of smoke in their wake.

A series of murals discovered as the new owners began to upgrade the building bespeak the history of what has earned the sentimental title of “Sandpoint’s favorite dive bar.” One entire wall bears the original artwork that was restored in 2013, while other chapters of the 219 story were revealed as former renovations were stripped away.

“We discovered a South Sea island, tiki hut mural behind a fireplace that we tore out,” Dick said. “That probably goes back to the days of the naval station.”

Keeping with tradition, the owners kept the murals going when they opened an outdoor patio area, featuring the paintings of local artists Nanette Cooper and Maria Larson on the walls in that area. Other contemporary changes include a more “Boho” décor in about a third of the lounge’s interior — a design direction that will eventually be used for the entire space, according to Dick.

The biggest change of all, though, might come with the scheduled “fogging” operation during the first week of December. For that job, the 219 will need to remain closed for a couple of days, flying in the face of long-held local history.

“As far as we know, this will be the first time that the 219 has ever been closed,” said Dick, pointing out that the bar has a record of being open 365 days a year.

Customers, meanwhile, appear to be fine with the brief closure and the shift to smoke-free status. Some were slower to come to that conclusion than others, the owners said, but consensus has been reached.

“There’s overwhelming support for this now,” Dick said. “Even longtime smokers are supporting the move.”