…he was distraught for days
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My Town, By Cora Hayes
332 Glass Street: Royal Garden
Royal Garden is a fairly middle of the road Chinese restaurant, one of three in town. Hong’s down on Cedar Street is better and Happy Dragon over in the Riverside area is a bit worse.
Now, Royal Garden does does do steady business, and I eat there about twice a month, but the restaurant is not where the big money comes in from. No, that would be the tobacco den located in the basement.
When Tobacco Prohibition passed in 1918, old Mr. Chao decided to rig up his large basement as a place for nicotine addicts to gather and smoke. It was a pretty good setup, since several city sewer pipes ran under the basement floor, thus allowing smoke to be conducted away with the help of fans. After patching into those pipes and doing a few other modifications, he was ready to open for business just before Christmas, 1918.
I was lucky enough to get a tour of the place early one Sunday morning, just after it had been thoroughly aired out and cleaned in preparation for the post-church smokers.
Entrance is via a concealed rear door in the alley out back. Some employee is always sitting on the back stoop, doing something innocuous. They buzz you in after you slip them the $10.00 fee.
From there, you walk down a few stairs until you come to the changing room. Since tobacco smoke clings to clothing like a barnacle clings to a rock, you are issued a robe and slippers that you change into, leaving your clothes in a locker.
Once you leave the changing room, you go past the showers and into the large smoking area through a small sort of room that keeps the smoke from getting out. The smoking room is large, furnished with sofas, chairs & tables. There is a bar in one corner. It serves up both liquor and tobacco of several kinds. The liquor is much cheaper. You can get tobacco as cigarettes, cigars, or pipe tobacco. No chewing tobacco is allowed.
Once a customer is done smoking, they exit the smoking area and proceed directly to the showers, where they can wash away the tobacco stench and eat a few mints for their breath.
The whole operation runs like clockwork and has been in business for nearly 10 years without the need to pay off any police. You can’t argue with success!
Next time, I’ll tell you about a very interesting apartment house.
The Dociverse Blog 