By Joanna Currier

WHEN I HANDED a flyer for the grand opening of Tenderloin bar Whiskey Thieves (839 Geary, S.F. 415-409-2063), where I'm a bartender, to a huddled group of Polk Street sidewalk smokers, they looked incredulous. "What do you mean, you can smoke there?" one asked, before exhaling a stream of gray haze. "That's not allowed."

"Not allowed" is how adult, free-thinking smokers have been forced to view their habit since antismoking enforcement hit local businesses – bars the hardest – in the mid-1990s. California was the first experiment in a national crackdown. The 1994 state ordinance and 1995 San Francisco labor laws ensured safety for employees, but when bars were officially added to the list of workplaces in 1998, most drinking establishments were slow to comply. Office buildings were one thing, disgruntled patrons protested, but how dare anyone disrupt the age-old, inviolate combination of alcohol and cigarettes.

When Delaney's Pub (2241 Chestnut, S.F. 415-931-8529) was fined more than $12,000 for smoking violations in 1999, however, nightlife professionals took notice. No longer viewed as a bunch of environmentalists blowing smoke, the law became serious business. Lighting up in a bar was an expensive act of treachery that could result in individual fines of $77 and establishment fines of up to $2,500 a violation – not to mention raising everyone's risk of lung cancer and heart disease by 30 to 35 percent. Today even the most die-hard smokers know that if they choose to puff anywhere near a drinking establishment, their marginalized place is outside on the street. The experiment has worked so well that it has now made a much-publicized spread to New York City, Boston, and even parts of cigarette-heavy Europe.

But smokers shouldn't leave town just so they can light up in accordance with the law. A handful of bars remain where smoking is an option. The exemption works like this: The labor law banning smoking, created to protect employees, doesn't apply if a bar is owned and operated by its bartenders. Without third-party employees, a business can allow smoking if it wants to.

The Occidental Grill Cigar Club (471 Pine, S.F. 415-834-0485) had the first legal exemption in the city and continues to welcome cigarette and cigar smokers. The Cigar Club remains pungently popular with Financial District types, and there are rumors of expansion into North Beach.

Whiskey Thieves, the city's newest owner-operated cocktail bar, has installed a state-of-the-art ventilation system that circulates clean air throughout the space.

"Going to Whiskey allows me to relax without qualification," Shanna Willner, a smoker and Polk Gulch resident, told me one night when I was working behind the bar. "I don't have to break up my evening, stop my conversation, and separate myself from the group like some alienated nasty-nasty."

"Protecting the workers is paramount, but bars are not health clubs," says Megan Bury, a Pacific Heights resident and regular at Thieves Tavern (3349 20th St., S.F. 415-401-8661), an owner-operated smoking bar that serves beer and wine. "I come a long way to get here, but it's worth it. Ingenuity over fascism is best – and a good ventilation system solves both," Bury adds.

For smokers looking for a hipper atmosphere, Amber (718 14th St., S.F. 415-626-7827) has offered a retro-posh cocktail scene since 2002, and one can enjoy a Marlboro with either a peach mojito or a Budweiser Tall Boy.

Of course, San Francisco also features many bars with separate spaces for more-comfortable drags. The glass-enclosed terrarium at the Hemlock Tavern (1131 Polk, S.F. 415-923-0923) is packed to the gray gills on weekends, and the back patio at Bottom of the Hill (1233 17th St., S.F. 415-621-4455) presents open-air comfort while live music thrums through the walls. Make no mistake, however – all smoking areas meet very strict legal standards, and not all "smoking" bars are actually exempt – so be very careful with your Zippo, or you might add "financial" to all of those consequences that come from putting finely packed tobacco to your lips.