Hookah: NH Hookah Bar

City club says smoking ban could cause a culture clash

Feb. 11, 2007
PATRICK MEIGHAN

Two things at the 603 Lounge cause patrons to raise their eyebrows. The first, surprisingly, is the name itself. Bar manager Stephanie Swartz said she’s bewildered by how many people find the name a mystery. “What’s that mean?” customers will ask Swartz. “We get that all the time,” she said.

The name, of course, refers to the state’s area code. The owners picked it because they liked how it looked on a design for the club’s Web site, www.603lounge.com.

The second reason why patrons often do a double take is a little more understandable.

That reason has to do with a bulbous, water-filled glass pipe with a hose and a mouthpiece attached at the end. Or, two mouthpieces for a double, four for one that can be used by a party.

Often, the response goes something like, “Huh, is that legal?”

It is, because these water pipes, or hookahs, are used for smoking flavored tobacco.

Akeeli, 27, is one of the bar’s three young owners. He’s also the reason why Middle Eastern tobacco pipes, common in bars on the West Coast, landed in a sports bar at 14 W. Hollis St.

“He always wanted a hookah thing,” another owner, Sandeep Singh, said of Akeeli.

Akeeli was born in California but grew up in Saudi Arabia, his family’s homeland.

Singh and the other owner, Nikul Shah, both 26, are of Indian decent, though neither was born there. Singh was born in Fiji, and Shah in England.

All three work at Fidelity Investments in such areas as payroll, personnel and retirement accounts. Meanwhile, Akeeli and Shah knew each other when they were students at Nashua High School. They knew Swartz, the bar manager, when she was a Nashua High student, too.

“They’ve been friends forever,” Swartz said.

Looking for an investment, Akeeli, Shah and Singh pooled their money and last summer bought what had been The Odyssey nightclub, where Swartz was working.

When the three bought it, “I came with the place,” Swartz said.

More than anything, 603 Lounge is a sports bar, with seven high-definition television sets and a pool table in a second room. The lounge has been a popular site to enjoy Patriots games, and the owners plan on buying a Major League Baseball television package for the upcoming Red Sox season.

There’s also a dance floor and DJ booth, and the kitchen’s menu includes various styles of wings, as well as sandwiches and other specialties.

In the midst of all this, the hookahs may seem out of place.

Akeeli, however, believes they add a touch of pizzazz that makes this sports bar special.

“Even people who don’t smoke try it, and they like it,” Akeeli said. “It looks different. It just gives (the lounge) a unique, ethnic touch.”

Hookahs aren’t like cigarettes. They don’t create a smoke-filled room. The natural tobacco comes in such flavors as apple, molasses, vanilla and pineapple.

Any surgeon general worth his salt will tell you that smoking in any form endangers health. But at least with hookahs the tobacco isn’t laced with chemicals, Akeeli said.

“Think of it this way – you’re getting messed up naturally,” Akeeli said.

For that reason, he and his co-owners think a cultural exception for hookahs should be made if the state legislature passes a law that bans smoking in bars. Akeeli has taken the lead on the issue and has contacted city and state officials to lobby for the exception.

Firing up

Akeeli doesn’t think banning smoking in any bar is a good idea, he said.

“If people are bothered by smoke in a bar, go somewhere where there is no smoking,” he said.

However, Shah, Singh and Swartz all favor a smoking ban, as long as hookahs are allowed.

“I’m not a smoker, and it bothers me when they all sit at the bar and blow cigarette smoke into my face,” Swartz said. “I’d much rather take a break and go out on the deck.”

Singh added, “I’m a non-smoker. My grandfather died of lung cancer.”

Hookah smoke isn’t a bother, they said.

“It’s not a strong, smoky odor,” Shah said.

“It’s like incense,” Swartz said.

Although this is the friends’ first business venture, Shah and Singh have a family history of entrepreneurship.

Singh’s parents, for example, run a motel in West Virginia, while Shah’s operate a grocery in Lowell, Mass., which they used to run in this city.

“When my parents first opened a store in Nashua, they were the only ones,” Shah said.

Now, there are three Indian groceries and three restaurants, he said.

Over the summer, the first-time entrepreneurs took out an antiquated fountain behind the bar, ripped up carpet and restored the hardwood floor, removed booths and substituted tables, and painted the walls and ceiling.

“That was the fun project, painting the walls red and the ceiling black,” Singh said.

They’ve learned a lot in their first business venture, including how many hours they have to work while still holding down jobs at Fidelity.

“We all have day jobs,” Singh sighed. “Long days; long nights.”

Swartz added, “They work very, very hard.”