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Gelato Vero Cited for Smoke
Threatened by city functionary after a complaint by irate customer
Though landmark coffeehouse and gelateria Gelato Vero Caffé has had an upstairs lounge for the 23 years its been in operation, and though that upstairs lounge has met all previous codes to allow smoking, the coffeehouse now finds itself threatened by the city of San Diego for allegedly violating the increasingly Draconian anti-tobacco laws. All it took for the city of San Diego to swoop down on the coffeehouse was a single complaint from a customer who complained bitterly to coffeehouse staff that another outdoor patron was having a cigarette upwind from her. When the complaining customer was told that the upstairs was meant for smokers, the customer allegedly threw down her coffee, threatened the staff with reprisals and stormed out of the coffeehouse. The next day, a code enforcement officer from the city showed up, notebook and tape measure in hand. According to the city, the relatively new sliding windows upstairs turn the outdoor pato into a “semi-enclosed space” that can be regulated as a nonsmoking area. The city issued a warning to that effect and the coffeehouse now limits patron’s smoking to the downstairs tables along the sidewalk. Owner Aaron Rabinowitz is now mulling whether to remove the sliding windows upstairs and replacing them with the previous arrangement of fixed plexiglass and open window frames that were there before. If he does, the coffeehouse should be free from city harassment for the time being, at least where outdoor tobacco is concerned.
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