Hanovers to go smoke-free March 5

"We do anticipate the council will want to consider the smoking issue in the next few months," she said.

To the south, Austin already bans smoking in bars. To the north, Round Rock allows smoking in bars so long as those bars receive more than half their receipts from alcohol rather than food sales.

Why now

Hanovers, though, decided to go ahead with the ban ahead of any city action after Bui and her husband and co-owner Eddie Tran—who is a smoker—began to talk to customers about the issue.

"We started getting a lot of complaints from our nonsmokers, that this place just reeks," Bui said. "They open the front door and it's just like this wind of smoke right in their face."

She said her biggest fear about the ban was that the bar would lose business, and that if Hanovers did not have other things to offer—the bar has regular live music and sports a set of volleyball courts—she and Tran likely would have waited for the city to take action first.

"Yes, it is going to hurt us in the short term, but in the long term, I think it's going to help us because it opens new doors for new people to come in," she said.

Those new doors include not only new customers, but also new musical acts. Bui said some bands would refuse to play at the bar because smoking was allowed and that smoke shortened the life of equipment in the bar.

But to Bui, the option to smoke in her bar is also a personal issue.

"I personally love it. I have children and I'm here, I work five days a week," she said. "That means, even though I don't smoke, I'm smoking."

"If I'm here for the next 30 years, I'm not going to die of lung cancer or I'm not going to have some kind of respiratory complication just because somebody else next to me is smoking," she said.

Reaction

Customer reaction, so far, has been mixed.

On the bar's Facebook page, comments have ranged from "Awesome! Love Hanovers but couldn't go much due to my asthma! Thank you thank you" to "Whatever, we'll be changing our hangout now! Sorry Hanovers."

"Yeah, we are ostracizing some people, but I think the good will overcome the bad," Bui said.

On the final Thursday night before the smoking ban takes place, the inside bar was filled almost entirely with regulars, most of whom were smoking and most of whom were not happy with the change.

"It really upsets and disappoints me," Marissa Monteverde said, adding that she would probably come a bit less often but would not abandon one of her favorite hangouts.

The nonsmokers in the bar were in favor of the ban.

"I like it cleaner," Katie LaPoint, a nonsmoker, said. "I don't think you should smoke inside. It's not the '60s anymore."

The prevailing attitude, however, was one of disappointment, even if some of the bar's most loyal customers said they had no intention of abandoning their bar.

"I love this bar," smoker and Hanovers regular Kevin Langley said. "I don't agree with their decision, but [I'll have] probably a 20 percent drop in my business."

"All my people are here," he said.