Get ready for hookah hubbub

Honest, they say, they only set out to make a salon, a "third place" where young people can unplug and talk.

But Paul Green and Erin Cobb's Cobra Lounge, in a Bellingham alley, won't be known for any of that. That's because it's also the only place around where you can legally light up tobacco, indoors, and puff away.

These two Kirkland kids, at 20 too young to drink, have apparently schemed a way around the state's sweeping ban on indoor smoking.

"That's very unique, what they're trying," said James Apa, King County health-department spokesman. "Here, we haven't found any scenario that would allow a business to have indoor smoking. But we've never been presented with anything like that."

The Cobra Lounge is in Whatcom County, not King. It's a hookah lounge, where folks gather around Middle Eastern pipes to toke flavored tobacco. It opened Thursday, and the health agency up there grudgingly says it's legit. For now.

The trick is that Green and Cobb actually opened two places. In one, they sell the tobacco (called shisha) along with private club memberships ($1 for life!). In the other, 10 steps along the alley, is the club. That's where the smoking happens. There are no workers there — it's like a co-op — so it's exempt from the ban.

"We studied this for a year to come up with this model," Green says. "I'd say it's got the powers-that-be irritated."

Ingenuity. Rebellion. Isn't that what youth is all about?

But Green and Cobb say they weren't motivated by a dislike of nanny-state rules. They were motivated by Howard Schultz.

The coffee baron set up Starbucks to be a home away from home. Schultz reasoned that if patrons could do more than drink coffee — say, hold meetings or read in comfy chairs — each Starbucks could become a community cog.

"I read some of his writings, and I thought: 'We need a third place for a different generation,' " Cobb says.

Enter the hookah. Neither Green nor Cobb smokes cigarettes. But sitting around a water pipe with friends or strangers is "like sharing a family meal," Cobb says. "The point is the communal atmosphere, not to fight the government."

But a fight is what they're likely to get. The county says it will investigate the club's ventilation. Also, how can the club keep the general public out with no workers at the door?

Look, the state smoking ban is a big success. But the crackdown has gone too far.

The other night I stopped by a new hookah bar in Seattle, which I won't name because it's almost certainly illegal (they sell and smoke in the same spot). People lounged on sofas, idly puffing on pipes. The two owners say they're the only workers.

Meaning nobody is harmed, except those who want to be. Yet King County says they'll go after this place. If they find it.

The great thing about Green and Cobb isn't that they found some clever dodge. It's that they're using the letter of the law to say something about the spirit of the law.

Which is: If people choose to gather and blow smoke at each other, with no one else around, it ought to be none of the government's business.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.