Earlier today, we received an email from the Hookah Cafe’s Gil Berman warning that the club is likely to have to close because it doesn’t comply with non-smoking laws passed in 2007 (We have laws against smoking?). It needs a zoning change that the Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association vows to to fight.

Assuming all that’s true (we haven’t heard from FMIA to confirm their opposition), that’s sad news, and it underscores how illusory the arts district overlay is as a solution to Frenchmen Street or any other area looking for live music. Clubs that opened under the overlay have to earn 50 percent of their income from food sales, which really forces them to be restaurants first or risk punitive fines.

There might be a good reason for insisting on food sales, but it really sounds like an attempt to discourage people from opening music clubs because of all the non-music-related expenses they’d incur. I doubt many Frenchmen Street venues affected by that regulation are meeting their food sales quota, and at least one was recently fined.

Until City Councilmembers and/or the mayor decides music is something important to the cultural, social and financial life of the city and not just a frivolous distraction, variations on this zoning battle are going to keep taking place with depressingly similar results.