Welcome to Mr. G’s, the Final Frontier for Smokers’ Rights : ‘It’s your constitutional right to smoke if you want,’ the nonsmoking waitress tells customers.

Frank Soris, owner of Mr. G’s Coffee Shop in Lomita, was determined to see his business go up in smoke. Literally.

That is why Soris declared his neighborhood coffee shop a haven for smokers who felt that their rights were being stomped on by a new state law that bans smoking in restaurants without bars or patios.

For a few short days this month, Soris, a 57-year-old Greek immigrant and longtime smoker, began setting out ashtrays for those customers who wanted to puff freely while downing their morning coffee. Before they could order a meal, patrons were asked to pay 25 cents to become lifetime members in Mr. G’s “Private Smoking Club.”

Mr. G’s had given out 300 membership cards by the time a health department inspector notified Soris last week that his so-called smoking club was not exempt from the law’s provisions. Told he would be fined if customers did not tamp out their cigarettes, Soris asked his manager to take down the smoking club signs and stop collecting quarters until he could discuss the smoking law with a lawyer.

“I tell the truth. I go in there, I smoke,” Soris said in a telephone conversation from Phoenix, where he lives part time. “If someone catches me, I pay the fine. But when I take the responsibility of everybody to smoke there . . . that I don’t want to do.”

The story of what happened at Mr. G’s, and the lunchtime chat it continues to inspire, reflects the kind of frustration that has been common among restaurateurs and smokers since the smoking ban went into effect Jan. 1.

The law, passed by the Legislature as Assembly Bill 13, prohibits smoking in enclosed workplaces and most restaurants. Smoking is permitted at the stools around a bar where alcohol is served, as well as at gaming clubs, hotel lobbies, large warehouses and tobacco shops.

Although there have been reports of other California

restaurateurs trying to get around the smoking ban by declaring their eateries private clubs, it is not surprising that the first coffee shop in Los Angeles County to stick its neck out for smokers would be located in Lomita.

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Bordered by Torrance on the west and north, rough-and-tumble Harbor City on the east and affluent Rolling Hills Estates on the south, Lomita has the kind of independent spirit more commonly found in rural towns in Iowa.

Its tidy, affordable homes are surrounded by white picket fences, and many front porches proudly display American flags. Many residents of the former farming community once known as the “Celery Capital of the World” enjoy ample back yards. And many have been trying, for years, to secede from the gigantic Los Angeles Unified School District.

Set on the far end of a plain, unadorned mini-mall on Pacific Coast Highway, Mr. G’s Coffee Shop, a community mainstay for 30 years, is easy to miss unless you know what you’re looking for.

Inside, plants in baskets hang from the walls and an arrangement of gold-tipped pine cones, cranberries and fir fronds adorns the mirrors. The tables are bare but generously stocked with condiments, and the mauve booths are shiny and clean. Some customers complain that prices are a little steep, though a recent daily special ($4.95) featured heaping portions of baked chicken, split pea soup and vanilla pudding.

“It’s such a hometown place,” said lunchtime regular Daniel Else, 32, who had his first meal at Mr. G’s in a highchair and is now earning a master’s degree in American literature at USC. “Everybody knows everybody here.”

If patrons had to choose a favorite waitress, it would probably be Colleen White, 42, a friendly and efficient woman adept at carrying on several conversations (“How’s business over there? What about your pudding? More coffee?”) while simultaneously refilling coffee cups, microwaving bowls of soup and ringing up checks at the register.

Earlier this week, when a scraggly man came in asking for work, White dug $2 out of her pocket and sent him across the street for a bowl of soup.

Although she does not smoke, White is a staunch defender of her customers’ right to light up.

She thinks she knows which customer brought Mr. G’s to the attention of the health department. “A woman coming in for 30 years!” she says incredulously. (In fact, a health department official said, the complaint came from a young patron who happens to work for a state senator.)

The day after the health inspector visited Mr. G’s, White genuinely regretted having to ask patrons to go outside to smoke.

After all, she told Terry Whaley, 57, a retired welder, as he was heading outside for a smoke, “it’s your constitutional right to smoke if you want.”

When Whaley returned to the counter, he announced that he had an idea.

“I’ve got a way around it,” he told the late-afternoon coffee crowd. “I’m gonna become an Indian. If I’m an Indian, I’m allowed to smoke. Religious freedom.”

Dave Adamson, a research technician for the county Sanitation Department who was having lunch in a nearby booth with his 24-year-old son, Blake, chuckled. “So what’s your Indian name?” he asked.

“Smoking Hill,” Whaley replied. “Or maybe Smoking Health Hazard.”

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Not all of Mr. G’s patrons warmed to the idea of a private smoking club. Several non-smoking regulars stopped coming, even though they had shared breathing space with smokers for years without a complaint.

“One regular (who) used to come here for years canceled his order and walked out after I lit up a cigarette,” said Ron Ferstadt, 57, a real estate developer and volunteer at Lomita City Hall. “He said, ‘You’re breaking the law,’ and I said, ‘Didn’t you read the sign? This is a private smoking club.’ He gave me a gesture and walked out.”

Most patrons, however, happily ponied up the 25-cent membership fee. In the few days that followed, the smokers in the crowd appeared to take smug, contrarian delight in perpetuating their timeworn smoking rituals in what had been, since January, a forbidden place.

The fingers of one workaday man who called himself “Java Jack” seemed to elongate into elegant pincers as he pulled a Montclair cigarette out of its pack. The match firmly struck, the first drag soundly drawn, he settled comfortably into the gray haze. On this day, he and the other smokers around him seemed content in a camaraderie wrought by adversity overcome. They could finally puff with dignity.

But not for long.

Just four days after the club’s debut, smokers were once again banished to the parking lot to smoke alone in naked view of the restaurant’s other patrons. Once again, they were forced to endure the humiliation of being identified by militant non-smokers as one of the selfish ones, clinging to a filthy habit that is hazardous to themselves and others.

Perhaps that was why so many of these battered psyches began to compare the smoking ban with Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigrant initiative.

Seventy-year-old Merle Quantz, a longtime smoker who referred to Proposition 187 as “the law against the Mexicans,” tried to spell out the fuzzy analogy.

“Everyone in the county voted for that and they still have those kids in the schools,” said Quantz, who had polio as a child and now walks with crutches. “I don’t think it’s right that everybody in California votes for 187 and one man sits up there in a black robe and says forget it, you don’t have to follow the law. This smoking ban--nobody even got to vote for it. Yet they are enforcing this, but not 187.”

The conversation abruptly ended when one customer asked Colleen White for his quarter back.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get it back,” she assured him as she rang up his bill. The message: Be patient. Mr. G’s may find a way around this law yet.