This essay by Andrew Martin in Granta has some wonderful insights into the appeal of pipe smoking:
My Uncle Sid smoked a pipe. He maximized the soothing, ritualistic aspects of the process in that he not only wielded the pipe cleaners, the various prodding instruments of a pipe tool and the weathered, old-faithful tobacco pouch, but he also rubbed his own tobacco, which came out of the tin solid, like a little piece of card. When these preliminaries were complete, and the flame was lowered on to the tobacco, there was what seemed like a crisis (not that Uncle Sid was remotely unsettled) as he discharged great clouds of smoke in the opening moments of combustion. This, to me, was as time-hallowed, as wholly masculine and right, as seeing a steam locomotive getting going. And in fact Uncle Sid was a train driver, and it was the contrast between his man of action persona – he was also a keen gardener – and the state he fell into with the pipe properly lit that I found particularly attractive. When Uncle Sid’s pipe was up and running, so to speak, then the smoke streams issuing from him were almost invisible, and he seemed to exist in a different dimension. He might be referred to by those present (especially, and in rather aggrieved tones, by his own wife), but he hardly ever participated in the conversation himself. Well, he didn’t need to: he had his pipe.
On those occasions when my father took me into pubs, I would focus on the Uncle Sid types, with their pipes in their mouths and their pipe paraphernalia on the table before them, forming a barricade between them and the outside world. The pipe was so obviously the priority with these men that I would wonder how those in their company could put up with being marginalized in that way. But I was on the side of the pipemen. Objectively, you might say they were under-weaned, but to me their pipes symbolized maturity and achievement. Pipes were not dashing or rakish, as cigars were in the nineteenth century and cigarettes in the twentieth; they were for men who’d graduated beyond trying to be ‘cool’, and I admired that, perhaps because I stood on the foothills of trying to be cool myself, and I knew it was going to be a hard slog.
Read the whole thing for a lovely description of the remaining embers of pipe culture in Great Britain.
Previously:
Pipe up!
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In a May post last year about the future of smoking, I made a prediction:
Have we reached a tipping point that will inevitably make smoking socially unacceptable? Or will the increasingly untenable and bizarre claims made by anti-smoking groups propel the movement over the shark, allowing smokers and property rights defenders to push back?
I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that, regardless of legal changes, old-fashioned pipe smoking will see a resurgence.
It’s too early to tell if I was right, but this piece in today’s Wall Street Journal is encouraging:
No one tracks how many young men and women are pipe smokers. But sales of pipe tobacco are rising again after years of decline, and many think young smokers are the reason. U.S. sales of pipe tobacco plummeted to 4.9 million pounds in 2006, from 52 million pounds in 1970, says Norman Sharp, president of the Cigar Association of America. Sales climbed to 5.3 million pounds in 2008. Pipe tobacco and smokeless tobacco sales are on the rise, offsetting over a decade of decreases in cigarette sales.
Pipe-smoking groups on social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have attracted thousands of members. Questions in the forums include: A bent or straight pipe? Does anyone have a favorite perique Louisiana tobacco blend? What is the consensus on corncob pipes?
Sykes Wilford, 28, burned his tongue when he first started smoking a pipe as a freshman at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tenn. He now walks new smokers through the first puffs in his own store in Little River, S.C., to ensure they don’t meet the same fate. Although he mostly carries traditional pipes, he’s trying to bring a modern edge to the ancient habit. “For me to have an iPhone in one hand and a pipe in the other is not unusual,” he says.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see pipe smoking adopted into hipster culture. It would fit right in with other oddly archaic fashions like handlebar mustaches, vests, and jackets with epaulettes. And lighting up a pipe is an instant conversation starter, conferring status on the smoker. As Richard Hacker writes in the introduction to his Ultimate Pipe Book:
The pipe is a unique invention of Man that has combined his creativity with the elements of nature: fire, earth, water and smoke, all of which co-mingle with the sky. There is a certain mystique to it all, and, perhaps that is why, when you see someone smoking a pipe, you cannot help but think he knows something you do not.
Perhaps more importantly, smoking a pipe is less expensive than smoking cigars or cigarettes, and the tobacco is coming out relatively unscathed from the new SCHIP taxes.
[Via TMN.]
Previously:
Ceci n’est pas une pipe
Pipe down!
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As you all know, Oregon is welcoming me to the state with a strict new smoking ban that goes into effect on January 1. As smoking bans go it’s not the worst in the US, in that it at least makes exceptions for cigar bars and retail shops. The income requirement from cigar sales is fairly reasonable too: at just $5,000 per year, smoke-friendly cigar bars should be able to achieve it without too much trouble.
The rules for cigar bars have a curious restriction though:
To qualify as a cigar bar, a business must… Prohibit the smoking of all tobacco products other than cigars
Presumably this means that hookahs and pipes are literally out the window (and at least 10 feet away from it). This is absurd. Pipe and cigar smokers join together in the brotherhood of the leaf. Where one is welcome, so is the other. Yet come January 1, enjoying a pipe in a smokers’ bar will be illegal.
I don’t think the intent of the legislature was to ban pipe smoking. It’s such a rare activity these days that they probably just didn’t consider it. My guess is that their true goal is to discriminate against cigarette smokers. They want to make it absolutely impossible for them to find places where they can light up. And further, by denying cigar bar owners the right to serve them they make it even harder for cigar bar owners to build a customer base and stay in business.
All of which shows yet again that the motives for these smoking bans has very little to do with protecting employees and the public from secondhand smoke and everything to do with stamping out a lifestyle deemed unworthy by our nannying rulers.
[Hat tip to commenter Ben at Stogie Guys.]
Previously:
Not a war on smokers?
Please do smoke, if you like
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Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
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