New youth craze: Pipe smoking
Read this on the plane this morning: Did you know that pipe smoking is the new cool thing among college kids and young people?
Via the WSJ:
Dan Nemets, a sophomore at Central Michigan University, likes the TV show “Family Guy,” heavy-metal musician Ozzy Osbourne and a good pipe.
Mr. Nemets took up pipe smoking 18 months ago after strolling into a pipe and tobacco store near the Mount Pleasant campus with a friend. Mr. Nemets can’t smoke in his dorm room but has networked with other youthful smokers on Facebook in the Collegiate Gentlemen’s Pipe Smoking League.
“They say everyone has an inner child,” the 19-year-old says. “I guess I have an inner old man.”
Friday is International Pipe-Smoking Day, when a number of puffers will unite to protest tobacco taxes and smoking bans. They will also engage in slow-smoking competitions to see who can keep a pipe going the longest. Each contestant is given just two matches. Events, which will go on all weekend, are promoted by the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association.
Health advocates may warn of oral cancer, mouth lesions and rotting teeth, but Mr. Nemets and his online brethren are in the vanguard of an unlikely set of smokers taking to the brier — people in their 20s.
“They’re eager to learn,” says 71-year-old Vernon E. Vig, president of the New York Pipe Club and the United Pipe Clubs of America. Mr. Vig started smoking a pipe as an undergrad at Carleton College 53 years ago. “Back then, everyone smoked a pipe,” Mr. Vig says. His group, which meets monthly in Manhattan, has seen a definite increase in college students and young professionals, he says.
What are the Big Nanny liberals gonna do? Remember: While they spend tens of millions on government smoking cessation programs, they depend on smokers to fund their universal health care expansions.
What to do? What to do?
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God I hate hipsters.
I tried a pipe (tobacco! only tobacco!) when I was in college. I never had the patience to learn how to keep the darned thing lit and drawing right. Good tobacco flavor, though. Even better than cigars, which are a decent second choice.
Hipsters? Man, it is great to see some classic stuff re-emerging. Gotta light up the Dunhill (I’ll do the Joe Stalin bulldog group 4)and celebrate the (albeit small) discovery of classic pleasure by the young people!
Okay, so the new S-Chip expansion covers kids into their mid-20’s, right? And this expansion is paid by tobacco tax, correct? And college kids are getting into pipe smoking?
Is this a case of irony, or a case of people paying for their own healthcare?
And besides, pipes smell a heck of a lot better than cigarettes and cigars.
Oh no; don’t start w/the tobacco thingy again…
signed,
a smoker
Don’t worry – competing goals has never stopped a Lib from spending.
I know exactly the types of college kids that are doing this, and believe me, they are not the type you would want appropriating something you consider a classic. They are doing it to be contrarian and “edgy”.
The only problem with smoking a pipe when you have dreadlocks is that people often suspect you of smoking something other than tobacco.
Recently when I lit up at an outdoor patio bar in WeHo, the young doorman sheepishly approached and asked if I was smoking anything illegal in my pipe.
Needless to say, my tablemates and I got a huge laugh out of it.
I picture Neil Goldman from Family Guy puffing on a corncob pipe and thinking that it makes him look cool.
Spend $$ to “study” the diametric.
I’ve heard hookahs are getting popular, too. And for use with real tobacky, not the wacky kind.
Ha ha ha. Great picture.
Didn’t some guys try starting this trend in the mid-1990’s? I was overseas at the time, so I couldn’t really gauge it’s popularity. However, I think the trend attempt was short lived. Does anyone remember anything about this? Any chance this “trend” dies out quickly?
Thanks for the gross walk down memory lane.
I can smell my grandpa now! YUCK!
Thankfully, he gave it up 20 years ago.
Hey, if Obama Messiah can smoke in the White House(and don’t tell me he isn’t) every smoking ban in the country should be rescinded post haste. I quit smoking almost four years ago but am totally against the do-gooders in Del Mar, California who have banned smoking on the public streets and the public beach. Most pipe smoke smells wonderful…..go for it PIPERS!
by the fall, when school reconvenes, they will be on to some other cool trend. we’ve weathered goth, gangsta chic, rainbow hair, and we will soon move from pipes to something else. especially when they start finding how nasty those pipes become. think of licking some tobacco chewers spit jar.
Leave smokers alone. If they want to inhale something dangerous and risk cancer, they should be allowed to. Moreover they help the society by not being a burden on others in their old age
On February 20th, 2009 at 3:15 pm, chapoutier said: (#7)
Aaaggghhh!
———————
Dexter Alarius said: (#11)
I’ve heard that too. Hookahs are kind of fun, and a chance for different flavored tobaccos.
As much as I hate liberal do-gooders regulating everything, I kind of like the smoking bans in bars and restaurants.
I like being able to go out for a few drinks without coming home smelling like an ashtray.
I guess if Mike Phelps was smart he would have chosen a pipe instead of a bong.
Being an asthma sufferer, I already know how it feels to not be able to walk across this room because I can’t breath well enough.
I’m SURE not gonna do something that’ll cause that, again.
I can remember before that ban. We would go to an outdoor event and some ill-mannered smoker would light up. I would then spend the entire event coughing and wheezing.
I’m glad to be able to enjoy those events smoke-free now.
Mrs Nail49 and I sponsored (think home away from home) several cadets at the Air Force Academy. All were clean-cut (regulation) but one was defintiely a CA surfer-dude, definitely laid back and he enjoyed (while we were there) going to the local Hookah Bars in town and smoking with the locals. Not sure what the others thought of him.
‘Our’ cadet graduates this spring and wants to be a fighter pilot! He is currently on the Wings of Blue, the championship sky-diving team at the Academy.
Kid with his head screwed on right and not afraid to mingle!
Smoke em if ya got em.
Sounds like a liberal to me.
Now if only deerstalker caps came back into fashion I’d be hip again…
I agree with you – as long as health insurance companies can discriminate between smokers and non-smokers (either way – but actually based on actuarial tables and not the whims of politicians).
Republicans are so unpopular right now, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a surge in college-aged identification for just this very reason.
This is interesting. I actually made a comment last week about the demise of pipe smoking. I stand corrected.
Howdy, neighbors. We can see the Academy from our front yard. We just moved here several months ago. We plan on sponsoring cadets next year.
Now if only they start smoking big honking corn-cob pipes like General MacArthur, then they will look cool and patriotic…
You have another good one coming your way in next year’s class that I know. A “D1″ basketball prospect who chose the Academy. Even though I was a ground pounder, I told him how very pleased I was that he chose to serve his country in the Air Force.
Take good care of him.
I’ve got a few meershaums I picked up in Turkey. Are those trendy, I wonder?
Ahh, youth, moving ever forward to the ’50’s. I remember my first pipe with great fondness. I smoked “Cherry Blend”. Terrible taste, bitter, but a great aroma. I looked great with a pipe, though, and after all, isn’t impressing everybody else what it’s all about?
Dex and FlyOMan: We no longer reside in CO. Moved to the deep south to be closer to family.
We miss the cadets, they were lots of fun. We still talk to the ones we sponsored and have had one stay with us (about 6 weeks) since graduation. That one actually calls me ‘Dad’ — his father passed away while he was in high school, so we have had a lot of ‘father-son’ talks. He calls MrsNail49 ‘Mom’ who says this ‘kid’ is the son I never had.
Dex, treat ‘em like family. If MrsNail49 wasn’t cooking, they had to fend for themselves when hungry. The only requirement was they had to clean up after themselves. We have had as many as three in the house at once and they never got in the way — helped me with some manual labor (I helped one of them dig his car out of a snow bank) and we always had the washer and dryer going when they were staying with us. You won’t regret participating in this worthwhile program.
Goesto show you the more things change, the more they stay the same. People are just people after all.
Enjoy. Four inches of snow in my world tonight.
When we decided to move we had a 6 foot snow drift outside our front door and that was another reason we moved!
Drove home from work the other night with the top down — lovin’ life!
Funny how that works. I remember trying Borkum Riff Cherry Blend because it smelled so good in a friend’s pipe. The taste didn’t measure up to the aroma. It seemed the best taste and the best aroma never matched up on any of them.
I’ve been quit smoking for years and I’m glad to be rid of the cigarettes. If I was to ever be tempted into smoking again it would probably be a pipe or a good cigar.
I put my 22 years, 2 months and 7 days in the war and now I follow my active-duty wife around. So far, we love it here. The snow hasn’t been unmanageable… yet. We both ski, so that helps, too.
Seen it. I lived in Colorado Springs for two years.
You know, I notice granite and flenser are conspicuously absent from posting on this thread.
I can only conclude this means they support pipe smoking by college-aged kids. In fact I don’t recall where either has EVER condemned smoking by ANY age group.
And granite calls himself a doctor. Shameful.
Republicans as counter culture? Who could ever have foreseen that?!
All of the thug and gangta-wear dumped in favor of khakis and polo shirts? Here we go…back to 1980…
Dex: I did 22 years, 5 months and 26 days. But who’s counting, right?!?!?
Your wife at the Academy?
I’ve never smoked tabacky, wacky or otherwise.
That said, a pipe looks good on Sherlock Holmes, not a dreadlocked twenty-something dude, or a petite, thirty-something woman (me).
Elementary, my dear Watson.
Yeah, at the hospital. I work at Schriever.
The economy made this PCS rough. We couldn’t sell our house in Illinois, paid 2 mortgages for 6 months, and finally are getting renters in that house this week.
If you’re ever back up here I’ll meet you at Rock Bottom for a brew!
Outlaw the production of smoking tobacco and increase taxes on the ‘rich’ to pay for the universal health care.
This thread is reminding me of my Swisher Sweets days… how embarrassing.
Hurray for Fred MacMurray!
Does this mean that reruns of My Three Sons is returning? You had to love Uncle Charlie. And I sure that I saw a bald Ernie on an episod of Mad Men last summer.
Same place I worked while there.
Ditto!
I’ll be at the National Space Symposium (held at the Broadmoor) 30 Mar – 2 Apr! Bottoms up!
It will probably have to be the 30th. Tuesdays are Scout nights, Wednesdays choir practice. Cheers!
7:00 too early/late?
Any others on the thread willing to join Dex and nail49 at the Rock Bottom in C-Springs to toast (our hostess — MM) and roast (our nemesis — the current Administration)?
Don’t worry, they’ll increase taxes regardless on the “rich” to pay for everything going forward. Remember, the ultimate goal of the Obama administration is to create “fairness” and “social justice”. Off my back.
Nope, sounds good. All MM fans welcome!
Should we all have pipes for recognition?
I’ve smoked cigars and pipe for 30 years…can’t say I have any reason to stop. My local tobacconist has a house blend that I’ve enjoyed for 20 years. He also keeps me well supplied with Swisher Perfecto’s.
My Elks Lodge made sure to keep my Swisher supply full, while I was in Iraq on both tours. I think just about every photo of me has a stub in my craw
I am also quite into historical recreating, by doing treks into the local mountains with nothing more than a bedroll, fringed tunic, deer hide leggings, heavy moccasins (rather rocky in my neck of the planet), and the .54 mountain or, usually, the .32 Tennessee rifle. In my smoking kit is a long stem clay pipe, along with another long stem made from a cherry tree branch. Nothing better in my life (other than my wife and daughter) than to trek a few miles into the nothing, make camp, and enjoy a wonderous smoke of my custom blend while the noisy wilderness silence envelopes me…..
….ahhhhhhh. I know what I’m doing this weekend!!
SSgt Medzyk, you have a wonderful wife. Don’t ever let her go.
Thanks for your service!
BTW, I have a .45 Hawken.
Drain pipes, exhaust pipes, stovepipes, pipe fittings, clay pipes, corncob pipes…
I’ll just be there!
Roger, that! See you then!
I smoked pipes when I was in H.S. and college. It was the only thing my parents allowed me to smoke. Too much of a hassle though, so I gave it up. At the time, I thought it looked pretty “intellectual”. Everyone switched to cigars and cigarettes, that I remember. Then came the non-smoking idea. Now pipes are back in. Funny, what was once, comes around again.
Agreed.
Grandpa was right.
A classic Meerschaum briar (the kind shaped like Sherlock Holmes’) brimming with Borkum Riff, the fragrant plume wafting across his silk smoking jacket and filling the room……….
No Doubt. If Flenser comes in and posts a quote where he has spoken out against smoking, feel free to call him a disingenuous phony, and mock him for going through the trouble of rebutting you.
flenser ROFLAMAO
Ahh, pipe smoking. When I was in college, a LONG time ago, I quit cigarettes for a year and smoked a pipe. Sail Pipe Tobacco in the yellow pouch was my tobacco of choice. Much milder than the old Half and Half that my old man would stuff in a pipe when he wasn’t smoking Camels. I had one pipe that I had broken in really well with a crust inside the bowl that was a sixteenth of an inch thick. I damn near ran out of room for tobacco! It’s good to see the youngsters nowadays doing something so foolish just to look cool! Isn’t that what being young is all about?
With all this talk of pipes I think I’m going to look for my pipe in my boxes. Now, is National Tobacco in DC still in business? They had a good house blend. (Maybe this time I’ll have the patience to learn how to keep the darned thing lit.)
You live in DC?
And was National Tobacco that place down on M street somewhere in the Foggy Bottom area?
Outside, in northern Virginia where I still have my Constitutional rights.
In my college days, I went to the National Tobacco on Pennsylvania Ave a block or two NW of the White House (at least around 1980.)
I used to live in Clarendon and am moving back (after 5 year exodus in RI) to Silver Spring in about a month.
Good for these kids. Everyone needs a little vice in their life.
A lot of us were smoking pipes back in the 1970s. Nothing new.
Erm okay you mean tobacco…….never mind. :þ
I don’t smoke, but I love the smell of pipe tobacco.
Chapoutier (re #66), the traffic is even more of a pain than it was then, except for the Mixing Bowl, mostly, and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. I prefer Virginia of the three jurisdictions, but with your politics I can see the advantages for you of Maryland.
I look forward to our being neighbors, even if we still only communicate on these threads.
Oh, for a few years I lived in Falls Church (at least that what the Post Office said). And in my college years I lived where the GW Parkway started hitting buildings on its way into Old Town.
Nothing to do with politics and everything to do with location (red line) and cost (much cheaper than the Orange line corridor).
Actually, I am pretty genuinely upset that I won’t be in VA now that it is a battleground state and my lib vote could mean something.
Location is very important. I have advised friends moving to the area for a job to live close to their work, except never live in DC if they value their paychecks (high taxes) and their Constitutional rights (guns and Congressional representation).
You don’t have to worry about the potential effect of your vote for a while in Virginia, all representatives and senators (fed and state) are Dems, at least in my district. (I kept getting out-voted.)
If I haven’t gone gallavanting around by then, I’d like to buy you and your family brunch to re-welcome you to the neighborhood. Not as fancy as the planned Colorado Springs gathering talked about above, but then, the scenery here is mostly man-made, unlike there.
I suppose I will have to fire up the Peterson Royal Gold full of some good McClelland in honor of those taking up this noble task. May my last breath be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled in jest.
von Rum
Getting? Hookahs have been pretty popular with hipsters (and nerds like me) since at least 2002.
I spent 40 years in the D.C. area. My first residence was Dupont Circle, in the late 60s, just in time to have a grandstand seat (7th floor, 20th & O) to watch the tear gas and demonstrations. Rush hour, then, consisted on taking the elevator to the basement floor. I finally “fled” the city life for the Va. ‘burbs. Times have certainly changed and I have no regrets in leaving the area back in May. No day laborers, no big traffic jams, and people, in stores, actually speak English. I had an infection back in November and had to go to the ER. I think I waited a total of 5 minutes before being seen and treated. You all can keep D.C.. And, the kids can keep their pipes. Like when I was growing up, it’s a fad; won’t last long.
Everything old is new again.
There was a pipe smoking fad back in 1982 during my last quarter of college. I don’t think this is new. The only thing “new” about it back then was that kids were stuffing tobacco instead of “whacky weed” in to the pipe.
The hookah fad is big around DC. I know of two hookah bars near my house.
The traffic is making me think of leaving DC. That and there’s no respite from the news of federal Washington as that is local news as well–and politics is the local blood sport. (I shall miss being treated like a somebody by the Nationals baseball team as they are trying to take care of all of their season ticket holders–even the part season, semi-cheap seat holding people like me.)
I wonder if there’s a corollary movement among youth to wear capes and drive around in MGs?
Are these youths solving mysteries as well?
If I had been all mechanically adept, I would have bought a TR-6 once I was old enough and with some income. Alas, playing with cars for fun and profit is not one of my talents.
Okay…off to smoke my Peterson church warden
Amen, graysonret. We said goodbye to Nova a few months ago and we don’t miss it one bit.
I used to enjoy a good cigar but since having a baby I just can’t stand smoke. My husband and I bought maybe a pack of cigarettes a year and would sit on our deck in the freezing cold bundled up with a good glass of wine and a cigarette or cigar. We never got addicted to tobacco of any kind, and we could have a couple a day for a week and then not touch them for 6 months. I’ve never understood how people can get addicted to tobacco.
I don’t have time to read the comments today, so if I repeat something already said, I apologize…
I used to work with a older man who smoked a pipe. For anyone who hasn’t been around a pipe being smoked, it is nothing like cigarette smoke. It doesn’t stink and make me gag. Quite the contrary, the tobacco he used always seemed really good…
Don’t know about the health issues with pipe smoking, as compared to cigarettes, but I find pipe smoking to be inoffensive to be around, compared to cigarettes…
Kevin K: The problem is, whatever income you would have would gone to keeping the TR-6 running!
Is there a commensurate increase in the desire to wear capes, deerstalker caps and solve capers?