This year’s “St. Louis Pipe Show” took place February 19, 2011, and PipesMagazine.com Publisher, Kevin Godbee was in attendance to cover the show. The show is remarkably in it’s 23rd year, and the official name of the show is, “The Gateway Area Pipe Show and Swap“. Organized by The St. Louis Pipe Club, the show was held at the Heart of St. Charles Banquet Center, in St. Charles, MO.

The well-appointed banquet hall was about a 15 - 20 minute drive from the St. Louis Airport. The show is a 1-day event on Saturday, but as you can imagine, it can evolve into a full weekend for many that travel and stay at the official show hotel; the Quality Inn & Suites. The hotel had smoking rooms and was just across the street making it a 15-minute walk, or a 5-minute drive to the banquet center. The hotel offered a free full breakfast with choices of eggs, sausage, waffles, coffee, juices, fruits and yogurts. The reasonable rates combined with the free breakfast certainly helped allow for a bigger budget for buying pipes and tobacco at the show.

On Friday night, the St. Louis Pipe Club had a Hospitality Suite that was filled with pipe smokers enjoying the camaraderie, which was lubricated not only with the relaxedness of the pipe smoking, but also the self-serve open bar. Prior to enjoying the hospitality suite, there were several restaurants within a minute or so walk, including a steakhouse, Chinese, Japanese, and the author’s favorite; Mexican cuisine.

We just updated the list of Pipe Shows for this year.

There are shows in St. Louis, New York, Raleigh, Chicago, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Columbus, Richmond, and Las Vegas.

http://pipesmagazine.com/pipe-events/