A great weekend at the Chicago Pipe Show

Sounds like a blast! Glad to hear you had an amazing time...do you have any pics? :D

I can't wait to attend my first show, hopefully this year. Thanks for sharing your experience! ::

Sounds like a great show. Can't wait for the pics and articles from Kevin.

What is this Obsidian Pipe oil of which you speak? Inquiring minds want to know!
-Jason

It sounds as if the show was great this year. How did the anti's behave this year? I know last year they put up a nasty fuss. As much as I hate to admit it, my sister was among the protesters last year.

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My whole family are on the nazi side, though since i bitch-slapped all of them silly, they don;t bother me about it anymore.
On topic, hopefully 4noggins picks up some obsidian stem oil, I'd like to give it a go!

Haunted did you meet Skip from The Briary while you were there?

Couldn't miss him... big red beard.

I was there, met Haunted and bought my own bottle of Obsidian oil. I think I'll try it out tonight! I was also hoping to meet Kevin, but our paths never crossed.
Basker, I think you're mistaken. Though there were expectations of anti-smoking demonstrators showing up the first year the tent was erected (3 or 4 years ago)they never showed up. There were a few local government inspectors who showed up the first time the tent was erected to check the distance from the MegaCenter (it had to be at least 15' away) and there had to be proper ventilation, but once we met their criteria they never returned (I got this info from a member of the Chicago club).
I managed to pick up a dozen or so tins of tobacco, mostly from McClellands and 3 new pipes: a Rad Davis blasted billiard, a Tom Eltang poker (won in the silent auction), and a freehand from EJH pipes. I'll try to post pictures soon.
Though the weather was a bit chilly (especially out in the tent) it was another outstanding show. Congratulations to head honcho Craig Cobine and the entire Chicago club for a job well done!

My weekend at the Chicago Pipe Show.
The first day, Friday, it was hot. It was hazy and humid outside and inside, there was a plethora of activity, the Friday pre-show was the best Friday pre-show ever. Crowded. Lots of deals. Got a weird bulldog. It looks like a bulldog, except sort of strange looking. Left at 12 noon and went back to the room and chilled, drank a few cold ones, watched free cable, checked for bedbugs by pulling the headboard off the wall, tried to find some towels, got bored, went to the smoking tent. Nothing crazy going on. Smoked a pipe and talked to some serious collectors from Russia. About 7 went to the dinner. The chicken was cooked funky. The red russet potatoes (or whatever they are) were great, I had about six helpings. Then they had these small eclairs. I think I ate about 30 of them. Then I got my first of about 50 beers at the cash bar. All of a sudden, someone was making a speech. It was a welcome to Chicago speech. Then, Kevin was making a speech. I told someone at my table, that's the guy from that website, sssssh. No one ssssshed. But what he said was pretty cool. He basically gave a warning, a caveat, a signal. He was issuing a clarion call, a proclamation, he was sounding an alarm, a premonition, a word to the wise. He told of clouds on the horizon, a gathering storm, and was a voice of conscience, forewarning of impending times. He basically said that the e-age was upon us and that the pipe community better step their game up and get more savvy with technology and the web and so on or else they were going to miss a great opportunity to reach out to future generations of pipe smokers. It was a very intense statement and reminded me of the Eisenhower speech when he talked about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, or the speech by Dean Rusk when he smacked down Nixon's staff for not embracing the media. I sure hope people were paying attention because that's exactly what's happening, there is very little effort made to maximize technology to expand the pipe community, EXCEPT by younger pipe smokers, of which there are more and more every day it seems. It was a heavy speech and our table talked about it and debated it for about a half hour and someone told me "all those kids on the internet don't buy real pipes" and I was thinking this is exactly the mentality he was talking about.
Saturday morning, went down to the show. Crowd seemed robust. Lots of wheeling dealing and stuff. Won a bunch of tobacco at the silent auction. There were lots of vendors who were absent, I noticed Bob Kiess wasn't there. Also The Pipe Rack, also Rich Lewis. I wonder if they are okay. It was good, only spent about $50 total all day. Saturday went to the tent and smoked my new bulldog with some people from Minnesota. The temperature in the tent was approximately 6 degrees Fahrenheit with high winds. People were bundled up. There was some all-star sightings of the usual suspects. Noticed that Todd Johnson looks astonishingly like Bob Dylan. I mean seriously. After I realized that, one of those Dylan songs was stuck in my head all night long. The one about "when you're lost in the rain in Juarez, when it's Easter time too".
Sunday, went to the show for about 2 hours, bought a ton of tobacco from McCranie and Cornell & Diehl, talked with some carvers. I noticed that people were leaving and packing up earlier than usual. Smoked a pipe in the tent for a half hour and drove home. Awesome time.

Oh by the way I talked to the guy with the Obsidian Pipe oil and it was amazing and I appreciate someone who fills a niche like that. I plan on eventually buying some because some of my pipes look like crap. I also noticed that even though I am a new poster I went through the care to actually make an avatar and I am not quite sure why it is not showing up but it is really there.

I was there as well! I've been going to the Chicago show since 2003, though I missed a few years in there due to apathy, flu, and marriage (my wedding was on the same day as the show, one year).
I didn't really see any "oh wow" pipes there this year; perhaps they were all bought in the pre-show, which I haven't ever attended.. I heard from more than one carver that they sold more pipes on Friday than Saturday and Sunday combined. I gotta start hitting that one! I did get one pipe in the silent auction. There were good, solid pipes from folks like Rad Davis and Rolando Negoita, as well as a good selection of Dunhills from the US distributor.
Tobacco was where I really felt this show shone. We had the Sobranie throwdown, and the two plugs by GLP, and Altadis was giving away tins of their full line. McClelland had some earth-shatteringly good tobaccos out to sample, including a new one (to me, anyways) that I didn't get the name of, and they had a tin or two of their throwdown blend hidden away.. Cornell & Diehl had their new blends as well, and were running a good deal on tins if you bought four at a time.. and there were a couple of blenders I'd never heard of before (but I'm not an expert), small folks running family businesses with their own concoctions. Kramer's Pipe & Tobacco Shop is the one I got a flyer from, along with a sample of two of their blends, which didn't seem to be the usual bespoke private-label blending at all.
MacBaren had a huge display of every conceivable pipe tobacco they produce. They weren't letting people fill up little sample baggies, though, as is custom; you had to load up a pipe or they'd turn you away. I think this is how they've done it in the past, but it made me sad. Daughters & Ryan had a rep there with their newly-pipe-centered tobacco blends; they had to stop producing shag cut RYO tobacco due to the tax laws that went into effect last year. I picked up a few tins and will report back on their contents.
The smoking contest went very well! I was at the table with the winner, but alas came in at about half his time They didn't have very many prizes this year, which is OK; the contest and the contest pipe are the most important things for me. We smoked EMP as the contest blend, which was a good choice since it's so evenly cut and blended.
There were more young pipefolk this year than I've ever seen; when I attended my first show at 21 I was the youngest person in the crowd by fifteen years. It seems like it's catching on, since there was a sizable crowd of folks in their twenties. Nobody was talking about being afraid the hobby would die like they used to; now the fears were mostly that the hobby would be shut down by the government, by taxes or prohibition. Both of these fears have been around since I started... now just the one remains.
Next year I'll be sure to show up for Friday! It sounds like that's where the action increasingly is. But I wouldn't miss the weekend itself; talking with everyone was such a pleasure.