Kramer's Pipe & Tobacco Shop Closing

To our Friends and Loyal Customers:

With saddened hearts, we want to let you know that, after 68 years in the same Beverly Hills location, our family owned business, Kramer's Pipe & Tobacco Shop, will be closing its doors December 31.

It is bitter-sweet for Jim and me, but times change and we are looking forward.

We are forever grateful to the Glassell and the Tronstein families, our landlords for 65 years, their care and friendship meant the world to my parents and to us.

They were an important part of building and preserving the village of Beverly Hills, which was referred to in a recent Beverly Hills Courier editorial, ending with "Despite all the rhetoric, about Beverly Hills being a 'village', there is very little 'village' left."

Our decision was made, and made easier for us to accept, due to many factors:

1) CA state Tobacco Taxes (now 67% - which lumps together pipe tobacco & cigars with cigarettes. What other legal product do we tax so high?) causing people to buy out of state - over the internet. (It appears that marijuana will be taxed at a lower rate in CA come January!)

2) new pending FDA regulations which would make it nearly impossible for small shops to blend pipe tobacco,

3) both city and state restrictions/legislations – that, in our opinion, unfortunately have gone way overboard in their rulings regarding, again, a legal product,

4) the city deeming it necessary for construction purposes, and seemingly their only choice, to remove our on-street metered parking since the beginning of this year - turning Little Santa Monica into a virtual freeway - to the total dismay of small businesses lining our street,

and mostly 5) the end of our lease.

One saving grace is my father's 7 private house pipe tobacco blends (from the early 1950's) now having a new life (with our exact formulas and same blending tobaccos) on-line at smokingpipes.com under Kramer's Pipe and Tobacco. Sykes Wilford, Rick Newcombe, and Brian Levine - you gave my father's legacy a chance to live on.

Good-byes are too hard. I know we will see many of you. And we are keeping our website (kramerstobaccoshop.com), email (kramerstobaccoshop@prodigy.net), and our Facebook page (Kramers Pipe & Tobacco Shop) going.

Thank you from the depths of our hearts - and my parents' hearts - for your support and loyalty.

With a flood of warm memories of our neighbors, salespeople, customers, and friends throughout the years ~

Big Thanks,

Marsha Kramer Keller and Jim Keller

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