Brothers,
I am a journalism student who is on his last week of the semester. As such I have a final paper due this Wednesday. The class is Column Writing and I chose to write about the pipe smoking community. I am going to post what I wrote below and I am mainly looking for feedback if you think it is a good snapshot of the hobby. I have a word limit (which the below is still slightly over) so I can't make major additions without making major subtractions. This is due Wednesday morning so I'm open to any suggestions or comments from now until Tuesday evening.
Here we go and please, all suggestions and/or constructive criticism are appreciated.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
There are a lot of things to be enjoyed in life, for some -including myself- one of those is lighting up a pipe and puffing away on a good tobacco blend.
I picked up pipe tobacco smoking last year around summertime as a natural offshoot of my cigarette and cigar smoking. I mean, I was doing the only other two ways to really smoke tobacco, why not try the third? I did and it was an experience that lead me to put down the cigarettes, the worst of the bunch as far as society and I are concerned.
Pipe smoking has a special seat in the minds of the public. Cigar smoking could be said to be something that the affluent do due to its usage in advertising and movies. But pipe smoking is generally held as something that the bright or eccentric engage in.
Some influential and recognizable people have been associated with pipe smoking, or were avid puffers themselves: Albert Einstein, General Douglas MacArthur, General George Patton, Mark Twain, JRR Tolkien, Jacques Cousteau, Joseph Stalin, Julius Oppenheimer and many others.
Those real people almost all stand in the shadow of probably the most famous pipe smoker of all, the fictional private investigator, Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is always depicted in pictures with a large calabash pipe, the signature sharp nose and his deerstalker cap. This image is one most would conjure up when thinking about someone who smokes a pipe.
I am none of those men though, but by smoking a pipe there is a loose association with them so long as I don’t act or speak like a dummy.
The history behind it all brings that nostalgia of yesteryears and for many of us that includes old family members. Like many in the pipe smoking community, our grandfathers may have smoked a pipe, mine did. I remember as a child my grandfather riding high on his tractor with a pipe clenched in his mouth as he bush hogged the field.
For those I have encountered in public while I am smoking some have recounted to me that the smell coming from my pipe reminds them of their grandpa. Those are positive experiences that hopefully bring a moment of fond memories to those I and other pipers encounter while out lunting, a British term that means to walk while smoking a pipe.
Aside from the enjoyment of doing something the old way, there is the aesthetics of the hobby when it comes to collecting. I have 10 pipes which may seem like a lot, but there are many within the pipe smoking community that far exceed my own modest collection. Pipes come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and with the resurgence of the artisan pipes unique shapes that aren’t standard have begun to command admiration and hundreds of dollars per piece from the market.
But at the heart of it all is the tobacco itself. The pipes are nothing more than expensive pieces of woodwork without the leaf. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of blends from numerous brands and artisan blenders to smoke. What my granddad smoked is barely even the tip of the iceberg in the world of tobacco blends. One could’ve been comfortable with the basic selection from behind the drug store counter in the 1950s. Now thanks in large part to the internet and the growing community of pipe smokers, there is a Willie Wonka-esque plethora of blends to select: sweet smelling aromatics, rich Virginias, spicy Orientals, smoky English. There is a never-ending list of blends that it would be almost impossible to try them all.
I look at the tobacco blending market much the same way I do craft breweries. There are the top dog corporations in the pipe tobacco world that are experiencing a market share being taken from them the same as craft breweries are now doing to the big beer corporations. The pipe smoking world has had the doors blown wide open with the online marketplace.
The online pipe smoking community is undoubtedly a very niche bunch; most don’t know others in the real world that share in the same hobby. There are smoking clubs that meet locally and pipe and cigar shops are usually a likely place to run into fellow pipe smokers. That may change as more people are being brought into the fold by their own interest and younger smokers are being welcomed with open arms by the elders of the briar brotherhood.
I am a journalism student who is on his last week of the semester. As such I have a final paper due this Wednesday. The class is Column Writing and I chose to write about the pipe smoking community. I am going to post what I wrote below and I am mainly looking for feedback if you think it is a good snapshot of the hobby. I have a word limit (which the below is still slightly over) so I can't make major additions without making major subtractions. This is due Wednesday morning so I'm open to any suggestions or comments from now until Tuesday evening.
Here we go and please, all suggestions and/or constructive criticism are appreciated.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
There are a lot of things to be enjoyed in life, for some -including myself- one of those is lighting up a pipe and puffing away on a good tobacco blend.
I picked up pipe tobacco smoking last year around summertime as a natural offshoot of my cigarette and cigar smoking. I mean, I was doing the only other two ways to really smoke tobacco, why not try the third? I did and it was an experience that lead me to put down the cigarettes, the worst of the bunch as far as society and I are concerned.
Pipe smoking has a special seat in the minds of the public. Cigar smoking could be said to be something that the affluent do due to its usage in advertising and movies. But pipe smoking is generally held as something that the bright or eccentric engage in.
Some influential and recognizable people have been associated with pipe smoking, or were avid puffers themselves: Albert Einstein, General Douglas MacArthur, General George Patton, Mark Twain, JRR Tolkien, Jacques Cousteau, Joseph Stalin, Julius Oppenheimer and many others.
Those real people almost all stand in the shadow of probably the most famous pipe smoker of all, the fictional private investigator, Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is always depicted in pictures with a large calabash pipe, the signature sharp nose and his deerstalker cap. This image is one most would conjure up when thinking about someone who smokes a pipe.
I am none of those men though, but by smoking a pipe there is a loose association with them so long as I don’t act or speak like a dummy.
The history behind it all brings that nostalgia of yesteryears and for many of us that includes old family members. Like many in the pipe smoking community, our grandfathers may have smoked a pipe, mine did. I remember as a child my grandfather riding high on his tractor with a pipe clenched in his mouth as he bush hogged the field.
For those I have encountered in public while I am smoking some have recounted to me that the smell coming from my pipe reminds them of their grandpa. Those are positive experiences that hopefully bring a moment of fond memories to those I and other pipers encounter while out lunting, a British term that means to walk while smoking a pipe.
Aside from the enjoyment of doing something the old way, there is the aesthetics of the hobby when it comes to collecting. I have 10 pipes which may seem like a lot, but there are many within the pipe smoking community that far exceed my own modest collection. Pipes come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and with the resurgence of the artisan pipes unique shapes that aren’t standard have begun to command admiration and hundreds of dollars per piece from the market.
But at the heart of it all is the tobacco itself. The pipes are nothing more than expensive pieces of woodwork without the leaf. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of blends from numerous brands and artisan blenders to smoke. What my granddad smoked is barely even the tip of the iceberg in the world of tobacco blends. One could’ve been comfortable with the basic selection from behind the drug store counter in the 1950s. Now thanks in large part to the internet and the growing community of pipe smokers, there is a Willie Wonka-esque plethora of blends to select: sweet smelling aromatics, rich Virginias, spicy Orientals, smoky English. There is a never-ending list of blends that it would be almost impossible to try them all.
I look at the tobacco blending market much the same way I do craft breweries. There are the top dog corporations in the pipe tobacco world that are experiencing a market share being taken from them the same as craft breweries are now doing to the big beer corporations. The pipe smoking world has had the doors blown wide open with the online marketplace.
The online pipe smoking community is undoubtedly a very niche bunch; most don’t know others in the real world that share in the same hobby. There are smoking clubs that meet locally and pipe and cigar shops are usually a likely place to run into fellow pipe smokers. That may change as more people are being brought into the fold by their own interest and younger smokers are being welcomed with open arms by the elders of the briar brotherhood.
