This Isn’t Your Grandfather’s Pipe
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Kevin Godbee - Dec 2, 2011
- 5 min read
By Kevin Godbee
Who smokes a pipe anymore these days? (I mean a wooden pipe with tobacco in it, not a glass or metal pipe with crack or weed.) If you walked up to a stranger on the street and asked them to imagine, and describe a person smoking a pipe, the vast majority of people would probably describe an old man sitting on a bench, or a grandfather-type figure.
Well, this is one of those times where the general public’s perception is not entirely accurate as to the reality of the moment.
Going back to the earlier part of the millennium, pipe smoking was still in a decline since the 1970s. According to Norman Sharp, head of the Pipe Tobacco Council, in a 2005 article in the Washington Post – "The decline has been persistent and unrelenting," In 1970, Americans bought 52 million pounds of pipe tobacco. In 2004, they bought less than 5 million pounds. "That’s a decline of 91 percent," he says. However, fast-forward just a few years to 2009, to an article in The Wall Street Journal, and we find note of a turnaround in pipe smoking. What’s even more interesting is the observation that college-age, young adults are once again partaking of the briar pipe, which hasn’t been a trend since the 1950s.
Pipe smoking’s first spurt in popularity came in the early 1920s. Subsequent peaks in pipe smoking took place in the 1950s and in the 1970s. The previously referenced Washington Post article also provides a view of what the actual size of the small niche-market of pipe smokers was back in 2003 – "In a 2003 survey, the Department of Health and Human Services calculated that there are 1.6 million pipe smokers in America."
While it’s difficult to come by clear accurate numbers of pipe tobacco sales today because of known reporting inaccuracies by different segments of the tobacco industry, there certainly appears to be continued and growing evidence of the increased popularity in pipe smoking amongst college students and adults in their 20s. It can be found right here in the virtual pages of PipesMagazine.com.
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Here are a few photos from The Gateway Area Pipe Show and Swap in St. Charles, MO, on February 19, 2011.
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As stated in the full article here, "There were several 20-somethings in the crowd of buyers, and some, while old enough to smoke in Missouri (18 is the minimum smoking age there), would be too young to legally consume alcohol. It’s pleasing to see this trend of the younger generation’s interest in pipe smoking continuing so the hobby may live on after the old torchbearers have departed."
More evidence that there is new interest in pipe smoking can be found in the member profiles on PipesMagazine.com as well. An optional field on a person’s profile is to list the date they first smoked a pipe. Look at some of the dates in the screen captures below.
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The four profiles above show three people that just started enjoying a pipe this year, along with another person that started in 2009. He is still smoking his pipe as evidenced by his just recent sign-up to this site within the last month. Following are two more profile screen shots, one showing that the more mature generation of pipe smokers is also represented here with a man that smoked his first pipe in 1957, and one more expressing how new he is to the world of pipes.
As the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of PipesMagazine.com, I travel to many pipe shows and various retail tobacconists all over the country. My travels have continued to provide evidence that the past-time of pipe smoking is continuing to grow, and that many, if not most of the new entrants are in their 20s and 30s. This comes from personal observation of the attendants of pipe shows, from talking to retailers about their customers, and from several posts in the Pipe Forums.
Speaking of our Pipe Smokers Forums, I will leave you with some photos of our younger members, and you will see that the notion that pipe smoking is only for "old men" needs updating. While were at it, let’s break another stereotype … while they are a quite small minority of pipe smokers, women, and younger woman at that, are enjoying pipe smoking today as well.
These are all members of PipesMagazine.com. (A few are pictured twice.)
In a related article, you can hear directly from a 20-something pipe smoker: Collegiate Smokers and a New Era of Pipe Men
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Kevin Godbee is the Publisher & Editor in Chief of PipesMagazine.com. Kevin started smoking pipes and cigars in 1998 and started an online cigar magazine & community site in 2005. (The site was acquired in 2008 and no longer exists.) He launched PipesMagazine.com in 2009, and in less than three years the site has become the largest trafficked pipe smoking related site, and the #1 Source for Pipes and Pipe Tobacco Information. In October of 2011, he launched Cigar Chronicles. In the beginning of his career, Kevin worked in the hobby and specialty toy business for 16 years in sales, marketing, advertising and product development for three different manufacturers, and with his own company. Over the last 10 years working in the online business, he has become an expert in Internet Marketing and SEO. Kevin is a Certified Master Tobacconist (CMT) through Tobacconist University, a member of Cigar Rights of America, is on the Executive Committee of The United Pipe Clubs of America, and is a "Media Member" of the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association. In his spare time he plays guitar, cooks, and enjoys all the wonderful places to go and things to do in beautiful downtown St. Petersburg, Florida where he lives in his penthouse bachelor pad. |
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. 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If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. 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It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! 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Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Hopeful in that the newer members in the Brotherhood of the Briar, especially the younger crowd, are allowed to continue to take their pleasures as they see fit.
Fun article Kevin!
Way cool, I hope more and more pipe smokers can learn and enjoy pipes and tobaccos due to Pipes Magazine.
well I started as a student, right now I’m not so old,
but most important: I will be always young inside 😉
It’s nice to see new blood. I would be curios to hear how much pipe tobacco sales have gone up over the last couple of years – say in pounds?
It’s very pleasing to see so many new younger pipe smokers, and it gives me hope that this fine hobby will survive.
It’s good to see new life in the old practice, and seeing people willing to step out of the box to experience tobacco as it should be enjoyed.
@clanobucklin
Unfortunately the reported numbers of pounds of pipe tobacco sold are unreliable and hugely over-inflated the last few years because of the RYO tax situation.
Great points in this article. When people try pipe smoking (and are giving a helping hand) they like it. People (especially younger people) are always looking to try new things, and when they get over stigmas of pipe smoking (and get past the anti-tobacco rhetoric) they’ll find are true pastime. The industry relies on word of mouth right now, but there’s a market out there that real advertising and promotion of smoking could reach if someone spent the effort/money.
The National Survey of Drug Abuse has reliable figures on the age distribution of pipe smoking, which I reported on one of the fora. I don’t remember the percents, but under 35 had the highest percentage, followed by those over 50.
Pipe smoking is an important tradition (even Santa smokes a pipe!) and it’s good to see the younger generation carrying it forth.
Hah and there I am. Happy to be a part of the culture and take part in such a proud tradition. Great article sir.
Another nice article from you.
In a related article, you can hear directly from a 20-something pipe smoker:
https://pipesmagazine.com/matchstickman/pipe-smoking/collegiate-smokers-and-a-new-era-of-pipe-men/
Nice article. Hard to believe that it has been just over a year since I have begun this new “hobby” and I don’t think I will ever give it up.
Check out the update box above. We have a 38% increase over the last 7 years.
Had anyone had the sense to introduce me to briar when I was young, I wouldn’t have torn my lungs up for 15 years smoking cigarettes. Though I’m closer to 40-something than 20-something, being in the company of younger people who enjoy the pipe makes me feel positive about where the world is heading. Pipe smokers are part of a unique subculture, but one that is free and open to any willing to take the time and learn to participate.
Very nice kevin i hope the pipe smoking get as big as cig, were at one time!!
I would not do without all my pipes and all the different tobacco varieties, we can buy here in Denmark. I am in Esbjerg Pipe Guild, and we meet once a month to once a good smoke and tobacco tasting. It’s wonderful to have such a good and satisfying hobby.
Great to see some of the young folks and young ladies (my wife has just taken up the hobby too!) getting into the joy of pipes! Don’t be shy about puffing that pipe outside where folks can see you. Let’s start a trend!
It was good to read this and I have a few thoughts on the subject.
I am not gonna go in to the female pipe smokers because I dont know anything of that trend.
But this is what I see and my oppinion of why. I am a former bouncer of 16 yrs Ive worked in all “Gentelmans clubs” all across the U.S from high scale places to biker dives. At one time in the upper class places all one would see is business men and pretty boys with their shaved chest and legs in clothes I wouldnt be cought in living on a trust fund or spoiled mamas boys with crotch rocketts and the biker dives were just that men in their mid 30 and up rowdy as hell on some sort of American made scooter. Over the years I have noticed a trend of younger men or should I say boys on American bikes in the rowdy bars. Now whats this have to do with pipe smoking you may be asking right now. Well here it is. It appears to me all these trends going on with the younger men are all leaning to old times where men were just that men. Maybe a little Machismo tossed in. The youth of today are longing for a time where it was ok to be a man it was ok to open a door for a woman it was ok to stand up for what you believed in. And yes ive seen these mamas boys hide behind a woman to keep from getting hit now I see the younder ones standing up for a woman as it should be. This just my oppinion
Amen Jaysin!
started collecting before i started smoking(strange i know)love that more of us may be coming out of the woodwork. i just worry that by the time im older, they wold have made tobacco illegal!
I am 60 now and had quit smoking for 25 years. After I retrieved a Meerschaum from my folk’s house I decided to collect. After collecting enough from eBay to begin to annoy my wife I decided that I would have to start smoking again in order to justify my hobby. I am facinated by the patterns in the briar and it’s fun to keep looking for styles I don’t have yet. A few months ago I came to win the bid on an Oom Paul (C.B. Perkins) that had a sand blasted finish. When I got it I could see that the surface on either side of the bowl was worn smooth and shiny. All I could imagine was that the previous owner had held that pipe for hours and hours, day in and day out to wear off that sand blasted finish. I felt awed and sort of humble knowing that I was holding someone’s favorite pipe (or only pipe). This is one of the things I get from collecting pipes that you just don’t realize with other hobbies. Pipe ownership can be such a personal thing. Anyway, I’m happily trying to do my part ot increase the sales volume of pipe tobacco in the U.S. – Happy puffing!