Oh Yes, My Friends, Pipes are Cool Again
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Kevin Godbee - Jun 1, 2009
- 5 min read
By Tommy Zarzecki
Back in the late 1960’s Hugh Hefner, the god of all furry creatures great and small, hosted a hip and controversial show known as Playboy After Dark. Only the coolest of the cool were chosen as guests by Hef himself, including actors, musicians, comedians and of course some of the most beautiful and sexiest woman of the day. There was much adult humor and talk of sex – something that was still taboo to speak of on television in ’68. But Hefner was a perennial groundbreaker and his late-night show personified what it was truly like to live the life of a "Playboy."
The one thing that Hugh Hefner was always recognized for was his pipe smoking. The dude simply oozed "cool" from every fiber of his being and men everywhere emulated their exalted Bunny King. His pipe smoking was a symbol of refinement, intelligence, and a suave sophistication that guys revered and woman found intoxicating. Young men were brandishing pipes of every make, size, and color. The nubile Hef wannabees experienced camaraderie, and relaxation in their newfound hobby, and hopes of scoring big time with members of the fairer sex. Suddenly the term "laying the pipe" took on a whole new meaning.
I vividly remember as a young kid growing up in the 60’s, my dad and my uncles enjoying their handrolled cigars and briar pipes on a daily basis. While I was attracted to the wafting blue smoke of a real-deal Havana, it was the smell of their pipes that always drew my olfactory attention. The sweet smell of Vanilla, Cherry, Rum, and Whiskey gave the house a delicious smell, one that mom, my aunts and grandmother didn’t even seem to mind. Dad was a school teacher, and at night while grading papers and preparing the next day’s lessons, he sat at his desk with his pipe and some forty years later, I can remember standing by his side because the smell was so wonderful. I would stick my nose into his tobacco pouch while deeply inhaling the beautifully aged leafy goodness, and he would laugh and tell me how one day I would enjoy the ritual that he so loved. (Yes, how politically incorrect as if he made that statement today, Children & Family Services would be at the door, preparing to stick my brother and I into foster homes.)
It was around the early 1980’s that the linking of smoking to disease was all the rage as warnings were placed on cigarette packs, and pipe and cigar smoking decreased in popularity. The incredulous Smoke Nazis were born, and a man enjoying his nightly puff was branded as evil, inconsiderate, and a purveyor of sin and unhealthiness. Pipes were no longer cool or suave, in fact, the thoughts of a pipe smoker conjured images of college professors garnering elbow patches on their jackets, grand dads in their rocking chairs, and salty old sea captains perched statuesque upon the bow of their sailing vessels. Sherlock Holmes and Albert Einstein smoked pipes, as did Hollywood’s version of dear ol’ dad.
But alas, as they say, things go round in circles and trends always make their way back somehow. Suddenly, by the grace of the great god Tobaccus (I made that up), pipe smoking has become cool again. Sales are on the rise for pipes and tobacco, shops and online retailers are busy, and college campuses have once again become a haven for Briar, Meerschaum, and Calabash. Even the sale of corncob pipes has started to flourish, mainly due to its cheap price tag amongst college kids and anyone for that matter who has been bludgeoned by this irritating economy.
Writer Mary Pilon has done a wonderful piece in the February 20th edition of the Wall Street Journal, entitled: The Latest Thing They’re Smoking in Pipes on College Campuses: Tobacco. She emphatically claims that there is a newfound love for pipe popularity amongst the collegiate ranks. Groups of young men are gathering at schools across America, enjoying the experience of time spent having a good smoke. Quoting from the article:
"They’re eager to learn," says 71-year-old Vernon E. Vig, president of the New York Pipe Club and the United Pipe Clubs of America. Mr. Vig started smoking a pipe as an undergrad at Carleton College 53 years ago. "Back then, everyone smoked a pipe," Mr. Vig says. His group, which meets monthly in Manhattan, has seen a definite increase in college students and young professionals, he says.
What’s interesting is that with the rampant tax and price increases on cigarettes, pipe tobacco has actually become a cheaper alternative. The WSJ piece talks of Rich’s Cigar Store, a 115 year-old establishment in Portland, Oregon, that has seen a definite spike in pipe sales and tobacco. Their pipe specialist, Bill Shindler was there during the massive "cigar boom" of the mid 1990’s and he makes an interesting observation on pipes vs. cigars…
"Cigars said, ‘I’ve made it,’ " Mr. Shindler says. "It was a form of reward for yourself. When Wall Street crashed, people backed off from that." Pipe smoking, he says, has a more calming effect. "It’s a comfortable aroma. It reminds you of grandpa. People are looking for that kind of comfort."
Wow, whowoulda thunk… pipes are cool again! No, not the Cheech and Chong weapons of choice, but rather, bowls filled with smoldering Black Cavendish, Virginia, Burley and Perique. Why I’ll bet once Ol’ Hef hears the news he’ll dust off the Calabash and even at 83, add another two ladies to his weekly harem. Oh, yes indeed my friend, pipes are cool again.
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Tommy Zarzecki, aka the Zman, lives in northern New Jersey and is a feature writer for Cigar Magazine as well as the writer and editor-in-chief of the weekly column, JR Cigars Blog With the Zman (www.jrcigars.com). Tommy’s latest venture is his website, PLANET ZMAN, the Official Portal to All Things Manly – a site dedicated to the Man’s Man in all of us. (www.planetzman.com)
Written by Kevin Godbee
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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. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. 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. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. 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! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. 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.
Here’s a photo of a college graduate enjoying his celebratory pipe after graduation.
http://www.oxfordlight.co.uk/univ/smoking-a-pipe/06/
Oh how wonderful, the ressurection… Let us all help to bring pipes back and keep them in the spotlight. For some of us, the mystique of pipe smoking has never waned and the billiard sporting gent doth not slip so quietly into lameness. For years I looked about myself, seeing only the rare pappies with ol’ beaters locked in their dentures. Boy, did I stand out. As an aspiring new pipemaker with hopes of sharing my art with the world, this article (and website) have put fresh wind in my sails…and I see a beutiful new sunrise on the horizon. The future of the pipe loving artist is growing brighter by the moment! LONG LIVE THE PIPE!!!
That’s right volk!
LONG LIVE THE PIPE!!!