The Second Annual West Coast Pipe Show
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Kevin Godbee - Aug 25, 2010
- 4 min read
By Rick Newcombe
If you like pipes as much as I do, then make plans now to be in Las Vegas Nov. 6-7 for the second annual West Coast Pipe Show.
By traveling west of the Mississippi, you get a whole different group of collectors from nearly every other pipe show. That means many different pipes for buying and trading – pipes you are not likely to see at other shows. It also means making new friends and meeting up with many veterans of our hobby.
This is a SMOKING SHOW in every sense of the word. There will be pipe smoking in the exhibit hall, in the dining room, at the casinos and in the bars and restaurants.
This is only our second show. Last year was a phenomenal success for a first West Coast Pipe Show, with more than a hundred tables filled with pipes and pipe-related things and some of the best pipe makers in the world, including Paolo Becker, Luigi Viprati, J.T. Cooke, Jeff Gracik, Todd Johnson, Brad Pohlmann, Bob Swanson, Bruce Weaver, Bob Kiess, Adam Davidson, Will Purdy, Michael Lindner, Paul Perri, Jon Rinaldi, Charles Cole, Michael Parks, Joe Skoda, Chris Brunton, Steve Morisette, Ryan Quagliata and Ron Fairchild, among others.
Many collectors told me last year that they were interested in seeing a West Coast Pipe Show, but they wanted to wait before attending one to see what the turnout was like at the first show. I can’t tell you the number of people who have said that this year, they are coming to Vegas!
The show is the brainchild of Steve O’Neill, who is ably assisted by veteran Marty Pulvers. I had always vowed never to get roped into putting together a pipe show, but Steve and Marty were very persuasive, and this show reminds me of Chicago in the early days, where the momentum is clearly building.
But as fast as we are growing, it is important to us to maintain the feel of the shows of old. Many collectors commented last year that the show was very friendly and not too big, so they could take more time and visit with the pipe makers and other experts in the field.
We do not anticipate having buyers from other countries bringing bricks of hundred dollar bills to buy out all the new pipes before you can even see them, as happened at one show recently. It certainly was great for a handful of pipe makers, but I did hear some of their regular customers complain. I am not criticizing this new development because I see both the positives and negatives. I am simply saying that we do not anticipate having these mega-buck buyers fly in from China, Russia or other countries.
The lectures will start off with pipe maker Bob Swanson at 11:30. There will be a talk and book signing by the noted pipe author Gary Schrier of Seattle, who wrote the bestselling book, “Confessions of a Pipeman,” and who is publishing some extremely rare old English pipe catalogues.
There will be a talk by noted tobacco blender Russ Ouellette, with plenty of free samples.
At the banquet dinner, the featured speaker is the brilliant Dr. Fred Hanna, who has written extensively on the joys of pipe smoking. Fred is not afraid to spark controversy and debate, and he is always interesting, fun and challenging.
Remember — there will be pipe smoking at all the meetings!
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We chose Las Vegas for many reasons but primarily because it is so easy to get into and out of — and it is a place where you might want to take off a few days for some R&R with your friends or family. Longtime collector Gary Humphrey and his wife and whole family will be traveling from Alaska to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. What better place to do that than at a spectacular pipe show?! Gary will be totally content at the Las Vegas shows and all the other family events during their week-long stay because he will be smoking his favorite pipes and mingling with old and new friends to his heart’s content during the two days of the pipe show.
The hotel rooms are reasonably priced. For special West Coast Pipe Show room rates, call the Palace Station Hotel & Casino: (800) 634-3101, or visit the hotel’s website at: www.palacestation.com.
Exhibitor tables at the show are $95 each. In order to be guaranteed a table(s) at the show, contact Steve O’Neill at the address below. All tables must be paid in full no later than September 30, 2010. Earlier reservations would be greatly appreciated, as we anticipate selling out because there is so much buzz about this exciting show. Tickets are also available for our Saturday Night Awards Dinner, where we will be featuring a wonderful Italian buffet. The dinner price is $55.
On Friday Night, there will be a special Poker Tournament. If you want to participate, please sign up now because seating at the poker table is limited.
For table reservations or any other information, please contact:
Steve O’Neill:
956 E 800 South
Lewiston, Utah 84320
steve@westcoastpipeshow.com
http://www.westcoastpipeshow.com/
Telephone: (435) 258-5431
We look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas! If you like pipes as much as I do, you won’t want to miss this incredible show.
Written by Kevin Godbee
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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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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.
Well there’s nothing like a touch of the plague to usher in the changing season. Leaving the airport just when the first advertisements for all things pumpkin spice began to appear—lattes, muffins, shampoos, trash bags, and myriad other concoctions—so, too, my ability to breathe freely disappeared. The unfortunate side effect of losing one’s sense of taste and smell for weeks is the utter inability to enjoy tobacco. Not that I consider myself an expert on anything but my own tastes, but be forewarned that this review was made with mildly impugned sensory equipment. Just when a comforting pipe was most needed, its comfort was denied. Be that as it may, the road to recovery found me limping along on one lung this past month, trying to wrest the particulars of two blends on offer from Sutliff: the latest 175th Anniversary blend, Silver Quarter, as well as their spooky seasonal Maple Shadows II. Silver Quarter is a new style on offer from Sutliff, their first coin-cut blend. Naturally a Virginia-Perique, it is enhanced with a traditional core of black Cavendish. In the tin it holds much promise, with a lightly bready and very woody, if ever-so-slightly sour, aroma. After some time acclimating to air, the bouquet softens further and offers hints of the burley with some chocolaty notes wafting through the more dominant dry grassy aspect. The tin art is of a coin-style bas-relief bust, presumably of a founding Sutliff brother, à la The Old Boss On the reverse of the tin we find the blend’s description: Reflecting on Sutliffs 175 years of tobacco excellence, we came across a brand that embodies true value, SILVER QUARTER. This name pays homage to Sutliffs roots, the legacy of two brothers who popularized pipe smoking in the burgeoning mining society of San Francisco. We celebrate this heritage with a coin cut composed of the finest African Virginias, complemented by a core of Perique and Black Cavendish. The tin notes are, forgive the pun, on the nose for a good VaPer blend: mild tart sweetness peeking out from behind dried hay and slight chocolate undertones, with a lightly tannic finish of weathered oak. It is always a joy to prepare a coin cut, my preference being to put a few in my palm and vigorously warm my hands together to fully break them apart. These well-formed discs pack and light easily, and smoke with little prodding to the end of the bowl. For technical points it scores well—it smokes light, and it’s easy to tend the ember. While it gets sharp after a few quick bowls, pacing should be heeded to easily smoke down to the heel without inviting bite. Of the flavor, though, I am left a bit wanting. There are tart and high notes aplenty, but very little of the lemony citrus I would anticipate, as well as scant midtones; they tend more toward the red wine-vinegary and sour. The flavors are muted, also, lacking the sweetness and piquancy of other marques—the small measure of Perique tickles the nose now and again with peppery hints, and there is a smidge of a deeper sweetness to be found in the Cavendish from puff to puff, but overall it lacks some dynamism. The Virginias, to my palate, come off a bit on the dry side, and here they dominate the blend. The aftertaste and mouthfeel are neutral, again evincing more of the dry, woody, tartly tannic end of the spectrum. The blend has plenty of polish, but not enough depth or richness (*yet) to make it a standout. Here, comparisons are inevitable: Luxury Bullseye Flake has more sweetness, both from its Virginia as well as its Cavendish, and a better finish; Davidoff is similar but with a pronounced umami that is absent here; as for Escudo, I haven’t had any fresh tins lately so it would be unfair to compare. 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Bewitched by a dissonant charm, we’ve created Maple Shadows. In a season that is defined by the unlikely harmony of treats and frights, we’ve joined the enchanting sweetness of maple with the earthy spice of Dark Fired Kentucky for a smoking experience that captures the senses with an otherworldly fusion of flavor. This may be the best aromatic blend Sutliff’s ever made—and they make a ton of them. First off, it’s not overbearing in the least—quite the opposite, it is also one of the more restrained aromatics they’ve ever made, with a clear but very light topping that melds oh-so-well with their choice Kentucky added to the mix. Opening the tin, the sweet maple is up front and center, but so too is the must of fallen leaves, bready pie crusts, and a crackling fire in the hearth—a perfect invocation of Herbstdüfte in a can. Packing best in an open and capacious bowl, the flavoring is subtle, and recedes to the background while puffing. With a sweet coffee or tea to accompany, the aftertaste of the maple is reinvigorated on the palate […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 632. Our featured guest on tonight’s show is the host of the Pipe & Tamper Podcast, Mike Murphy. Brian and Mike will have an extended chat revolving around the days before, during and after the Las Vegas International Pipe Show. We will hear about their travels to the show and the anxiety of Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida at the same time while running a show and not knowing if your house is going to be there when you get home. In the end, the show went great and our homes survived, although many others in Florida were not so lucky. We’ll have clips from the show, and shoutouts to other podcasts and vlogs that were broadcasting from the pipe show.
Thanks Rick! What a fun event and your article was great at
bring the fun to those of us who didn’t make the show.
From what I have seen here and elsewhere on this site, it will be well worth it to pony up the entrance fee and, if nothing else, just do a little walk about. You never know what will come home with you or who you will see.
It sounds like Vegas is going to be the Western Pipe Mecca for years to come. And a bit more attractive because of the lack of smoking restrictions.
That’s just one of the many things I love about Vegas. You can smoke just about anywhere. Sin City is my kind of town.