Am I being a snob?

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seamusjft

Starting to Get Obsessed
Dec 16, 2012
190
0
Wow. I just had to walk away and come back to reply cos I probably would have made myself sound like a douche. The title was tongue in cheek and didn't really hold much relevance. I didn't even put packets down. I was asking if I should not let my first experience put me off trying others.

I'm as common as they come. A single parent with a low income so I too can only afford certain brands.

Why I'm explaining myself I don't know?!

 

ravkesef

Lifer
Aug 10, 2010
3,040
12,562
82
Cheshire, CT
I have long since passed the point of criticizing anyone's tobacco, nor them for smoking it. De gustibus non est disputandum. Some decades ago, I went through a phase where I smoked nothing but Balkan Sobranie (in tins of course,) and looked down my nose at anyone who smoked anything else. I would offer them a bowlful of my Sobranie, and if they told me they didn't care for it, I just knew that there was something wrong with them. How utterly foolish I was, and a quintessential snob, to be sure. We can talk about better tobacco, the price paid at auction for certain leaf, the processing method, etc., but if someone likes a particular tobacco, be it flavored with the gods alone know what, packaged in plastic, tin or sheeps bladders, he's in the right place. I have read that certain companies package their top blends in tins, and a slightly lesser grade, bearing the same name, mind you, in plastic. I have also read that it's the same thing, regardless of how it's packaged. Perhaps it does age differently, but it really is a matter of taste. It's the start of a New Year--so light up and enjoy. Your pleasure is uniquely your own.

 

hawk60ce

Lifer
Jun 11, 2012
1,401
2
Mac baren makes some great tobaccos at decent prices. Not sure why loco jumped your shit. I saw nothing wrong with your original question. I enjoy captain black from time to time. Also, captainprophesy is right, some will stay moist for years.

 

jpberg

Lifer
Aug 30, 2011
3,256
7,706
Seamus, "snob" is a silly, meaningless, yet still overused word in the pipe and tobacco world. Keep trying blends, both tinned and loose, until you come onto what you like. It's an interesting and rewarding journey.
And for God's sake, Loco, when you wake up, please notice that the OP is in the UK, most of the blends you aren't able to spell are not available there.

 

cigrmaster

Lifer
May 26, 2012
20,248
57,309
67
Sarasota Florida
seamusjft, you are not being a snob and you asked a legitimate question. I don't smoke any blends that come in a pouch, does that make me a snob for not enjoying those blends.....I think not. If I said blends in pouches are inferior, that would make me a snob. People should smoke what they like no matter how it comes. I have heard that those blends which you mentioned are different from their tinned versions. Since I have not smoked any I can only go by what I have heard. Back years ago I was buying St Bruno's flake in tins because I was told by the seller the pouched version was not the same stuff.
locopony, you were very harsh and I believe an apology is in order.

 

flyguy

Lifer
Nov 20, 2012
1,018
4
How many of us started pipe smoking with drugstore blends? Probably all of us old timers. The drugstore blends were good enough in the early years. Heck, I started drinking coffee with Folgers coffee. It was only until later, when the new whole bean coffees came out, did I switch. Now I think Folgers is bilge-water. Same thing holds true for pipe tobaccos: I would never go back to Mixture #79 but it holds fond memories...

 

flyguy

Lifer
Nov 20, 2012
1,018
4
Roth,

You are correct, sir! Folgers is better than no coffee and drugstore tobacco is better than no tobacco.

 

seamusjft

Starting to Get Obsessed
Dec 16, 2012
190
0
Ah now coffee........ just fill me up with cafine every hour!

I'm getting there with the tobacco. This time of night I really enjoy a bowl or 3!

 

simnettpratt

Lifer
Nov 21, 2011
1,516
2
@cajun: That was pretty frigging sweet Bradley; pretty frigging sweet. Never thought of that. Why doesn't that work for me? Do the mosquitos expect me to be ugly because I'm British?

 

locopony

Part of the Furniture Now
Jun 7, 2011
710
3
I didnt mean to be harsh. Only informative. Please dont regard my statement as harsh. I was only trying to help him find a comfortable way of communicating that he had a bad experience with a blend with out risking insult to a fellow on here. Sorry for the misunderstanding, my fault completely.

 

wildcat

Part of the Furniture Now
Jan 1, 2012
682
1
As long as your not rubbing anyone's face in it, your not being a snob. All good man.

I think this is key and both sides are guilty sometimes. The majority of my smoking is with OTCs... Walnut, KC Mild, Velvet, Sugar Barrel, Half&Half, with some bulks mixed in and recently dipping into the world of tinned tobacco.
I have one observation tho (and by no means do I state it as a rule), most of the folks I know who spend a lot of time with OTCs smoke a lot... a lot. While some of the true "snobs" puff once a week give or take. There is a great essay by A.A. Milne (Winnie The Pooh) regarding this and "white dot" snobbery. I'll find and post...

 

wildcat

Part of the Furniture Now
Jan 1, 2012
682
1
A. A. Milne
SMOKING AS A FINE ART
My first introduction to Lady Nicotine was at the innocent age of eight, when, finding a small piece of somebody else’s tobacco lying unclaimed on the ground, I decided to experiment with it. Numerous desert island stories had told me that the pangs of hunger could be allayed by chewing tobacco; it was thus that the hero staved off death before discovering the bread-fruit tree. Every right-minded boy of eight hopes to be shipwrecked one day, and it was proper that I should find out for myself whether my authorities could be trusted in this matter. So I chewed tobacco. In the sense that I certainly did not desire food for some time afterwards, my experience justified the authorities, but I felt at the time that it was not so much for staving off death as for reconciling oneself to it that tobacco-chewing was to be recommended. I have never practiced it since.
At eighteen I went to Cambridge, and bought two pipes in a case. In those days Greek was compulsory, but not more so than two pipes in a case. One of the pipes had an amber stem and the other a vulcanite stem, and both of them had silver belts. That also was compulsory. Having bought them, one was free to smoke cigarettes. However, at the end of my first year I got to work seriously on a shilling briar, and I have smoked that, or something like it, ever since.
In the last four years there has grown up a new school of pipe- smokers, by which (I suspect) I am hardly regarded as a pipe- smoker at all. This school buys its pipes always at one particular shop; its pupils would as soon think of smoking a pipe without the white spot as of smoking brown paper. So far are they from smoking brown paper that each one of them has his tobacco specially blended according to the colour of his hair, his taste in revues, and the locality in which he lives. The first blend is naturally not the ideal one. It is only when he has been a confirmed smoker for at least three months, and knows the best and worst of all tobaccos, that his exact requirements can be satisfied.
However, it is the pipe rather than the tobacco which marks him as belonging to this particular school. He pins his faith, not so much to its labour-saving devices as to the white spot outside, the white spot of an otherwise aimless life. This tells the world that it is one of THE pipes. Never was an announcement more superfluous. From the moment, shortly after breakfast, when he strikes his first match to the moment, just before bed-time, when he strikes his hundredth, it is obviously THE pipe which he is smoking.
For whereas men of an older school, like myself, smoke for the pleasure of smoking, men of this school smoke for the pleasure of pipe-owning—of selecting which of their many white-spotted pipes they will fill with their specially-blended tobacco, of filling the one so chosen, of lighting it, of taking it from the mouth to gaze lovingly at the white spot and thus letting it go out, of lighting it again and letting it go out again, of polishing it up with their own special polisher and putting it to bed, and then the pleasure of beginning all over again with another white- spotted one. They are not so much pipe-smokers as pipe-keepers; and to have spoken as I did just now of their owning pipes was wrong, for it is they who are in bondage to the white spot. This school is founded firmly on four years of war. When at the age of eighteen you are suddenly given a cheque-book and called “Sir,” you must do something by way of acknowledgment. A pipe in the mouth makes it clear that there has been no mistake—you are undoubtedly a man. But you may be excused for feeling after the first pipe that the joys of smoking have been rated too high, and for trying to extract your pleasure from the polish on the pipe’s surface, the pride of possessing a special mixture of your own, and such-like matters, rather than from the actual inspiration and expiration of smoke. In the same way a man not fond of reading may find delight in a library of well-bound books. They are pleasant to handle, pleasant to talk about, pleasant to show to friends. But it is the man without the library of well-bound books who generally does most of the reading.
So I feel that it is we of the older school who do most of the smoking. We smoke unconsciously while we are doing other things; THEY try, but not very successfully, to do other things while they are consciously smoking. No doubt they despise us, and tell themselves that we are not real smokers, but I fancy that they feel a little uneasy sometimes. For my young friends are always trying to persuade me to join their school, to become one of the white-spotted ones. I have no desire to be of their company, but I am prepared to make a suggestion to the founder of the school. It is that he should invent a pipe, white spot and all, which smokes itself. His pupils could hang it in the mouth as picturesquely as before, but the incidental bother of keeping it alight would no longer trouble them.
(1920)

 

wildcat

Part of the Furniture Now
Jan 1, 2012
682
1
So it seems this issue, like most issues, has been around a long, long time... :puffpipe:

 
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