Lifestyle?!!

[deathmetal]

You mean... hipsters?
I feel like you put your finger on the difference: for some people, pipe smoking is a way of making themselves look cool.
For others, we just really enjoy our pipes, cigars and fully automatic weapons and want to learn a lot about them.

 

[marcel]

There's a link on this site called The Pipe Smoking Lifestyle which I completely missed.
The Pipe Smoking Lifestyle

 

[marcel]

There's a link on this site in the categories sidebar called The Pipe Smoking Lifestyle which I completely missed.
The Pipe Smoking Lifestyle

 

[mso489]

I can't quite visualize smoking a pipe to look cool. First of all, it is uncommon enough that it just looks unique, unless you happen to look cool for other reasons -- being quite a dresser or having a flashy car, etc. Second, smoking a pipe takes some work, to learn to do it, to keep the pipe somewhat/mostly lit, and to figure out the other aspects of the activity. And if it's just for looks, you can't be attending to the packing and selection of blends enough to really enjoy it. It would be like going to medical school and getting a specialty in something because it looks cool when you park in a physicians parking space. A lot of trouble for that particular benefit. I think the pleasure of looking cool would last about a week, maybe ten days if you took a few days off.

 

[saltedplug]

I was cool in the 7th grade but not since.

 

[smokinginquirer]

To my mind, it's less easy to define it as a lifestyle today then it would have been in the 50's and 60's. Everyone smoked back then. It was more visible, so maybe (I'm too young to know) when the numbers were high enough it was easier to peg certain people to certain smoking. Say, one could imagine cigs were common, cigars were for richer people and pipes were for contemplators. I'm just throwing around associations that probably have no basis in reality, but the point is perhaps "lifestyle" is used to evoke a sense of a kind of people that were associated with that kind of smoking from an age when it was much more popular. It would seem a good advertising ploy. Additionally, "lifestyle" might be simply a hobby taken to an obsession. So really, anyone could make a lifestyle out of pretty much anything.

 

[judcole]

In the movie, California Suite (screenplay by Neil Simon), Hannah Warren (played by Jane Fonda) said, "I don't have a lifestyle - I have a life." That sort of sums up my feelings on this issue.

 

[bigpond]

I learned early in my corporate life that very frequently the least capable workers found their way to either HR or executive management, while those with a hairs breadth more talent often landed in advertising. The lifestyle angle has more than a mere whiff of art school drop out, a scent that permeates ad agencies like a wet fart in an elevator.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Oh for Christ's sakes, like the discussion on "trends", you don't have a choice to have a lifestyle or not. Whether you like it or not, the choices you make, give you a lifestyle. Even if the l;lifestyle is Dollar Store underwear, dirty Walmart coveralls, and whatever shoes you older brother outgrew. Even if the only car you drive is whichever in the yard runs.
"I'm not fancy enough to have a lifestyle." "I'm not a part of any trend." Phhht, give me a break. Even the bum on the street has a lifestyle and the choices of garbage that he wears out of the dumpster contributes to the trend of what bums are wearing these days. It is not a sign of being "fancy" or a weakness of spirit... it's just a marketing term, based on what people chose.
Sure, sure, some advertising folks will try to sell you something based on what other people are doing, calling it a "trend" or "lifestyle", and that is a less desirable way of using that term. But, ultimately the things that you do in a day contribute to your lifestyle, even if it is picking your nose with a dull pocketknife or fishing rotten anchovies off of the bottom of a dumpster. The only way you could not have a lifestyle is by just doing everything you do differently, never the same way, all day every day, AND even that could be considered a lifestyle choice of some sort.
It's so interesting to see men's reactions on here to these terms. "Keep you fancy words off of me." Ha ha ::

 

[jorchamp]

Lifestyle makes a habit or a hobby sound fancy. It should to more one than thing in how one lives one’s life. Something more complex than a hobby: a whole worldview on what life is all about should be involved. People who smoke pipes live their lives in many differ ways, and enjoy the hobby in different ways.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Think about the lifestyle of the cigarette smoker. They panic when they get down to the last two cigarettes, and they mentally have to prepare for the next pack, or carton. They have to plan vacations on where smoking will be less inconvenient, "are there places to buy cigarettes there? How much are they?"
Even the lifestyle of the bum is similar... Make a mental note of that niche there in the retaining wall, looks like a great place for a nap. The best dumpsters are down by the beach, but you have to fight the cats for the rotten fish heads. "I hope I don't get the flu this winter, because it will kill me."
It doesn't have to be all private jets and solid gold toilets.

 

[jpmcwjr]

Quite so. Doing everything opposite of others is a lifestyle, too. I agree everyone has a lifestyle, like it or not (and have a feeling I've posted that before). Only when you strive for a lifestyle does it get in the way.

 

[sablebrush52]

I'm not wealthy enough to have a "lifestyle". I just have a life.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Well, I guess we can blame Robin Leach for ruining a concept for the working man. Ha ha

 

[twosheds1]

Small batch cigars are made up so those Gen X'ers can all get all excited about finding this rare xyz cigar and pay silly amounts of money for it.

I've always found it odd to spend a lot of money on something you're going to set fire to. Prairie Home Companion (I think) did a parody video on "artisanal firewood" which is along the same lines.
As for the "lifestyle," I don't know what that lifestyle entails, so I'd have to say no. I did own a smoking jacket once, though once I put it out it was no longer smoking. :lol:

 

[cosmicfolklore]

As for the "lifestyle," I don't know what that lifestyle entails,

Look in the mirror, whatever you see is your lifestyle. It's as easy as that.

 

[badbeard]

I don't really care if I have a "lifestyle" or not. What I do want though, is this on a t-shirt:

pipes, cigars and fully automatic weapons

 

[youdancer]

badbeard what does that have to do with this thread?

As a longtime lurker and occasional poster I'm getting tired of all the guns and ammo comments in the pipe and tobacco threads.

We're not all Libertarians, this isn't a thread about the FDA/Govt/Man telling you what you can and can't do with your life.

I don't spend time in the general sections here, I have no interest in what you think in general, but in the past I have got a lot of valuable information about the art of smoking from some very thoughtful and generous souls on this site.

However, I really don't want to have to continue to wade through NRA apologia. This is political discourse and that's not why I came here.

Goodbye

 

[badbeard]

badbeard what does that have to do with this thread?

As a longtime lurker and occasional poster I'm getting tired of all the guns and ammo comments in the pipe and tobacco threads.

We're not all Libertarians, this isn't a thread about the FDA/Govt/Man telling you what you can and can't do with your life.

I don't spend time in the general sections here, I have no interest in what you think in general, but in the past I have got a lot of valuable information about the art of smoking from some very thoughtful and generous souls on this site.

However, I really don't want to have to continue to wade through NRA apologia. This is political discourse and that's not why I came here.

Goodbye

Sorry! I wasn't making any political statement whatsoever. I just thought what deathmetal said was humorous. I will crawl back under my rock now.

 

[deathmetal]

We're not all Libertarians, this isn't a thread about the FDA/Govt/Man telling you what you can and can't do with your life.

My comment was not political; it was designed to be humorous.
Some comments are philosophical, not political. Consider a Platonist who realizes that democracy is suicide and many other tenets of our current society are simply rationalization and compensation by people who subconsciously know that they are doomed. Consider the rage of Generation X, which inherently thinks this way.
The problem with the no-politics rule is that it allows many statements which are inherently political to go unchallenged if they agree with the status quo. It leads to situations where you might suspect we are trying to sneak in political content, but really, we are just screwing around.
My only real issue at the voting booth is the legalization of dynamite as a personal sexual stimulation device. Hopefully you will join me in this one.