Favorite Smoking Haunts

[Kurt Weiske]

What is/was your favorite place to smoke in public?

In the 1990s there arose a fad in cigar pubs - typically catering to young professionals looking for something that felt high-end to them. Overpriced, mass-produced Central American cigars and single-malt scotches met the task.

I wasn't about that, though.

I lived in Albany, CA in the early '90s, and lived next-door to a place we called THE PUB. Mostly because those two words (in uppercase) were what you could read from the road. What had been a small house on the high street in a sleepy east-bay town had been turned into a "discussion salon", a cafe/pub with 3 porches, a living room turned into a sitting room with chairs, a large coffee table, bookcases and a fireplace. A dining room had a threadbare rug and 2 tables. A back room housed a similarly threadbare couch, end table with stacks of magazines, a small bistro table and two chairs.

It looks like people moved out of a house in the morning, and it opened in the afternoon as a pub.

If you'd like to see it, here's a great article:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/The-story-of-the-Albany-pub-where-time
-stands-12917018.php

They had 3 or 4 beers on taps, obscure bottled beers from around the world.
a hand-pull tap for room-temerature British beer, wines, an espresso machine and a variety of cold drinks. Sales were tabulated on a steno pad.

Oh, and they had pipes, tobacco, cigars and cigarettes for sale. Cigars ranged from a couple of obscure brands, tobacco consisted of dusty tins of name-brand tobaccos and jars of un-named generic blends from the pipe shop across the street. The pipe collection was dusty.

THE PUB was a great place to hang out, more of a pub in the British sense instead of an American "Pub".

With 3 porches, you could sit out on a pleasant day, order a drink, sit out with your pipe and enjoy a break in your day. It became a post-work hangout for me, working in a company where we were making the world a better place by writing imaginative screen savers.

The best part about THE PUB? I lived next door.

THE PUB was a special part of a time in my life - a confluence of good friends, a rewarding job and a diverse social circle with a shared interest. As I've learned, all things are to be appreciated in the present, because life is ephemeral. The conditions that bring people and circumstances together are fleeting.

I moved out, following a new job and feeling a longing for the Big City. Along with the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area, THE PUB went smoke-free a while ago. For a time, the back room door was closed. Every once in a while the door would open briefly, and you'd see people smoking in there. I imagined it to be a smoke-easy, where you'd need to know the code word to get in.

When I'm in the area, I make a point of stopping by for a drink. Going to the counter to order, I'll look at dozens of snapshots of employees and patrons stapled to the wall and see people I remember from my time next door. I'll go out to the porch with my drink and remember those times and those friends, but now the ashtrays are gone.

kurt weiske | kweiske at realitycheckbbs dot org
| http://realitycheckbbs.org
| 1:218/700@fidonet
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
* realitycheckBBS - Aptos, CA - telnet://realitycheckbbs.org

[Pipeman1]

Thanks for a great post, Kurt!

The article shows THE PUB exactly as you described!

However I think guys without a subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle may have trouble accessing the article. However everyone should be able to view it here: https://archive.ph/HpWx8

P.S. How does one go about accessing you at your address? http://realitycheckbbs.org yields:
----This site can’t be reachedrealitycheckbbs.org refused to connect.
----ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED
and telnet://realitycheckbbs.org yields:
----An error occurred while searching known hosts (for details run “ssh-keygen -F realitycheckbbs.org”).

[Kurt Weiske]

To: Pipeman1
Re: Re: Favorite Smoking Haunts
By: Pipeman1 to alt.smokers.pipes on Mon Mar 06 2023 01:49 pm

Pi> P.S. How does one go about accessing you at your address?
Pi> http://realitycheckbbs.org yields:
Pi> ----This site canrCOt be reachedrealitycheckbbs.org refused to connect.

It's back now, I had to reboot my router.

[Casey Tuggle]

On Monday, March 6, 2023 at 4:49:13 PM UTC-5, Pipeman1 wrote:
> Thanks for a great post, Kurt!
>
> The article shows THE PUB exactly as you described!
>
> However I think guys without a subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle may have trouble accessing the article. However everyone should be able to view it here: https://archive.ph/HpWx8
>
> P.S. How does one go about accessing you at your address? http://realitycheckbbs.org yields:
> ----This site can’t be reachedrealitycheckbbs.org refused to connect.
> ----ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED
> and telnet://realitycheckbbs.org yields:
> ----An error occurred while searching known hosts (for details run “ssh-keygen -F realitycheckbbs.org”).
> > kurt weiske | kweiske at realitycheckbbs dot org
> > | http://realitycheckbbs.org
> > | 1:218/

> > --- Synchronet 3.20a-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
> > * realitycheckBBS - Aptos, CA - telnet://realitycheckbbs.org

Thank you for the Archive link!

I have had nothing as eclectic and homey as The Pub, but I did use to go to a member's lounge that was inside a very large (probably 60k square foot) pool hall. The Havana Room, as it was known, had a fireplace and a welcoming feel with a collection of like-minded folks. We had Thursday night dinners there, private wait staff, comfortable furniture, and TVs with both cable and satellite so any game or program was available. I made great friendships there, some of which still last to this day, but time has a way of upsetting the delicate balance that brings people together, as you noted.

I also am old enough to recall the day of going to Buffalo Wild Wings for live pub trivia every week and enjoying a smoke with my friends. The franchise eventually moved out of that building into a modern corporate-looking restaurant and took the smoking away. For a time, however, trivia and smoke and beer and wings were all in happy equilibrium.