BriarPipeNYC
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2018
- Messages
- 119
- Reaction score
- 74
First... thank-you for having me as a member. I'm sure that not only will it be enjoyable to read all the postings on various subjects, but that I will also learn many pipe-ish things, here also.
Born and "bred" in New York City, and have been smoking my modest briar pipe collection, on and off, since 1966 the year I turned 16 years old. Being allowed by my parents to smoke a pipe when I turned 16 yrs. old, was a big milestone in my life. I considered myself as a grownup, a man!...and the girls would just flock to me because I was different then the rest of the skinny, jerks who smoked cigarettes. Well, it didn't quite turn out as I planned, girl-wise. Yada, yada, yada.....fast forward. In my salad days, I learned how to hate my pipes. Smoked cheapo tobaccos, gooey aromatics, and smoke the pipe all wrong. Tongue-bite, gurgling-juicy smokes, acrid-rank smells, oxidized bits, smelly ashtrays, sticky pipe cleaners....YECH! Concurrently, pipe shops in NYC started closing down by the dozens, and the price of briar pipes, and tobaccos skyrocketed. So I stopped smoking about 20 years ago.
I'm back. My pipes laid there, for 20 years, in a forgotten drawer, comatose.....and each time I saw them, they begged me to ...."give us one more chance"..... So, I joined a few pipe smoking forums, watched some very informative You-Tube videos, asked questions, followed suggestions, and now.... I can actually enjoy the art of smoking my briar pipes once again.
So now your up to date. I'm still discovering the merits and demerits of some of the various mixtures and blends that are now available to us pipe smokers. Back when I started to pick up the pipe this incredible variety of blend choices, and computer-shopping was nonexistent. All my favorite B&M tobacco shops are gone like Wilke's, Wally Frank, De La Concha, Barkley Rex (many locations back in the day), and most of them have become cigar lounges. Too bad. The aromas wafting around the old-timey Tobacconist shops was not to be believed! I miss those days. Gone, also, are all the hole-in-the-wall, "Pipe Hospitals" that operated in lower-Manhattan. What's a "pipe hospital"? Back in the day, a guy could get his pipe repaired while he waited, or even more commonly done, men dropped off their broken pipes at one of these "pipe hospitals" in the morning, went to work, and they just picked up their refreshed, and repaired pipes, when quitting time rolled around. Very convenient for the many pipe-smokers walking around the streets of NYC. These quaint, "pipe hospitals" were nothing more that 4' X 6' wooden shacks. They looked very much like today's garden/storage sheds. All had a small lathe, plenty of files, and other hand tools, plenty of briar and Vulcanite dust, and hundreds of repaired and unclaimed pipes hanging all over the ceiling, dangling from strings. Eye candy for this young, sixteen year old "man".
That was then, and this is now. So....on with the show. Thanks for the interest.
Frank
NYC
Born and "bred" in New York City, and have been smoking my modest briar pipe collection, on and off, since 1966 the year I turned 16 years old. Being allowed by my parents to smoke a pipe when I turned 16 yrs. old, was a big milestone in my life. I considered myself as a grownup, a man!...and the girls would just flock to me because I was different then the rest of the skinny, jerks who smoked cigarettes. Well, it didn't quite turn out as I planned, girl-wise. Yada, yada, yada.....fast forward. In my salad days, I learned how to hate my pipes. Smoked cheapo tobaccos, gooey aromatics, and smoke the pipe all wrong. Tongue-bite, gurgling-juicy smokes, acrid-rank smells, oxidized bits, smelly ashtrays, sticky pipe cleaners....YECH! Concurrently, pipe shops in NYC started closing down by the dozens, and the price of briar pipes, and tobaccos skyrocketed. So I stopped smoking about 20 years ago.
I'm back. My pipes laid there, for 20 years, in a forgotten drawer, comatose.....and each time I saw them, they begged me to ...."give us one more chance"..... So, I joined a few pipe smoking forums, watched some very informative You-Tube videos, asked questions, followed suggestions, and now.... I can actually enjoy the art of smoking my briar pipes once again.
So now your up to date. I'm still discovering the merits and demerits of some of the various mixtures and blends that are now available to us pipe smokers. Back when I started to pick up the pipe this incredible variety of blend choices, and computer-shopping was nonexistent. All my favorite B&M tobacco shops are gone like Wilke's, Wally Frank, De La Concha, Barkley Rex (many locations back in the day), and most of them have become cigar lounges. Too bad. The aromas wafting around the old-timey Tobacconist shops was not to be believed! I miss those days. Gone, also, are all the hole-in-the-wall, "Pipe Hospitals" that operated in lower-Manhattan. What's a "pipe hospital"? Back in the day, a guy could get his pipe repaired while he waited, or even more commonly done, men dropped off their broken pipes at one of these "pipe hospitals" in the morning, went to work, and they just picked up their refreshed, and repaired pipes, when quitting time rolled around. Very convenient for the many pipe-smokers walking around the streets of NYC. These quaint, "pipe hospitals" were nothing more that 4' X 6' wooden shacks. They looked very much like today's garden/storage sheds. All had a small lathe, plenty of files, and other hand tools, plenty of briar and Vulcanite dust, and hundreds of repaired and unclaimed pipes hanging all over the ceiling, dangling from strings. Eye candy for this young, sixteen year old "man".
That was then, and this is now. So....on with the show. Thanks for the interest.
Frank
NYC
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