A ‘Nice Vice’
In a Costa Mesa storefront filled with the velvety smells of vanilla and raspberry tobacco, an old man and the shopkeeper are haggling over the price of two pipes, antiques made in England, with stems forever marked by teeth of men long dead. They’re finely carved, like little totems, and they take the men back to older days, of barbers and suspenders and gentlemen who thought before they spoke.
There is sadness in their smoke-hoarsened voices as they muse over the death of the pipe--murdered, they say, by the hectic pace of modern life.
“Nobody smokes a pipe anymore,” said retired engineer Vernon Edler, 79, hoisting his pants as he thinks about it. “It’s lost, pipe smoking. It’s a shame.”
Indeed, consumption of pipe tobacco in the United States has plummeted more than 90% since 1950, from 75 million pounds a year to less than 7 million in 1998.
But Edler’s eulogy may be premature. Tobacconists across the United States, once discouraged by incalculably low sales, say they’re selling more pipes than they have in years.
The number of pipe retailers, according to one trade group, has nearly doubled since 1997 to about 3,000. Circulation of the nation’s only magazine dedicated to pipes increased from 50,000 to 60,000 subscribers during the same period. The Robb Report, a consumer journal for the wealthy, recently declared the pipe is “in” again and rates the best ones to buy in this month’s issue.
Even as Edler and the shopkeeper ruminate about the pipe’s demise, six customers stop in for pipe tobacco. Only one wants a cigar.
That the public is at least flirting with the idea of reviving the pipe reflects cultural attitudes about tobacco and the way Americans see themselves, trend watchers say. The cigar craze has peaked, and cigarettes are unavoidably linked to lung cancer. The pipe--a safer, if not entirely healthy alternative--is the next logical step in Americans’ ceaseless pursuit of a “nice vice,” experts say--of something that can define them without being immediately lethal.
“It’s the most sensual and most stimulating of all the smoking habits,” said Watts Wacker, a Connecticut futurist who studies tobacco trends and believes pipes are coming back. “Cigarettes kill you. Cigars smell bad. Pipes make you look smart. As a culture, we seem to all be looking for that: Shakespeare is back. So are books. And so, too, are the props.”
The Pipe Tobacco Council, a national trade group, estimates that 3 million Americans have the habit, or about 3% of the adult male population. In Europe, the figure is as high as 8%, and in France even some women smoke pipes--a practice no one sees returning to America.
There’s a certain irony in the fact that the pipe has fallen so low in America: Most historians believe it was invented in North or South America more than 2,000 years ago, and spread--along with tobacco--to Europe after the arrival of explorers from the Old World.
If the pipe indeed has a future here, it may look like this: 23-year-old Jon Goudrault, a Cal State Fullerton student who likes to smoke a pipe in his Costa Mesa garage as he and a couple of his Gen-Y buddies play Warhammer, Robotech and other role-playing games.
He Received
Pipe as a Gift
Goudrault has smoked a pipe for about a year--ever since he got one as a gift--and now owns several. He is so fond of the pipe that he took a part-time job at the Tinder Box, a tobacco shop in Costa Mesa.
Like many trendsetters, he exhibits a rebellious streak: in this case, against the go-getting 1990s.
“Everybody’s gotta go here, gotta be there, gotta go--I can just sit back with my pipe and be laid-back,” he said. “It’s kind of intellectual.”
Welcoming the prospective trend with open arms, many tobacconists now are selling starter kits--a pipe, some tobacco and cleaners--to capture neophytes like Goudrault. Manufacturers are making smaller pipes that take less time to smoke--less than 20 minutes, instead of a leisurely hour or more.
Manjit Bain, owner of the Tinder Box in Costa Mesa, said his customers are looking for something to replace cigars, sales of which leveled off last year after a five-year boom.
“I think pipe sales are going up a lot,” Bain said. “I don’t really know why. Over the past year, more and more people seem to be asking for them.”
Tobacconists across the country report a similar trend.
“When it was really bad a couple years ago, we only sold three or four pipes a month. Now we’re selling three or four a day,” said Dan Spaniola, co-owner of Paul’s Pipe Shop in Flint, Mich. “Maybe it won’t catch fire like the cigar did, but this is going to get good. People are coming around. We’re ready.”
For all their optimism, pipe sellers have their work cut out for them. In an age when tobacco has been vilified, when states ban smoking indoors and people feel too rushed to vote or read a newspaper, the pipe, which can stay lit for hours, is distinctly out of place.
And there are the health concerns. One national smoking expert said pipes are not as risky as cigarettes because most pipe smokers do not inhale. But in place of the substantial risk of lung cancer with cigarettes is a small risk of mouth cancer with pipes, said Brad Rodu, a University of Alabama pathology professor.
In general, however, the pipe has largely escaped the public health campaign against tobacco that began with the U.S. Surgeon General’s 1964 report linking cigarettes and cancer. So few people smoked them that pipes never were targeted by anti-smoking forces, and to this day the surgeon general--while opposing all forms of tobacco--has no position specifically on pipes.
Beyond that, practical economics work in favor of the pipe, tobacconists say. Taxes on tobacco are rising dramatically, particularly in California with Proposition 10 adding about 50 cents to the cost of a pack of cigarettes. Even with the taxes, pipe tobacco is downright cheap.
About $100 can buy up to 30 packs of name-brand cigarettes, no more than 20 respectable cigars--or about 28 ounces of pipe tobacco, enough to last a moderate smoker for months, tobacconists say.
Chuck Stanion, managing editor of Pipes and Tobaccos magazine, points out that a briar pipe, costing anywhere from $15 to $150, will last for years.
“It seems very upscale, but it’s by far the least expensive way to smoke and enjoy one of life’s great pleasures,” he said.
Some who see the pipe coming back say its anachronistic quality gives it the same kind of nostalgic appeal that helped the cigar regain popularity in the early 1990s.
“Pipes are icons of credibility,” said Wacker, the Connecticut futurist who works for a New Haven think tank called First Matter. “There’s tremendous nostalgia in them because they point back to an America of more sophisticated taste,” an America peopled by pipe smokers such as Mark Twain and Einstein. “People are searching for something that reminds them of a time when things weren’t so confusing and you didn’t worry as much.”
Tending a Pipe
Takes Up Time
Unlike the cigar, the pipe encourages smokers to slow down and think--if for no other reason, because lighting and tending a pipe takes time. Some say the pipe stimulates more senses at once than about anything else--just cradling the curves of a fine imported briar is allure enough, they say, to conjure up deep thoughts.
“It makes me feel smart,” said Keith Moore, who oversees one of the nation’s largest pipe selections at Uptown’s Pipe Shop in Nashville. “There is not enough philosophy in the world, and too much psychology. If I smoke a pipe, I do more thinking. I didn’t used to do that . . . I like how I feel when I smoke my pipe.”
Frank Burla, curator of a pipe museum in Chicago, said the physical nature of the pipe distinguishes it.
“Cigars disappear. Pipes are collectible. You learn how to smoke one. . . . It is something to enjoy, and people are starting to see that,” he said.
Edler, the retired engineer from south Orange County, put it this way: “The pipe is the least of all evils. It helps your mental tranquillity,” he said, striking a match to his new pipe on a recent sleepy afternoon at the Costa Mesa tobacconist’s. “But they got a lot of those rules now. It doesn’t make it easy for the fellas who carry [a pipe]. Not easy at all.”
Edler had stepped outside the tobacco store to light his pipe, carefully sheltering it with his hand and puffing gently. Smoking is not allowed inside.
Matthew Ebnet can be reached by e-mail at socalliving@latimes.com.
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Pipe Dreams
History and literature is filled with images of pipe smokers--variously contemplative, lazy, brainy or fatherly.
It was about dark now; so I dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. I made fast to a willow; then I took a bite to eat, and by and by laid down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan.--”The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain.
Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal stove, made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age; who had screened himself from the cold air without, by a frousy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters, hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement.--”A Christmas Carol,” by Charles Dickens.
The servant led us down a matted passage and showed us at the end into a great library, all lined with bookcases and busts upon the top of them, where the squire and Dr. Liversay sat, pipe in hand, on either side of a bright fire.--”Treasure Island,” by Robert Stevenson.
I reached the Grange before sunset, and knocked for admittance; but the family had retreated into the back premises, I judged by one thin, blue wreath curling from the kitchen chimney, and they did not hear. I rode into the court. Under the porch, a girl of nine or ten sat knitting, and an old woman reclined on the house-steps, smoking a meditative pipe.--”Wuthering Heights,” by Emily Bronte
