It was a slow evening at the pub. Through the blue and grey smoke diffusing through the room, I smelled something familiar. It smelled like my music teacher’s leather jacket; it smelled like his trumpet and my piano and avoiding my lessons.

Four, college age men sat at a table and one of them was holding a long, clay pipe. Like some sort of mystic ceremony, they passed it around the table, taking a puff, savoring the flavor, and passing it to the next.

Within a week, I found myself at a small, old tobacconist with a statue of an Indian chief standing on a block with the word “TOBAK” written on it. I remember circling the tourist area a number of times before I even worked up the courage to park. It took me even more time to walk inside.

I was completely out of my element. Large glass jars were filled with different types of tobacco, all of which looked so similar, aside from the one in a porcelain jar with a portrait of a Middle Eastern man painted on it; I later discovered that this was the one English tobacco that the establishment offered.

I am sure that I lingered too long in my attempt to blend into the woodwork, but I eventually asked to purchase the same pipe that the guys at the pub had been smoking. I work at a Renaissance Faire during the summers – yes, I’m lame like that – and I justified the purchase to myself by thinking that, if I didn’t take to the pipe, I could at least use the clay one as a prop.

I remember taking the long box that contained the pipe and my two plastic bags full of bulk tobacco back to my dorm room and hiding them in the bottom drawer of my desk. I wasn’t hiding it from my roommate, since I didn’t have a roommate. Perhaps I was hiding it from the memories of my parents telling me how evil tobacco is. What I could not hide, however, was my excitement: a slight feeling of butterflies in my stomach, smiling like an idiot, and anticipating my first experience.

To say it was not the best of experiences might be an understatement, and, much like most bad first-pipe-experiences, it was entirely my fault. I was trying to use flimsy matches to light a pipe that was poorly packed and around a foot-and-a-half long on a cold, windy night, while perched on a ledge of a dormitory building. I think it might have been easier if I had been trying to juggle eight rabid pit bulls while trying to light my pipe. Read more

CL had just clocked out when I got into work.

I was carrying my PipeFolio in one hand and my Amazon Kindle in the other. It was a beautiful Monday night, to my eyes, with a steady rain and grey sky. I knew that this meant the night would either be extremely busy or extremely dead. A selfish part of me was hoping for the latter, as I had just gotten to an exciting part of A Dance With Dragons, by George R. R. Martin, and I was looking forward to trying out a new tobacco.

After I clocked in, I strolled back often to the host’s station, which is simply a small counter with a phone and calendar next to the bar. Rainy weather always puts me in a good mood, that night being no exception.

Twenty minutes into my shift, no one had walked in. About that same time, CL dropped his backpack next to where I was standing and leaned against the counter with a glass of red wine in his hand.

One of the things I really admire about CL is his ability to appreciate a plethora of flavors, a skill that has made him an aficionado on wine, beer, and scotch, and he is working on adding pipe tobacco the list.

“So, I have a pipe question for you.”

Wonderful, I thought, putting my Kindle down in anticipation. It is a rare that a young man gets to help educate the bar manager where one works, so I was not going to pass the opportunity. Plus, as someone who helped spark his fascination with pipes, I feel like I have a stake in his continuing enjoyment, as, indeed, all pipe smokers have in the continued proliferation of our community as a whole.

“I recently snagged some Full Virginia Flake –“ Read more

We all use stereotypes. Every single one of us, every single day. For example, someone at a restaurant hands you something in glass that is liquid and perfectly clear, has no aroma and no fizz. You assume that it is water based on your stereotypes of the world. Some stereotypes are useful; some are harmful.

One particular stereotype out there concerns our hobby, my friends. For the purposes of context, take a look at this picture: Read more

In a blog on this site back in September,  https://www.craighobson.com/archive/qualitybriar/2011/09/the-price-of-information/, Chris Lee expressed an understandable dismay at the prices of briars being offered for sale on Chinese sites, amounts which appeared to reflect a 300% markup. In thoughtful reply, Warren Wiguto speculated that those figures might well reflect a combination of market availability, as well as the allure of the “exotic, rare or luxurious”. Reading Mr Lee’s blog, I felt a weight rise from my shoulders. Finally, someone started a dialog on a subject that many are aware of, but no one seemed to want to discuss, and Warren’s hypothesis is undoubtedly part of the equation. For a few years I have studied the Chinese pipe market, mainly concentrating on the trail of the product from the source, and the subsequent pricing at the end. So, how do the briars get there, and why is the end user paying what seems to be an exorbitant tribute? Here’s the skinny. Read more