Independence Day. The 4th of July.

For Americans everywhere, these titles evoke intense happiness for many reasons. For some, it is a sense of patriotism; for others, it is remembers those who gave their lives in the defense of a country that they loved so dearly; for others, if not most, it also has to do with barbecues, burgers, and beers, family, friends, and fireworks.

Before I get into the bulk of my piece, allow me to wish every one of you a happy and safe Fourth of July. Please keep the kids away from the fireworks!

It is easy to simply crack open a beer, watch the colorful designs made in the sky, and think no more about this day. It is also easy to simply think, “Well, this is when America won its independence.” I would encourage you to think a little bit deeper and consider how this celebration connects to our lives today.

The Revolutionary War has been cited as having many inspirations: taxation without representation, alienation, authoritarianism. No matter what reason one cites, one of the most critical moments leading up the American Revolution was the Boston Tea Party, or, as it was known at the time, the destruction of the tea.

So, why did this event occur? It was primarily a reaction to a series of laws passed in 1767, which were proposed by Charles Townshend. These laws included a number of tax hikes on products like stamps, sugar, and tea. These were items that the colonists valued and the Acts took that into account. After all, the primary purpose of a tax is to raise funds and the most effective way to do that is by taxing something that people cannot live without, or do not want to as in the case of tea. This, combined with the later passage of the Tea Act, resulted in colonial jobs to be lost and a number of people to be unable to afford their daily servings of tea without compromising other financial aspects.

The result of these new taxes was a feeling of oppression on the part of the colonists. This feeling surged until it finally culminated in the destruction of the tea.

Enough with the basic history lesson. So what?

The Boston Tea Party, arguably the powder-keg for the American Revolution, was a result of a government taxing luxury items to the point of making them more and more difficult to afford. Does this sound at all familiar?

In order to control the use of tobacco products today in the United States and elsewhere in the world, taxes are being raised on these items, sometimes to the degree of over 1,000% increases of current taxes. It seems horribly ironic for a country to be committing similar offenses to those that caused the country to be born in the first place.

Quick side note: this taxation spans party lines. It is not one party or another, one person or another. It is an apparent coalition on the part of governmental figures to unite against tobacco because it is the popular thing to do.

These taxes, while not physically or legally preventing the innocent pipe and cigar smokers from enjoying his hobby, discourage the use of luxury tobacco products through financial manipulation, all the while hiding behind the shady technique of lumping both cigars and pipes in with cigarettes. While we’re at it, let’s stop playing Bach and Beethoven just because we don’t like Britney Spears.

It is an attempt to limit our freedom without being accountable for doing so. They are trying to have their cake and eat it, too. It is subtle. It is deceptive. It is powerful.

I know that “independence” and “freedom” are not synonymous. But “independence” and “autonomy” are often cited as meaning the same thing, or at least being easily interchangeable. Autonomy is the ability to act and make decisions for oneself. These draconian taxes of all tobacco products violates this concept, however.

Mind you, I am in no one encouraging a revolution. Well, maybe a little one, but not in the same way as happen in Boston in the December of 1773.

There is already an official International Pipe Smoking Day, Febuary 20th, a day that I look forward to every year. I would encourage that today, July 4th, become our National Pipe Smoking Day. Across the country, we can stand (or sit) together and declare that, while some might disagree with or not like pipe or cigar smoking, they should damned well respect our ability to make that decision for ourselves, so long as we are not imposing it on others.

There is brilliant episode of the show “Futurama” where the characters celebrate a holiday known as “Freedom Day”. They celebrate this by engaging in any activity that might otherwise be unacceptable. Let’s face it, pipe and cigar smoking both have a clear stigma attached and many of us deliberately hide our hobby in an attempt to not offend others, because we are considerate.

Today, however, I encourage you to celebrate your autonomy at the same time that you celebrate America’s independence. Make the decision for yourself and enjoy your life. Smoke a pipe or a cigar or both, and, if someone asks, just tell them that you believe independence is something to be cherished.

This week, I am extremely proud to present a uniting of forces of Pipe School and another member of the online pipe community, simply known as “quantumboy7″ to many. Jim, as he is known to those uninitiated in the world of pipes, has dedicated himself to reviewing a single brand of tobacco straight through with incredible amounts of detail and information.

One of these sagas is known as the Pease Pilgrimage. The individual reviews were published in serialized form on some pipe forums. After I read these reviews and saw the scope that they covered, along with the devotion to detail, I knew that this was something that needed to reach as many people as possible.

In order to facilitate that goal, I will be posting some of Jim’s reviews every month.

So, with no further delay, here is Jim’s review of Pease’s Abingdon. Thank you, Jim, for all of your hard work; I know it’s a tough job reviewing pipe tobacco, but someone has to do it!

Abingdon (reviewed 01-08-10)

Tin date: 03/26/09

Aroma: Smoky, but a bit more austere than Odyssey – not as rich and campfire-smoky. It just seems a bit more reluctant to release its odors, but this could be because it’s a drier tin than the Odyssey I tried recently. Odyssey is a much blacker blend, which to me would mean more Latakia, but Pease’s description of Odyssey tells us that Odyssey is “A huge Latakia blend, second only to Abingdon in forcefulness.” Not sure if that means it is second to Abingdon in its quantity of Latakia. Seems to me that Abingdon has less.

Appearance: The cut is quite coarse, with some large chunks of Latakia that really needed a little additional rubbing-out. For small chamber pipes, this coarse blend might be a little challenging. I think it works better in a large chamber pipe. The photo clearly shows that this blend does not have a lot of Latakia (I’m assuming the Latakia is the black bits). The tin description lists “Latakia,” “red and lemon yellow Virginias,” and “rich oriental leaf.” I believe all four are clearly visible in the mix. It looks like it could have been mixed up a bit better, as there were little pockets or gobs of one type of leaf here and there. It’s visually quite beautiful!

Pipe 1: Stanwell Vario Billiard

Pipe 2: Savinelli 320KS Author

Pipe 3: Dane Craft S Freehand

Flavor: The last time I tasted Abingdon is when I reviewed it on TR in May 2009, and in all three pipes it’s much more oriental-forward than I remembered. I think the balance is impeccable. I consider the definition of English vs. Balkan as a continuum, one blending into the other on a linear scale, which is consistent with Pease’s comments about some blends blurring the lines between the two. Abingdon seems to emphasize the orientals while maintaining a very significant Latakia presence.

I puffed as hard as I pleased and it didn’t bite, but of course that causes the flavors to become too burnt. As with every tobacco, this one should be respected, nurtured and contemplated, and Abingdon, due to its rich complexity and changing character, is a very special and delicious treat when smoked carefully. I think some of the change in flavors I experienced throughout a given bowl is due to the not-so-even mixture of the components themselves, along with the quite large chunks of a given tobacco. When one of those big pieces catches fire, it seems to emphasize that particular leaf during that part of the smoke. To me, this makes it interesting. But there is also a gradual change during the smoke toward a more smoky, richer flavor that just gets better and better right to the bottom.

The aftertaste lasts for a long time, a quarter to a half-hour or longer if you don’t eat or drink, and it emphasizes the orientals. This blend reminds me of the McClelland Three Oaks series. I would love to try this with Syrian Latakia just to explore the difference, but I understand Greg lost his stash of Syrian in a fire. Bummer!

It burned well with no problems. Pease suggest a lighter than normal pack, but while loading my pipes I had to pack it in with greater than average force because my tin was quite dry upon opening and the leaves were stiff. A typical gentle pack did not provide nearly enough density to get a good burn. This was not true with the Odyssey I opened last week (next week’s review). It was moister with a much finer cut.

Overall, this is an easy four star blend for me. I love the flavors and I love the complexity. The coarse cut, while it may alter your normal packing methods (or not, if your tin is moist), provides a visually interesting experience and allows you to clearly see exactly what you’re smoking. An excellent blend with which to start our pilgrimage! Please let us know your opinions!

Sometimes you really can turn a piece of coal into a diamond. It just requires a little work.

This last Sunday, I left St. Louis for a month in Chicago. I am starting job training for my new position teaching high school English at one of the lower-achieving St Louis public school, courtesy of Teach for America (more on this in another post).

One I had been on the road for a little over three hours, I noticed that the road started feeling a lot rougher. Being naive, and probably a little sleep-deprived, I chalked it up to rough roads and my beat-up car. At one point, I had gotten it going over 85 miles per hour and I simply figured that I had pushed it too hard. Silly me.

About two hours out of Chicago, I knew that something was up, especially when I started seeing pieces of black debris flying by the corner of my eye. Calmly, I pulled over to the smell of burning rubber and saw that my rear driver’s side tire was shredded.

No problem, I thought to myself. I may be a city-slicker, but I can change a damn tire. So, I rummaged through my trunk to find the…lack of a spare. Problem.

So, I climbed back in my car and called AAA. “We will have a tow truck out there within an hour,” the woman on the other end told me, after she tried to tell me that I wouldn’t be able to find any place open on Sunday (Thank you, Walmart!).

I had an hour on my hands and four pipes sitting right next to me, which I had brought to keep me sane during my time at job training. So, I pulled out a black sandblasted Rubens Rhodesian, packed it full of the re-release of  Balkan Sobranie, and started making the best of my time. With that pipe, a radio special on philosophy and psychology, and some surprisingly beautiful scenery for Nowhere, Il., I managed to make the best of that hour. Not only did I make the best of it, but it ended up being one of the most pleasant piping experiences in recent memory.

The point of this story is to remind you to step back from an otherwise irritating situation and find the best. It is there, even if you have to search a little to find it.

We humans don’t seem to really like having our rights infringed upon, especially when you start messing with our vices of choice. One need not look further than the Prohibition Era to see this, specifically within America, though Canada went through a very similar experience.

On January 16th, 1919, Congress ratified the Eighteenth Amendment, just a little over a year after it was first proposed, despite President Woodrow Wilson’s veto. One year and one day later, the majority of “intoxicating beverages” became illegal to sell or create. So what came out of this? Well, needless to say, that year between the ratification and enactment was probably full of “end-all, be-all” style parties, at least it would have been had this same Prohibition taken place today.

One modern example of alcoholic prohibition involves something known as Four Loko, a beverage consisting of an energy drink and alcohol. Four Loko and its liquid brethren were hits at college parties, as the concoction allowed people to both experience the alcoholic effects and the high of the energy drink. The popularity of this drink at such college parties earned it a reputation not unlike that of the Biblical serpent – taking the rap for the poor decisions of others. In some college towns, this drink is now illegal, a decision which seems illogical, since one could simply mix an energy drink with vodka or any other alcohol completely legally. In St. Louis, party-goers were given a one month warning that the drink would be banned soon; this one month saw a number of “Four Loko Parties”, where participants bought full pallets of the drink and knocked back as many as they could before it became impossible. Sadly, these parties led to a number of alcohol poisonings and deaths, finally turning Four Loko into the demon that the naysayers that it was initially. Ironic? [/rant]

In the 1920s, Americans did what humans always do: found a solution to their problem. We are problem solvers, and good ones. Some solutions were simple ones, such as importing alcohol from Canada, Mexico, and Jamaica. Those who were best at illegally importing these treasured liquids wanted to make a profit for their risk, and they found this profit in the form of speakeasies. So much were these speakeasies a part of American culture that children today are still impacted by it; “What’s the password?” is a common phrase in childhood games, along with “Murphy sent me,” or something along those lines.

These speakeasies were often in basements, with their doors sometimes located behind counters or in an alley and guarded by burly men ready to fend off those who did not belong. Once one passed through the door equipped with the knowledge of the secret password, one passed into a different world. In these rooms, sometimes cramped and sometimes spacious, almost always filled with cigar and cigarette and pipe smoke, men gathered together to enjoy their vice of choice away from the scrutinizing eye of Big Brother.

There are many bars in existence today that try to replicate the feel of those speakeasies, some going so far as to require a password, though failure to answer correctly does not result in a pummeling, as it might have the the ’20s. For the first time in my life, however, I was recently able to experience what was, in my mind, the closest thing to a Prohibition Era speakeasy: the cigar lounge at Brennan’s in the Central West End of St. Louis.

I walked in the main door of Brennan’s to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Inside, it was a small bar with twelve stools and bottles lining the wall behind the counter. At the right end of the bar was a small humidor containing half a dozen boxes of cigars. Yellow Post-It notes were stuck everywhere by the bottles behind the bar, which piqued my curiosity. “That’s our computer system here,” said the bartender with a smile. Behind where I was sitting, I heard the sound of a harmonica emanating from a small doorway that led to a narrow, stone stairway.

Jeff, a friend of mine from the pub where I work, told me that that basement used to be a speakeasy. “There used to be a counter here,” he said, indicating an area in front of the doorway leading to the stairs. “That way, when someone went back here, people just thought they were going to the back of the shop.” Clever.

The place was nice and the Manhattan I ordered was enjoyable, but I knew there had to be more. I had read previously that this was a cigar lounge, but I was told that smoking wasn’t even allowed inside. I pulled my Castello 55 out of my pipe bag and looked at it longingly, preparing to take it back to the car, as I had clearly been misinformed. Once I pulled my pipe out, however, the bartender instructed me to exit the bar, take a quick left, and walk through the large doors.

*insert confused, unintelligible sound here*

I did what she said, because I’m the trusting type, and left my lady at the bar to keep the birthday boy company.

Outside, there were two heavy doors, completely unmarked. Shouldering open the left door, I saw an old, wooden staircase, nearly completely dark. As I started to make my way up the steps, small lights by my feet were activated by motion sensors, illuminating only enough of the stairs to get me to the next light source.

Once up the steps, I found another small bar, with a bartender hand-polishing glasses the way they always do in mobster movies. This is cool, I thought to myself. It’s not what I expected, but it’s pretty cool. The upstairs bar had a modern feel to it, which was a bit of a downer to me.

“So, I can smoke my pipe here?” I said as I pulled up to the bar.

“Nope, just cigarettes here,” the bartender responded.

“Son of a –”

“The cigar lounge is for members only,” he continued casually.

There’s more to this place? “Would it be okay if I saw it?”

“Sure, follow me. Need another Manhattan first?”

Of course, I needed another Manhattan!

The bartender took me through another backdoor area, where I saw a case full of cigar cutters and accessories, so I knew I was close. Stepping through a final door, the entire environment changed. In here, there was a tiny bar, enough room for three people to sit and only enough alcohol for the bartender to make the classics – though the full bar was only a hop and a skip away.

Beyond the glass case containing myriad Zeno Cigar boxes and accessories was a 10′ by 20′ room with couches, leather chairs, tables, and even a workbench with an intense light for inspecting pipes and cigars.

On the walls were bottles of single malt scotch and whiskey and framed photographs. A little alcove behind the bar contained a record player, at that moment playing John Coltrane – in fact, the bartender changed the record to Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” right when we walked in.

The room was pretty full when I arrived, with a young lady smoking a cigar to my left and men smoking pipes spread throughout the room, talking and laughing and swapping pipes and tobacco. Next to the woman was a man named Clayton, who jumped up to shake my hand and greet me as soon as I walked in. I must have looked like a cat inspecting an active vacuum cleaner, but Clayton clapped me on the shoulder, pipe in his mouth, and started introducing me to the entire room. I then found out that I had serendipitously arrived at Brennan’s on the very night that the Viking Pipe Club was meeting. What luck! I have, since that time, enjoyed many meeting of the Viking Pipe Club and have been constantly surprised at the very low average age of the members.

After being introduced to a number of people, I reclaimed my Manhattan from the small bar and found a spot on one of the couches. I had been carrying my Junior Archer PipeFolio with me the entire time, so I finally pulled out my Castello 55 and started to load it with Full Virginia Flake.

“Nice fifty-five!” a gentleman across from me said. He then pulled out his own Castello 55 and we exchanged pipes for inspection. This was a totally new experience for me. In all of my time enjoying pipes – which I admit is not that much, but the point remains – I had never been around such a large group where my pipe could be identified by make and model by so many people so easily.

On the table in front of the man, who I later found out was a lawyer, were three tins: Union Square, Escudo, and Full Virginia Flake. This, too, was a new experience for me. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with drug-store tobacco as long as it makes you happy. However, I tend to enjoy the craft blends like those of G. L. Pease and Esoterica, and here, for the first time, were other people who enjoyed the same.

Burning all around me were many fine blends: a Samuel Gawith rope, Night Cap, Full Virginia Flake, Shortcut to Mushrooms, and many more.

While the evening progressed, I started to realize that this was the speakeasy of my day. Here, gentlemen, and a lady, enjoyed their vice of choice away from the judgmental eye of a society that scorns them for their pleasures; here, they enjoyed their pipe and cigar and drink with others who not only put up with those vices, but accepted and embraced and loved those same pleasures with just as much enthusiasm. Up those barely illuminated steps, a group of people found solace and acceptance and friendship in a society that wants nothing more than to see their kind eliminated. Here, they were safe.

I know that I have already written far too much about the Chicago Pipe Show, but that is mostly because it is such a massive gathering that it would take me until the next show to fully explicate the totality of the event. One thing is without question about the show, as I am sure is true about almost all other pipe events: one of the best parts is getting the chance to meet new and incredible people there.

During the banquet on the Friday evening of the show, Lauren, Dustin, and I were joined by five men from Sweden. Two of the men were Martin and Anders of Vollmer & Nilsson, while two others were high end collectors. The fifth man, and the youngest, was named Jonas. He was extremely affable from the moment we met him, leaning across the table to shake hands, tell a joke, and let out a big laugh. From that moment on, we spent a great deal of time with Jonas Rosengren.

I had actually seen him for a couple of moments earlier that Friday at the show’s Smoke and Swap event. I was walking up and down the aisles, snapping as many photos as possible for the several stories that I was to be writing about the show. When I passed Jonas’s small table, I had to stop and look at the few pipes that he had available. Two of them were perfectly spherical, not counting the stem, of course, and refused to let my gaze go anywhere else. I then recalled seeing Jonas the night before, though I had no idea who he was at the time. I saw him smoking one of those spherical pipes and showing it to another pipe maker, who looked at it with a combination of skepticism, awe, and amazement. Now that I had a chance to look closer at these pipes, I understood why.

These pipes are Jonas’s take on the classic calabash. The top part pops out, revealing an expansion chamber inside. Jonas had another calabash design on his table that was in the shape of a volcano, which sold very quickly. The customer let him take a couple of puffs from it once it was bought, as Jonas had never gotten the chance to try it out before. He then leaned over to me and whispered, “This shape smokes even cooler than the ball calabash. I didn’t think that was possible.”

These ball calabashes have been a smash hit, to say the least. Within 72 hours of going live on Quality Briar, all of Jonas’s pipes were sold out and he already had at least two threads about him on pipe forums. I must admit, I couldn’t resist getting one of my own after eyeballing it for the whole weekend at the Chicago Show.

I asked Jonas where he got the idea for this take on the calabash: “From my head, I guess?” Jonas is never one to say anything without a joke and a smile. “I know that some makers have a shape that is their own, like Geiger’s logo pipe, and I wanted something that I haven’t seen before and made the spherical pipe. Then I realized that some similar been made before but not as a calabash so I tried that and I think that I succeed with the challenge.” Read more