Oh, yes! One month left. That’s right. You do know what I’m talking about, right?

The Chicago Pipe Show, of course!

For those of you who have never been to a Chicago Pipe Show — oh, wait, that’s me! — the show is put on by the Chicagoland Pipe Collectors Club. According to its website, the club “started in 1993 with a small group of pipe smokers meeting at local lounges and restaurants for companionship and trading information and ideas about the hobby of pipe collecting. Over time we established meeting venues where we could display our pipes and other smoking items and buy, sell and swap from each other. Oh, and smoke together for an evening. Our first ‘Chicago Show’ was held in 1996 and has steadily grown to one of the largest hobby shows of it’s type in the world.”

In the sixteen years since the start of the Chicago Pipe Show, it has made an incredible name for itself, featuring over 300 different exhibitor tables, lots of different events and speakers, and one of the most incredible assembly of pipes in one place in the entire world. If you can dream it, it is either there or has not been invented yet. (If it is the latter, I would just contact Stephen Downie and he can make it happen!) Read more

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