Old pipe shops from the 60's and 70's

[BriarPipeNYC]

I grew up in New York City. I enjoyed, as a young teen (early 1960s), shopping in and around the old Nassau Street/Wall Street area, and loved to walk around and shop in all the WW-2 Army Surplus stores, and job-lot hardware stores that were located right where the World Trade Center Towers were standing. All those old stores were razed when they built the Trade Towers. Many millions of bankers, lawyers, business execs worked in the Wall Street area, and thousands smoked pipes. All, poured into the streets for a quick lunch, and the streets teemed with people, all rushing to get somewhere. One of my greatest pleasures was to walk behind some well-suited man, or men, who was smoking a pipe. Ahhhh....that aroma.

Anyway, I used to love going into the old fashioned tobacconist shops, and there were plenty of them, and also smoke shops like Wally Frank and Barclay Rex, both sold pipes, cigars, and tobaccos. My absolute favorite place to visit was the pipe "hospital" on Chambers St. or, on Maiden Lane. I can't remember the exact location...it was so long ago. So, the old pipe "hospital" was nothing but a tiny wooden shanty/shack roughly measuring approx. 5 ft X 8 ft....no bigger than a backyard storage shed. In it was a lathe, that was set up for pipe repairs, and various other hand tools, sanders, buffing wheels, etc. When some Wall St. exec sat on his pipe and broke the stem, he'd bring that pipe, for repairs, to the "pipe hospital"- at lunch-time and pick up the expertly repaired pipe, at quitting time. Sometimes pipes were polished, reamed out, stems buffed....all while you waited, and for a small fee. Hundreds of repaired/refurbished pipes, with their owner's names written on tags, hung from the ceiling, waiting to be claimed and reunited with their owner. Wally Frank had a pipe repairman, who set up his shop, and worked in the front window. Passers -by could stop and watch as a pipe was worked on. Wally Frank, Barkley Rex too, also had a whole wall of mixed and custom blends, and blending tobaccos, all stored in large glass apothecary jars. The aroma wafting around in these stores made my head swim. I wasn't yet old enough to smoke a pipe....that came when I got permission, to smoke a pipe when I turned 16 yrs. old...but I knew even as a boy, I wanted to smoke a pipe. I loved buying hot dogs at Nedick's and drinking that "heavenly coffee" at Choc Full O' Nuts. A 12 year old boy ordering and drinking black unsweetened coffee, with two cinnamon-sugar donuts, raised the eyebrow of many a sassy waitress. I always joked around with them, wise-cracked with them too, if necessary, and always left them a good tip. Most got to know me by name. Those NYC eateries are also, defunct, and long gone. As are most things of my youth.

Those days are long gone, and hardly anyone, especially all the younger pipe smokers, even know or could imagine what NYC was like when pipe smoking was still in vogue. Many young men, college students, teachers, professors, and professional business men, smoked pipes. Pipe smoking, and at least trying to smoke a pipe... was almost a given. Millions smoked cigars, and cigarettes, and it was very common to smell the stench of a bad cigar as you choked down a dirty-water hot dog...with mustard and onions, of course. In today's fascist, PC climate... it's almost a crime to even THINK about tobacco!

I miss the days of my youth when everything was brand new, and living it was an exciting adventure. Back then, many pre-teen kids were quite independent and learned to fend for themselves if problems showed up. I started traveling on the NYC trains, and shopping in Manhattan when I was 12-13 yrs old. I learned, real fast, to become responsible. The whiny, entitled Millennials and the half-girl snowflakes of today wouldn't have a chance, back in those days.

[hemlocktree]

wow! nice!!!!

there is a book titled something like last child in the woods which deals with today's society and the fact that we are so out of touch with nature and woods and creative play time. the newer generations have lost so much. I personally have always tried to stay in tune with the outside via dogs, gardens and planting hundreds of trees here in what some special ops guys that came for training call my compound. cut wood for heat amd try to not get caught up with modern society - i tell people i belong living 200 yrs ago. i refuse to have a smart phone and do not text. i run multiple laptops with linux but that is where i stay.

yes the old days and times and places are so long gone now. woods i roamed were sold to developers for houses and buildings etc. all around me the country is long gone. i am stuck here till i die trying keep my plot of mother earth happening. the old 2 tobacco shops i spent a lot of time in are.... well - a memory.

[Tsal]

I grew up with a corner store literally on my corner that sold carded pipes(which were probably Kaywoodie and Dr. Grabow) and tobacco and everything else in-between...I was too young to notice but I can still remember going in there everyday to buy something for my parents. Back then they still sold loose candy by the handful for a nickel and cigs were 70 cents.
They made the best potato salad!

[Kevin Keith]

Yeah.. the good old days of 60's and 70's tobacconists.. I remember... wait, I as born in 1983.. nevermind.

LOL

[arturo7]

That's a high rent mall. I'm amazed they are able to hang on.

[Maynard]

The Smoke Shop in the Cookville Mall back in the late 70s. Jars full of tobacco and a wall full of Savinellis Petersons etc and a large basket of basket pipes, rejects and second hands and I still have a few of those pipes. The mall is still there as a giant flea market.

[kxg]

Loved the Tinderbox shops, made my trips to the mall with my wife bearable. When I was in collage at K-State, several decades ago, there was a local "Town Crier" shop. One of my four "original" pipes came from there, a small straight apple briar. As far as I know, Louisiana is the only place with Town Crier shops still operating; but of course I could be wrong. I did run across a neat lightly smoked Tinderbox Milano, made in Italy, straight tall Bulldog on ebay a while back. Snapped it up for cheap and it is a great smoking pipe.

[Longshanks]

I was excited to find out a couple guys partnered together to keep the Bowling Green Pipe & Cigar alive. It's located in the old part of Bowling Green, but lately it appears they're struggling with keeping it up.

About 5 years ago I stopped in and it was a cozy little setup. They had a big screen TV, pretty good cigar selection, limited but decent pipe tobacco selection, a few odd basket pipes, local microbrew on tap, a cozy lounge-like atmosphere, pipe and cigar magazines on the coffee table, comfortable "manly" leather couches and love seats, and I believe there was even a bookshelf you could explore for interesting books to read. They had a pool table in the back room, though it looked more like a storage area than a billiard room. I figured if anything, they'd fix that billiard room up to increase seating and maybe increase their pipes and pipe tobacco selection.

Well that didn't happen. They did improve the alcohol offering with liquor, added to the pipe tobacco selection slightly, and then backslid by ruining the ambiance. Maybe the bar is making them more money?? I don't know, but the comfy leather furniture was replaced by bar stools and hard wood chairs seated around short tables the size of card tables. Heck, even the bookshelf and TV are gone. You can't sit back and enjoy a smoke and watch the news or weather or read a book. It doesn't even feel like a pipe & cigar shop anymore. In fact, my first impression is that it's setup like a generic mall coffee shop, so it's kind of cold and plain and boring. Imagine four decent sized men sitting around a tiny wooden card table. Blah. Oh, and the billiard room looks exactly the same.

Service was not 'unkind' but it was also not warm and welcoming, either. I noticed they enlarged their briar pipe offering and made a neat looking cabinet to showcase them. Unfortunately, it was so dark the day I went in that I could hardly see and appreciate the pipes. So I asked the partner working and he told me they had LED lighting running off a battery but the cord was cut or the battery was dead, or something. Whatever the case, he wasn't interested in fixing it so we could see his offering.

Later that week I walked in and the other partner served up a beverage, took my money and retreated to his laptop without much conversation. I sat there alone sipping my drink, burning a bowl and wondering what I was doing there. LOL The place was very quiet and empty and blah. I can't imagine business is really that good until Friday/Saturday night when the bar hoppers visit.

[Bamarick]

I was excited to find out a couple guys partnered together to keep the Bowling Green Pipe & Cigar alive. It's located in the old part of Bowling Green, but lately it appears they're struggling with keeping it up.

About 5 years ago I stopped in and it was a cozy little setup. They had a big screen TV, pretty good cigar selection, limited but decent pipe tobacco selection, a few odd basket pipes, local microbrew on tap, a cozy lounge-like atmosphere, pipe and cigar magazines on the coffee table, comfortable "manly" leather couches and love seats, and I believe there was even a bookshelf you could explore for interesting books to read. They had a pool table in the back room, though it looked more like a storage area than a billiard room. I figured if anything, they'd fix that billiard room up to increase seating and maybe increase their pipes and pipe tobacco selection.

Well that didn't happen. They did improve the alcohol offering with liquor, added to the pipe tobacco selection slightly, and then backslid by ruining the ambiance. Maybe the bar is making them more money?? I don't know, but the comfy leather furniture was replaced by bar stools and hard wood chairs seated around short tables the size of card tables. Heck, even the bookshelf and TV are gone. You can't sit back and enjoy a smoke and watch the news or weather or read a book. It doesn't even feel like a pipe & cigar shop anymore. In fact, my first impression is that it's setup like a generic mall coffee shop, so it's kind of cold and plain and boring. Imagine four decent sized men sitting around a tiny wooden card table. Blah. Oh, and the billiard room looks exactly the same.

Service was not 'unkind' but it was also not warm and welcoming, either. I noticed they enlarged their briar pipe offering and made a neat looking cabinet to showcase them. Unfortunately, it was so dark the day I went in that I could hardly see and appreciate the pipes. So I asked the partner working and he told me they had LED lighting running off a battery but the cord was cut or the battery was dead, or something. Whatever the case, he wasn't interested in fixing it so we could see his offering.

Later that week I walked in and the other partner served up a beverage, took my money and retreated to his laptop without much conversation. I sat there alone sipping my drink, burning a bowl and wondering what I was doing there. LOL The place was very quiet and empty and blah. I can't imagine business is really that good until Friday/Saturday night when the bar hoppers visit.

Thanks for your review of the shop. My wife & I are going to be up your way within the next 2 weeks or so and on my way I was going to stop by to check them out. Now I think I'll just pass on by.

[Longshanks]

I was excited to find out a couple guys partnered together to keep the Bowling Green Pipe & Cigar alive. It's located in the old part of Bowling Green, but lately it appears they're struggling with keeping it up.

About 5 years ago I stopped in and it was a cozy little setup. They had a big screen TV, pretty good cigar selection, limited but decent pipe tobacco selection, a few odd basket pipes, local microbrew on tap, a cozy lounge-like atmosphere, pipe and cigar magazines on the coffee table, comfortable "manly" leather couches and love seats, and I believe there was even a bookshelf you could explore for interesting books to read. They had a pool table in the back room, though it looked more like a storage area than a billiard room. I figured if anything, they'd fix that billiard room up to increase seating and maybe increase their pipes and pipe tobacco selection.

Well that didn't happen. They did improve the alcohol offering with liquor, added to the pipe tobacco selection slightly, and then backslid by ruining the ambiance. Maybe the bar is making them more money?? I don't know, but the comfy leather furniture was replaced by bar stools and hard wood chairs seated around short tables the size of card tables. Heck, even the bookshelf and TV are gone. You can't sit back and enjoy a smoke and watch the news or weather or read a book. It doesn't even feel like a pipe & cigar shop anymore. In fact, my first impression is that it's setup like a generic mall coffee shop, so it's kind of cold and plain and boring. Imagine four decent sized men sitting around a tiny wooden card table. Blah. Oh, and the billiard room looks exactly the same.

Service was not 'unkind' but it was also not warm and welcoming, either. I noticed they enlarged their briar pipe offering and made a neat looking cabinet to showcase them. Unfortunately, it was so dark the day I went in that I could hardly see and appreciate the pipes. So I asked the partner working and he told me they had LED lighting running off a battery but the cord was cut or the battery was dead, or something. Whatever the case, he wasn't interested in fixing it so we could see his offering.

Later that week I walked in and the other partner served up a beverage, took my money and retreated to his laptop without much conversation. I sat there alone sipping my drink, burning a bowl and wondering what I was doing there. LOL The place was very quiet and empty and blah. I can't imagine business is really that good until Friday/Saturday night when the bar hoppers visit.

Thanks for your review of the shop. My wife & I are going to be up your way within the next 2 weeks or so and on my way I was going to stop by to check them out. Now I think I'll just pass on by.

Well, I don't want to run off their business, but I'd like to see them create an ambiance that brings pipers back in. It's worth a walk in, if nothing else. Plus, they've got the Esoteric hidden on the top shelf if you're into that flavor.