Category Archives: tobacco

Review of Sam Gawith’s Golden Glow

Golden Glow is a straightforward pressed and aged golden Virginia tobacco.

The tobacco looks beautiful when you open the tin, but that’s about the only exciting part of the experience. It’s an underwhelming tobacco in every other aspect.

The tobacco is difficult to pack, which I don’t mind in tobaccos with big pay-offs, but I allowed myself to be irritated by the fact that I had to shred and crumble this tobacco for what was an extremely mild smoke. The tobacco is pressed to be aged, but is not caked. Instead, it’s in large, loose, almost ribbon-cut sections. Basically, big chunks of leaf. More than once leaf stem has interfered with my packing and smoking.

The flavor is very mild, with a light acridity that is not at all unpleasant. One reviewer I read compared it to roll-your-own cigarettes, which is disappointing, but not unpleasant. It has a lightweight mouthfeel and easy-going smoke.

Some Virginias have a vinegary, Tabasco-ey profile. On the other end are woodsy, firewoody types. Golden Glow is caught in the middle of those two profiles.

So…I smoked the tin, but I don’t anticipate buying any more.

Be Aware of Pipe Abuse

The bottom of a friend’s pipe. He did this twice in a month. The pipes were cheaper basket pipes, but technique was at fault.

Rest your pipes, and do no thing abusive. Instead of packing new bowls he would throw new tobacco on still-burning coals all day long.

He has since repented.

Dom Flemons Smokes A Pipe In New Music Video

I’ve been enjoying the new Carolina Chocolate Drops single,Country Girl, on WNCW these past several weeks. It’s a super fun tune, mixing the best of the worlds the Chocolate Drops move in.

In October of 2010 I interviewed multi-instrumentalist Dom Flemons about his love for pipe smoking. If you haven’t heard the interview and you’re a pipe smoker, you might be interested in his perspective on the “hobby” and how it’s perceived.

The music video for Country Girl, which is a classic country dance party video (which is so fun from the Chocolate Drops) features Mr. Flemons smoking his pipe in the pastoral jam scenes. Represent!

Ice Cube w/ Straight Billiard Pipe

Ice Cube has written lyrics on glass pipes and homegrown “tobacco”, but here we see him looking oh so dignified in his settled middle age, smoking (okay, pretending to smoke) a briar pipe.

Whoever found that pipe for him did  a great job. Strong traditional form, straight lines. A dose of intellectuality without any snobbery. I choose to imagine that Ice Cube spends many an evening out on his porch, enjoying a smoke and pondering his amazing life.

Straight billy.

“How To Smoke A Pipe” Milestone

Three years ago I posted a video entitled “How To Smoke A Pipe”. I was starting a YouTube channel for my bookstore, and figured doing a couple of “how to” videos would be a great way to get a few subscribers. I tossed a few random videos on to the channel. “How To Smoke A Pipe” was actually my second video. The first was a reading of Thomas Merton’s poem “Night Train”. I would never have guessed that my pipe video would have 100,000 hits three years later.

Huzzah for the round number milestone!

It’s true, I’m a pretty big deal on the internet. Still, let’s not lose perspective. After all, videos of babies and cats rack up millions of views in a matter of days; it took three years for this video to reach the milestone it did. But I am pretty proud. If you google “how to smoke a pipe” odds are you’ll see my face smiling back at you on the first page, and that makes me feel good.

The video ushered me into a whole “community” of pipe and tobacco video-makers on YouTube. Only after I made the video did I begin to approach the “expert” status I project in the video, thanks to what I started learning from les autres. Fake it ’til you make it, that’s my motto.

A few months ago a new family showed up at church. The man overheard me talking to another gentleman who makes and repairs pipes. So he joined in on the conversation, said he was interested in picking pipe smoking up. We all talked about pipe smoking for a while then said goodbye.

The next Sunday the guy comes up to me and says, “Dude. I googled ‘how to smoke a pipe’ this week!”

I felt like a rock star.