i remember ashtrays on the arm of every airplane seat!
I was born in the early 90s and remember making fun of the idea that a non-smoking section separated from active smokers in the IHOP by a thin barrier that didn’t even reach the ceiling could do anything.
Boy, leaded gasoline really fucked up whole generations, didn’t it? Oh… We are still dealing with the fallout from that, aren’t we?
I was born in the early 90s and remember making fun of the idea that a non-smoking section separated from active smokers in the IHOP by a thin barrier that didn’t even reach the ceiling could do anything.
Barrier? Most restaurants barely divided the two with an aisle.
Tim Hortons had the smoking box, I’d give a lot to find a photo of it. Basically it was one of the last holdouts.
Minneapolis airport had a smoking room in one of the concourses. It had glass walls and was as gross as you could imagine. I held my breath everytime I walked past
Holy crap that’s a memory unlocked, transferring in Minneapolis and holding my breath as you walk past the smoking area
A smoking area in a restaurant was about as useful as setting up a pissing area in a pool…
You got that backwards. Smoking section was the default state. The non-smoking section was the special.
Dumping water in a piss pool then?
I’m still convinced that lead poisoning was the catalyst for the fall of the Roman empire. And they weren’t even breathing tainted air constantly.
We still use lead pipes for water infrastructure in many areas of the country for fucks sake.
Fun fact: ancient and medieval societies had so much fucking lead around because lead is commonly found in silver ore (galena), usually around 100X more plentiful than the silver and it melts at a lower temperature. So the quest for silver produced huge amounts of lead as a byproduct and people found uses for it like roofs, water pipes and, uh, sweeteners? Jesus Christ, Rome.
Until she left home, my wife didn’t realise that normal non-smoking households don’t have to mop their walls.
Omigod.
We had to do this with our first house. Former tenants were 2 pack a day each with kids in The house. The water cascaded down completely brown.
My wife’s parents used to smoke heavily. She tells me how they had to clean the windows monthly just to be able to see out of them
Gross, even in my chain-smoking days I never smoked indoors.
When I was a kid the old people in my family all chain smoked when we went out to eat. I hated eating with them because of that. I seriously thought my aunt was 15 years older than my mom because of her chain smoking and alcoholism aged her. Found out after she died she was only 3 years older.
What I remember most is coming back from concerts reeking of cigarettes and having to immediately throw my clothes in the wash and take a shower. Going to shows got so much more enjoyable after they banned indoor smoking at clubs.
Ashtrays everywhere. Companies marketing for kids who proudly make massive branded ashtrays, like McDonalds.
I got told to turn my Joe Camel shirt inside out in the 8th grade. I didn’t understand. I was so rad and so was he.
Good lord the times have changed thank goodness.
I don’t get it
I was a child rocking a camel cigarette shirt.
camel Joe was a hero back then
not to be confused with cotten eye Joe
At least the ashtrays can still be used, one of my buddies uses them for coasters and I want to use one for screws when I work on stuff.
Even just going to a restaurant or bar got so much more enjoyable.
When I was maybe 3 (maybe 4 - it’s a little fuzzy), I remember safety pinning a towel around the collar of my shirt so I could be like Superman (we had recently seen it in the theater). The towel also had frayed ends, and ended up in the ashtray along side my mom’s cigarette. I remember my mom panicking trying to get those safety pins off when the towel caught fire. We never were allowed to safety pin towels to our clothes again after that. 😂
Also I love how my kids know the cigarette lighter in the car as a place to plug in a car charger and nothing else.
Cigarette lighter? You mean the finger print eraser and “lesson enforcer”? It was always empty when I grew up, seems like every child needed to learn that it was still hot even after the glow had vanished :)
The bic type lighter where everywhere, including in the coin shelf in cars
I still have a bic lighter, and I quit smoke 10 years ago. Never know when it’ll come in handy.
I also remember when there were cigarette vending machines in restaurants. $1.25/pack and no age verification. 😉
I still have a bic lighter, and I quit smoke 10 years ago. Never know when it’ll come in handy.
We got one from a gas station for lighting birthday candles. I just got a firepit and went to use it to start a fire and realized I’ve never used one before and had to try a lot of times to actually get it to light.
They’re pretty shit for lighting anything that’s not cigarettes or similar. They burn the fuck out of your finger if held any orientation but vertical which makes lighting a campfire annoying. Gotta light the kindling in your hand then place it under the wood once lit.
I thought the cigarette lighter in the car was a rubber stamp and I’d get the icon marked on my hand.
Yes, I burned myself.
Yep. The 80’s were absolutely horrible if you were bothered by smoke. There’s a reason why a lot of us 80’s kids “had asthma”, which magically disappeared when everything went non-smoking in the 90’s.
Smoking was just so pervasive here in Europe in the 80’s, it’s impossible for people to understand if you didn’t experience it first hand.
Like, even teachers smoked. Not in lessons, but if they were out in the playground supervising, or in the staff room, they’d light up.
My headteacher had a pipe. I think it was about the only thing that kept him going, right up until the cancer got him.
Also in lessons. I had a teacher that would open the outside door of the classroom (leading to a garden) to stand there smoking. Not that it helped because we still got a good whiff of the smoke.
This was around 1995 probably.
Mine thought that opening a small window in the class would suffice, and was smoking the whole time.
Part of the reason kids have asthma from that era, myself included, is because our mothers smoked while pregnant.
disappeared when everything went non-smoking in the 90’s.
Funny, in Russia that transition happened around late 00s.
A-and in 2014 entrance to my (then) uni territory still looked like one big stinking cloud of smoke and a barely visible group of students smoking just outside, some coming, some leaving.
Fun fact: instead of cupholders, 1970s cars would proudly advertise the number of ashtrays they had equipped the car with, usually 1 within reach of every seat. This number was equally important as horsepower or price on marketing materials.
Someday when beverages are a thing of the past, people will be aghast that cars ever advertised their drink holders.
Yes, someday we will all ingest nothing but crumbly dry blocks of nutrient fuel, and scoff at those who used to slurp up liquids like a meat mosquito.
Someday when beverages are a thing of the past, people will be aghast that cars ever advertised their drink holders.
But then where will I put my water bottle?
I remember this!
The flip side is that now that cars have zero ashtrays, most smokers just throw the butts out the window.
The same people doing that now would have been doing it then also. It’s so easy to put an ashtray in your car, or just an old soda can, and people used to care a lot less about “littering”.
I have a Trabant, a car from East Germany that was made pretty much as cheap as possible. Still has ash trays front and back.
I have a 2015 car. Imagine my surprise to find that it has front and rear ashtrays. I hadn’t seen an ashtray in a car since probably the early nineties. I remember for a while after the ashtrays stopped being standard that you could order a “smoker’s package” to get them, but I thought that option had long since gone away.
I remember that in pre-school in around 1990 we made clay ashtrays for father’s day. My father did not smoke but they told me to make one anyway…
When I was a kid I used to kick cigarette butts down the aisles at the local grocery store.
I’m a weirdo and I loved the smell, so naturally I became a smoker at the ripe old age of like, 10.
I know how much other people hate the smell so I’m always so paranoid about it.
I’m about to be a stay at home dad for a bit. I’m quitting to kill the expense. Wish me luck!
Good luck! The journey may be tough but I believe you will make it.
Good luck! If it’s ok, I can DM you to see how it’s going? Quitting smoking/nicotine felt like the hardest thing I ever did, but I’m so glad that I did it. I’m still kind of surprised at myself for having succeeded after so so so many failed attempts.
But if you keep trying, one day it just works.
Good luck to you!
I quit like 20 times, and what finally worked was an ayahuasca ceremony.
Those things had me in their grip hard
I never became a smoker but I too love that smell.
That smell kinda helps me relax too, depending on the type, I guess. I use (vanilla) incense because it has a similar effect for me. Though it doesn’t smell quite the same.
I don’t know if it’s nostalgic for me or what. Funny thing is, I hate, hate, hate, the smell of incense (or anything else burning for that matter). My daughter started burning them recently and I couldn’t stand it.
A lot of smells that most people enjoy make me sick or give me a headache. The smell of matches burning and cigarettes though, I’ve always loved that. Maybe it makes me feel like a little kid or something. Who knows?
That’s interesting.
What do you think of the smell of car exhaust fumes?
Gives me a headache and I can’t stand it haha.
I guess we are not the same then. But it was interesting to find someone else who likes the smell of cigarettes.
Good luck! I quit cold turkey after 20 years of smoking, and I started just like you at around 10 or so. The year after I quit was a bit weird, it was hard the first month or so, and got substantially better every day. What helped me not to start again, is that feeling that it might be weird now, but if I start again, that would mean all those terrible first days were for nothing, and I hate suffering with no purpose.
After a year I randomly realised that not only I don’t want to smoke anymore, the thought alone is a bit revolting, and that’s when I knew that I’m finally done with the whole shit. Gained a bit of weight though, nicotine is a wonderful appetite suppressor, but never regretted it.Quit to not harm your child 🤷♂️
This is, indeed, an even better reason to quit.
My parents did that and stopped smoking when i was born.
I started smoking when i was 17 …
More money, you’ll live longer and so have more time to spend with kiddo, and hopefully they’ll never have to post on one of these threads complaining about the smell at dad’s house!
…my high school phased out the student smoking area starting my freshman year in 1986: the older classes still had access, but not mine, and by 1990 it was fully decommissioned into a landscaped atrium…
…when i worked as an apartment groundskeeper in the early nineties, my first two hours of every day were spent cleaning cigarette butts throughout the complex…
Did the kids just smoke somewhere else?
I don’t think we had an official smoking section but there was always a big crowd in the parking lot (early 2000s)
…i know people smoked off-campus but i’m pretty sure it was verbotten anywhere on-campus for students my age and younger: i was resolutely accosted by faculty for wielding a convincing fake cigarette in the parking lot after-hours…
I also made one. But mainly out of choice. My parents didn’t even smoke. I guess I was weird that way.
I still regularly marvel about how great it is not to have to quarantine my clothes and have a shower as soon as I come home from the pub or restaurant, and it has been 20 years since it was banned around here.
I went on a road trip a few years ago and we went to a bar… somewhere along the mid Atlantic. Maybe Virginia or one of the Carolinas, and people are smoking at the bar, and I felt like I had just landed on a different planet. Like… I had almost forgotten people still smoked at all, let alone a dozen people puffing away in a small barroom.
We got pretty drunk and had a good time though. But then when I took a shower in the morning, it was like all that smoke residue was oozing out of my pores and hair. Being hungover and having a steamy, cigarette-smelling shower did not start the day off well.
Same. I’m so sensitive to smoke I will run away from anyone smoking in my vicinity even outdoors.
sometimes though, the bars smell like piss. i think id take cig smoke smell to piss smell
If your bar smells like piss, maybe it’s time to go to a different bar.
Your beer tastes like piss
That’s cos we piiiisss in it
Idk… Depends on how cheap the drinks are.
I’m old enough to remember when smoking was banned in bars/clubs in the UK. It went from a musky smell to body odour, and it took practically all venues by surprise.
Now, I’m so glad that indoors smoking was banned. Looking back, it was fucking gross, and while sadly lots of people now vape indoors it was a huge improvement to basically be able to actually breathe in those places.
I came to Ireland when they just banned smoking and it was still legal in Germany. The first time I walked into a pub and ran against a solid wall of sweat and beer farts I missed smoking.
Seriously this! I grew up poor so going to restaurants was a 2-3 times a year thing. And as a kid, going to one meant non-smoking area, where the nasty ass smoke would still waffle over. And my eyes would get irritated, id get really sick and cough nonstop for days.
It didn’t even notice the coincidence until it happened to me at a friend’s house in college who was also a heavy smoker.
In the US, I lived in a state that went non-smoking and later a city in another state that did. B.O. mixed with mold and a hint of piss is what it ended up smelling like.
Fuck smoking.
My pack has no vagine or anoose.
For real though, about to quit. Wish me luck, boys!
Best of luck! It’s a hard thing to do.
Good luck!
Having quit this year (after a long time of cutting down/vaping etc) I think my main advice to you will be this:
If you relapse it isn’t the end of the world, it’s just a bump in the road. Don’t be too hard on yourself, it’s not easy.
Also, keep a pack of smokes or a vape or snus or whatever you use on you for a week or so after you stop using them, so when you feel your pockets you don’t panic when you’re missing something, which will set off the response to “I need nicotine”
Good luck!
Fuck luck. Do, or do not.
Aww man you’re gonna make me want to start again.
Drink smoking, fresh air smoking, adderall smoking, coffee smoking, drive smoking, fuck smoking.
dont forget after a good meal smoking and after sex smoking
Don’t tempt me with that evil, Satan!
😂😬
I remember bars so blue with smoke you couldn’t see across the room.
I know one of those bars. When my city banned indoor smoking back in the mid-aughts, that bar still reeked of cigarettes for years. It was just coming out of the walls
I worked for an Internet startup in the mid '90s that was so desperate for venture capital funding we were sucking up to RJR Nabisco (who were rolling in so much cigarette money that they actually started a venture capital division just to do something with the cash). One day some of their executives showed up and they spent the entire day chain-smoking in our conference room (our building was a non-smoking building). The smoke was so thick everywhere you couldn’t even see to the end of the hallway. I made a point of coughing loudly and my bosses sent me home before the end of the day. In the end we got nothing from them.
It’s a warm memory because most of those bastards have probably died a miserable death by now.
I wonder how much that affected the life expectancy of those kids
Quite a lot. Most mothers smoked while pregnant and gave their kids asthma as a result, and ADHD too. That’s why you see more of that.
My mom quit smoking before pregnancy, and dad never smoked. Still neurodivergent. I’ve not personally heard of a causal link there before.
Thanks, but, uh:
CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that the association between maternal smoking during pregnancy and offspring ADHD is not due to causal intrauterine effects, but reflects unmeasured confounding.
ADHD too. That’s why you see more of that.
Citation needed!
Invalid URL?
If you want to experience this sensation today, travel to Russia or Japan. Yes, Japan. People don’t talk enough about how prevalent smoking still is over there. As a non-smoker, the number of restaurants or cafes I could go to without getting sick was diminished by about 90%.
Was in Tokyo and Osaka last year.
Tokyo was gorgeous. No smokers in sight at most locations. Some vapers, but whatever.
Osaka was the complete opposite. I had to find outdoor restaurants. The gaming bar I hung out had a smoking corner near the bathroom. Lots of cigarette butts all over the city.
Also:
- Any vacation spot with a lot of Russians, like Cuba. Nobody wants to tell a drunk Russian to put out their cigarette indoors, and smoking is allowed in open spaces (even covered spaces like open lobbies)
- Rome. Igneous rock is very porous, and everything ancient is made of it. Decades after smoking is banned there, the stonework will still be leaking the fumes out of its pores. The smoke was inescapable when I toured 15 years ago despite it being banned in indoor public places, and it will be inescapable 15 years from now.
Nobody wants to tell a drunk Russian to put out their cigarette indoors
As someone living in Russia, the danger is overestimated. The problem is mainly with them not understanding you. Possibly accidentally starting a fire when fulfilling your request.
That’s probably true. Every drunk non-smoking russian I’ve met was just happy to make a new friend.
Dude, you don’t get it. Nobody wants to hear from Russia anymore.
Wow.
Dude, Russia still has killed less people than USA in the last 20 years.
Among groups of people nobody wants to hear from anymore yours is higher.
Do you think it’s some kind of competition? Do you think that as long as you can find someone else who else did a bad thing yours is suddenly OK?
For the purpose of this branch of conversation - yeah.
I’d really like to find something like Voinarovsky test, only in English. It’s a humorous way to test one’s ability to reason. Only the first time counts naturally, sane person’s result would be 26/30 minimum, it’s not hard. I think most of commenters here would struggle to reach 15/30.
I’ve never set foot in the US. So shut up and go get ass-fucked every day in your hellhole soon to be glass joke of a country, Kümmel.
Oh, a German. I see why you are so anxious. Condolences.
So I literally just touched down on a flight from Tokyo (haven’t gotten off the plane yet) and actually not really. They’re more like America in the 00s. A ton of smokers and everywhere has to say you can’t smoke there, but you can’t smoke anywhere anymore. It’s definitely weird that they have to say no smoking on the Shinkansen, but it doesn’t smell like smoke
Tokyo is the exception not the rule. Go anywhere else and you’ll start seeing a lot more smokers.
Oh was the city I spent most of my trip in that was a multi hour Shinkansen ride from Tokyo also an exception and not the rule? Because I spent three days in a factory there and dealing with Japanese engineers and factory workers and it’s the way I describe. Maybe Osaka or Kyoto are different but they’re closer to where I was than Tokyo is. For all I know Hokkaido is a perpetual cloud of cigarette smoke. But I hit up two factories in two cities that aren’t Tokyo and my experience holds. Tokyo is just where my airport was.
Yes. That’s like saying everyone in America acts like New Yorkers.
Ok but if I drove to and spent time in by Albany and Milwaukee after flying into NYC and found that there seemed to be major social changes that had happened that notably had happened in other places first I think I’d be reasonable in telling people that America seems like it might’ve undergone some cultural shifts or at least it appears to be in the process of it.
So yeah believe me or don’t. Maybe I hit relatively low smoking areas. I know executives in Japan at least in my company are still stereotyped as absolute chimneys. But when I was in three cities in Japan over the past week I didn’t see or smell much tobacco use at least not a huge amount more than in America. The country certainly couldn’t be compared to America over 20 years ago, I remember by eyes burning from the smoke at restaurants back then and my lungs are terrible these days.
So to stick with factual statements: in the three cities I was in I witnessed not many people actually smoking, enough “no smoking” signs and announcements to find it notable, a couple of cigarette vending machines, two smoking floors in one hotel to 5 non smoking (no other hotel specified in the elevator, but none of my rooms smelled of smoke), no indoor smoking sections in any restaurant or public transit I took, and none of the people I spent days collaborating with took smoke breaks. And I don’t recall seeing anyone smoking while waiting for a train. I hypothesize that Japan has recently moved towards the anti smoking reforms that were effective in other countries, but I may have just been in the wrong places to see it or missed it. I’m just some lady on the internet, for all you know I’m lying.
Guys, found us another white knight weeaboo who will raise to any occasion to use his two week guided tour through Japan as a shield against even the slightest mention of something that isn’t perfect in his utopia, Japan.
Sure you got me. I’m an absolute weeb and white knight who took a vacation and was excited to get into an argument about it. Definitely not someone who was there on business and actually pretty excited to see much less smoking than I’d expected and was honestly just happy to get her first out of country experience even if she had to spend the majority of the time working and didn’t get to really see anything because the factories are in bumfuck nowhere.
I will admit, I was guided by an engineer I work with who happens to be from there. You see I never bothered to learn Japanese because I don’t really have a reason to learn except for business. That’s a guided tour right? Business meetings, factory tours, going out to dinner where my coworkers and business contacts suggested, and occasionally wandering around near the hotels?
Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m just avidly defending a country that I’m appalled by a lot of their actions including in present day because some people really love their media. Or I just thought you were wrong, was met with hostility and jackassery, and presented my arguments for why I think this country may be experiencing a cultural shift.
You on the other hand, should go take up chain smoking
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Check out my comment! Tokyo is really different. When you visit Shibuya or Shinjuku, you’ll start to see more smokers. Kabukichō district is also where you’ll find smokers (and other underworld-y stuff)
Ok I’m not going to say where I was, but you missed the part where Tokyo was a pass through because it’s where Americans fly in and out. I landed and promptly took a series of trains to a small city west of Nagoya. I also spent a day in a factory in a place that could very well be or not be considered Tokyo because I’m not used to megapolises, incidentally though the hotel there is where I saw more smoking than near Nagoya.
Probably you didn’t get the full picture because you only went to Maid cafes and the Akihabara child porn stores.
What is wrong with you?
Bullseye!!
I watch Midnight Diner and they all smoke on there.
I live in Russia, it’s better than 10 years ago. But this thread did give me memories.
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I didn’t say I’m a smoker from Russia.
Taking an international flight where half the plane is smoking. Those were good times, especially in Greece where they loved smoking even more than the Americans.
I read a lot of Southeast Asian countries still smoke everywhere. And I can’t imagine being cramped in a small area with a nasty ass smoker without flipping out.
Actually, air was cleaner back when smoking was allowed on flights. They had to completely recycle all the air in the cabin where nowadays it’s all a closed system. Every fart and cough, every armpit outgassing and nasty crotch reek is with you from takeoff to touchdown now.
Most of you won’t believe me so I suggest you look it up yourself before downvoting (which you won’t).
Oh good I’m still youngish I AM old enough that I remember being really excited when the headlines on our newspaper said smoking was banned indoors! Not even a “smoking” section in a restaurant anymore unless it was patio/outdoors maybe
I remember huge arguments about whether or not smoking was allowed during team meetings. Not in your office, that was presumed just fine.
The day they banned smoking in bars/restaurants was glorious. No more trying to decide if it was OK to wear something that required dry cleaning.
