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.
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.
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
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.
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. 😉
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.
Part of the reason kids have asthma from that era, myself included, is because our mothers smoked while pregnant.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fuck smoking.
My pack has no vagine or anoose.
For real though, about to quit. Wish me luck, boys!
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.
If you want to experience this sensation today, travel to Russia or Japan. Yes, Japan.
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.
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.
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 moved to São Paulo recently and discovered that people here still smoke on clubs. Is disgusting coming back from party with the hair and clothes smelling like cigarettes.
My wife is from an Eastern European country, and whenever we visit her folks I have a similar experience. Every single restaurant reeks of smoke, and there is apparently no political appetite to change that.
I remember a beloved fish-and-chips restaurant in the area where I grew up that had, in addition to fun cartoons of a clam introducing various dishes, smoke stains all along the edge of the ceiling. It was that bad... funny to think that it was soon after smoking was banned that the place closed down--maybe it never actually tasted good but nobody could tell??
So the grocery store in my little town growing up was the last hold out. They had ash trays in their buggies until they legally couldn't, then kept the buggies for years after.
"Smoking or non?"
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