WHERE TO SMOKE IN SAN FRANCISCO

Recently a cigar smoker complained that there was nowhere to light up. Poor baby. His wife had ordered him to enjoy those nasty smelly things at the back of the yard, and the rainy season has begun. He cannot indulge anywhere near her or the dogs. And others are even worse off, because either they have no yard, or they live in areas which ban smoking anywhere near doors, windows, common spaces, other apartments, shared walls floors ceiling and airwells, or triggered people.

Much of the well-to-do suburban Bay Area is like that.
Basically, anywhere the middle classes live.
It keeps reprehensibles away.

So, for the benefit of liberty-deprived fossils and pipe smokers, here's a list of places where I smoke when I am not at work. I hope it helps.


PRIVATE PLACES FOR PIPE SMOKING

1. My home, when my apartment mate is at work during the day, or fast asleep in her room late at night. Her schedule is a normal Monday to Friday stretch, mine isn't. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I can fume as much as I want, provided I allow four hours for the place to air out before she returns.

2. Chinatown, before or after a late lunch or tea-time snack, afternoons and early evenings, while the apartment airs out. Chinese people have more relatives who smoke than white people or vegans, and are consequently a happier bunch, equitably tempered and tolerant of other humans.
Eat well, then light up outside.

3. Private parks, of which there are two near the pyramid. Plus alleyways in this part of the city, and under awnings in the rainy season when stores close, though warm clothing and an umbrella are necessary.

4. North Beach. Have you ever told an elderly Italian he can't light up?
Try doing that sometime and see where it gets you.


Additionally, for your reference, there is a nice bar in the Financial District where no children or whiny white healthnuts are allowed (other Caucasians are okay), nowhere near a Greens or a Chipotle, or even a healthclub or other modern interpretations of the Christian Women's Temperance League. Yes, they'll charge if you bring your own cigars, but as a pipesmoker that does not apply to me. Flavoured stogies and aromatic pipe tobaccos are not allowed, though. That's for fruit-in-the-heads and wheatgerm freaks, and damned offensive besides. Feh, gottenyu, and gevalt.
They open at noon, for the lunch crowd.

The Occidental Cigar Club
471 Pine Street, SF
415-834-0485

Union Square and the shopping district are almost entirely no go areas. The Mission District, Haight Ashbury, the Castro, Marina and Cow Hollow, and the club scene south of Market are too sodden with hipsters and righteous immigrants from elsewhere in the country to be safe, and because of middle class breeders and their whelps out in the avenues, those places are largely Mau Mau country also. Very much like Marin, Berkeley, and Oakland.
But you can buy plenty of organic non-gmo "food" there.
Assuming, heaven forefend, that you want to.
And pot. Pot is always good.
"Therapeutic!"

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