IT'S ALL IN THE IMAGE

The picture of the modern-day pipe-smoker is a man with a big but well-maintained beard, perfectly coiffed hair (touch of gel), an assertive mustache (slightly waxed), contemplatively puffing a full bent pipe. He is wearing a heavy dark suit that is slightly retro, looking assertively darned hip. A serious man. Perhaps with a martini.
He is both posed and poised.

A man who spends fifty to a hundred bucks every fortnight at a place with old fashioned barber's chairs, a tile floor, and straight razors on the premises. Which smells like good leather oil because there is a shoe shiner on the premises.
Plus faint hints of lavender and sandal wood.
Oh, the masculinity!


The nineteen fifties pipe smoker was clean-shaven and had a straight pipe.
At six o'clock A.M. he was scooping coffee into the machine.
Already fully dressed for the office.
Crisp white shirt.
A tie.

At present I'm wearing dark slacks, a plaid shirt over a tee-shirt with an image of an angry office lady red panda (Aggretsuko), and a grey sweater. The apartment smells of coffee and aged Virginias. I trimmed my beard and mustache yesterday and look somewhat evil.

I am not posed and poised. I am rumpled.


The pipe is a straight billiard shape 60 sandblast ('shellbriar'), group 4. It does not look like anything Gandalf, a hobbit, or a serious author would puff. It's something an engineer for the defense industries, or a junior electrician, a race car driver, or Clark Gable might smoke.

My old draughting equipment -- drop bow pens, compasses, proportional dividers, French curves, etcetera -- is within reach in the bookshelf behind me, and I'm wondering where my architect's scale is. I know where the mechanical pencils are. None of these have been used in over thirty years because CAD took over. Instead of up to five blue print machines (that smell!), over a hundred draughtsmen and twenty plus experienced engineers, you can get everything done with one engineer, a couple of trained monkeys, and a computer.

White shirts and ties are also things of the past.


Later today, after my lunch, I will look like your disreputable uncle Bertie having a smoke in a quiet alley in Chinatown or North Beach, safely away from sensitive souls, earthmothers, and Karens, all objecting to the smell, or that hipster with the full beard and polished hair who wants to know the distinguished provenance of my wherewithalls.

I do not own hair creme or aftershave.

Might be scowling.



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