From: ????????????????
Subject: Boston stores; age of college students; power tools; related matters

At SIGGRAPH this year I had the chance to check out some Boston smoking
haunts from my youth and am pleased to say they are doing fine.  
They include David P. Ehrlich's, L. J. Peretti, and Leavitt and Pearce.
Note that there are no cute business names.  Note that none of them are
in (my pet peeve) malls.  Note that all three of them
were founded before anyone we ever knew was born.*

Peretti's (Park Circle, at the juncture of the Common and the Public Garden)
is the most traditional in one sense -- it makes no particular attempt to
look old.  It just is.  The selection of tobaccos is complete and includes
many straight tobaccos for blending.  The pipes are varied and reasonable.

Ehrlich's (Tremont Street, between Scollay Square (now Government Center)
and Park Street, next to Erich Fuchs, a fine hobby store) is a little glitz-
ier, with fancy wood and such about.  The owner said that they had trouble
insuring their wonderful collection of old meerschaum, and that is had moved
to "the Tobacco Museum in Nashville."  I'd certainly like to hear more
about that place.

Anyway, I picked up one of their seconds ($12.95) for old time's sake, and
some tobacco, and some cigars of a new brand.  It was a good visit.

Like most tobacco stores, Ehrlich's has had to branch out a bit.  But 
instead of beer steins or statues of sailors, they decided to stock a
few fine wines.  Good for them.

(Smoker's Paradise is, as Norm says, a trifle weird. It has carried
"branching out" about as far as is possible.  The tobacco side
of the store includes very small and exotic-looking pipes, not to mention
Fat Freddy comics.  The other side is a lock shop with ton-sized safes
lying around.  If you have more than a few dozen old Dunhills, you might
need one :-))

Ehrlich's sister store, Leavitt and Pierce in Harvard Square, has changed
even less.  (College students have gotten young, though...)  For many
years _their_ sideline was board games, mostly chess.  They still have
lots of chess stuff, but have acquired a fine stock of go paraphernalia
and literature as well.  It was a good visit.

----

Norm, it was good to hear that you finished your pipe and that you liked
Andre's.  Good luck with finding a used lathe.  Unfortunately, things like
that don't seem to come on the used market until they're all beat up or
their owner dies.  The Unimat(tm) system seems to be of a good size
for pipes, and includes an indexing jig that you could use for the kind
of faceted pipes you described earlier.  With all the right pieces, it
would spend up most of a grand, though.  You can buy lotsa pipes for that.

The one pipe store in Soquel, whose name slips my mind, has a meerschaum
carving kit for sale, though.  You might explore that as a next project.

(Soquel is one town south of Santa Cruz, on the coast 40 miles over the
hill from Silicon Valley.  A nice place to visit, but not worth the haul
just for that store.)

---
*Well, they were founded a long time ago.  I was born in 1944.  My neighbor
at one house, a Mrs. Corcoran, was born in 1855 and lived till 1952.  I
received a watch from her as a posthumous birthday present.  Anyway, Mrs.
Corcoran may have antedated one or more of these stores.

___
I've used up my alloted time without even mentioning my new pipe.
Not the Ehrlich cheapie, which is giving good service, but the other one.
Wait for next time.  Smoke safely; the drought is everywhere.
Keep those contributions coming.

						phil

[ Thanks for all the good info - I've got to look into the Boston pipe
  scene at some point! Looking forward to hearing about your "other" new
  acquisition. -S. ]


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