392. Pete Geek D. H. Billings on the Purposeful Point of a Pointless Pursuit
"My sympathies for the obsolete are climbing higher every day" —Mutemath, Break The Fever Before I was a husband, before I was a father, before I was a nurse, before I worked in mental health, before I'd realized that one day I might lose my hair, I was a pipe smoker. I was an idiot, but at least I had figured that out... barely. It would take me almost a year and discovering the local pipe shop to figure out some of the basics—like what a tamper is, the difference between a tapered and saddle stem, and even the difference between aromatic and non-aromatic tobaccos—but I knew I was a pipe smoker, and I knew that I liked it. I think part of what attracted me to the hobby was its obsoletion. After all, there is no real place for pipe smoking in our society; it's like a typewriter, a relic from days gone by that forces us to slow down—to appreciate things like craftsmanship and old-world charm, to focus in on something that has no purpose outside of itself. But, also like a typewriter, that's kind of the point; it is a weird, unusual hobby that connects current enthusiasts to each other and to those who came before. 2014 Christmas 107: I know this particular style rustication was divisive, but on this particular line I always felt it evokes the look and feel of a pinecone. Dracula System 302: This particular pipe completely changed how I look at the shape due to its perfect hang. Like many pipe smokers from my generation, I was initially attracted to freehands. Their exotic, flowing lines that went with the grain spoke to who I was at the time. After all, I wasn't some stuffy Bertrand Russell meme, I was a millennial pipe smoker! But, as time marched on, I found that I was being drawn towards traditional shapes. Specifically, the shapes that stood out to me the most were the 111 KS and 320 KS from Savinelli, and the 107 and 302 from Peterson. Those last two shapes are chubby, feel great in the hand, smoke like champs, and are distinctly Irish - something that, as an Irish American, means a whole helluva lot to me. (We'll forget that I mentioned Savinelli. This is a Peterson blog, after all.) A recent LEAPS banner I also found that I prefer acrylic stems to vulcanite, funky finishes to traditional ones, flame or random grain to cross-cut grain and birdseye on smooth pipes, gnarly sandblasts with visible scars to more pristine ones, and affordable pipes to ones that cost more than a car payment. In fact, I got so fed up with the "more expensive automatically means better" crowd that I created the Low End & Affordable Pipes Society (or LEAPS for short) on Facebook with its concept being to "celebrate the affordable." Not that I have anything against higher end pipes (hell, one of my dream pipes is a Natural Spigot 107 and the…