Chicago, part 4.

We arrived at the strong-coffee-party room, Brother David's room (I've considered obfuscating his name, on the assumption that Brother David's room is like Fight Club, even though nobody told me as much, but I am torn over motivations. There's a better than fair chance that a year from now, if/when we head out to Chicago again, I'll need this blog posting to remember everyone's names, so pseudonyms won't help (I can get away with 'hops' as presumably I'll still remember her name, and I don't call her by name anyhow). At the same time, I don't really want to out people that prefer to remain anonymous. I think my goals harmonize around the fact that nobody actually reads this crap but me), and I could see Gabriele inside, and a couple other people I didn't recognize. Before I got far, Brother David asked if I'd brought a pipe. For some reason, I hadn't.

Actually, the reason was probably that I'd figured I was done with smoking for the day. Despite my enthusiasm to attend a pipe show, I'm really not much of a smoker. I try to keep it down to 4-6 bowls a week, a number chosen arbitrarily to preserve my health, and I prefer to smoke outdoors, because indoors the secondhand smoke of others interferes with the appreciation of my own tobacco.

Anyhow, I admitted I didn't have one with me, and Brother David shooed me out to go get one, so I went back to the room and picked up my new Dal Fiume. By the time I got back, the maker had left, but there were still plenty of others there. I was introduced to Jeff, who shared some Va/per labeled "Ashton Old London Pebblecut OLD". I'd actually been having a pretty poor time on the technical side of smoking during the show. This was a partially rubbed out flake, and the FVF I got the day before from Gabriele was a flake. I like to rub out my flakes (aka crumble them into smaller bits). Actually, I don't just "like to" rub them out, that's simply what I do, and the only way I currently know how to smoke flakes (there are other methods that I am aware of but not experienced with, and the pipe show was not the place to practice). At home I rub out my flakes onto a piece of paper or a loaf pan. At the show, I had my lap, which is certainly not a good container, especially for gifted "prize" tobacco. So I didn't rub it out very well, and thus it didn't smoke very well. I got the gist of it, more or less, but had a whole lot of relights and not a lot of reward. I've come to accept this as the result of group-smoking, although I suppose that with more practice, group-smoking could become as relaxed and relaxing as solo. In any case, I was really there to socialize, which I did.

The guy next to me introduced himself as Mike, and I remarked that it was a good name, and probably the only one from the whole show that I'd remember. He didn't say much, and he kept pulling Castellos out of his pipe bag. After I got home, I realized that this was the noted Castello collector of the smoking forum. I hadn't made the connection at the time.

There were also two guys that worked as corrections officers and were overjoyed to find another federale (hops) to speak to about beating people up or locking people down or whatever it is that federales do. I was laughing on the inside as one of them admitted that he normally doesn't reveal what he does because a lot of people have negative preconceived notions about his job. He was speaking to hops, but I was right next to her, and I sure do have a lot of those negative preconceived notions, as the attentive reader may have inferred from my rude comments above.

The guys were friendly, of course, and outside of work one of them made pipes (I didn't catch his name, alas) and the other was an avid bicycle tourist. It was great to meet someone whose hobbies intersected so well with ours, and we talked of cycling and piping and pipes and bicycles. I could talk all day about pipes and bicycles, and sometimes I do.

The whole time, Paolo Becker was leaning against the wall behind us, in a very Italian style, speaking with a large, Nordic looking young (well, older than me, older than Lasse, but younger than, say, Lars Ivarsson or Paolo Becker) pipemaker whose name I never caught. I didn't really have anything to say to Paolo and contented myself with the fact that I was in a room with Paolo Becker and I wasn't being forcibly ejected.

Periodically, whenever the conversation turned back to pipes, Mike would whip out another Castello to show everyone. It really should have been obvious who he was. He used the adjective "Castello-y" at one point, too.

Brother David brought out his coffee, finally, after enlisting me earlier on to provide some muscle for the brewing process (he used an Italian stovetop espresso maker, which requires some twisting to seal). It was, as advertised, very sweet, and very strong. I drank some to be polite, and it was good, but we had warned Brother David hours earlier that we couldn't drink much, or really any, if we wanted to sleep that night. Since the party typically ran to 4AM, he didn't see the problem. Since I was already time-hosed by the travel and needed to be up early to get to Chicago by 9 the next day, in the middle of road construction season, I saw a problem. Still, I had a little, and we managed to get some sleep that night.

The other two guys, whose names I really can't recall, began to talk with each other, and hops excused herself to visit the loo. Mike left, and I got up and wandered over to the other part of the room, where Dr. Fred J-polish-witz, a very nice guy whose name I (of course) do not remember fully, was sitting, chatting with Uhle and Marty Pulvers. I'd met Fred J earlier while admiring Fred Hanna's collection of straight grains. Fred J had made a humorous comment of the sort that pipemen make about other pipemen's collections (everyone says of Uhle's 50+ Bo Nordhs, "it's a good start", har har har), something along the lines of "they're nice, but they'd be nicer if the grains were straight". Fred and I talked a lot about life, smoking, getting older, health, and, of course, everyone's favorite topic, tobacco taxes and laws.

Uhle was smoking the same Bo I'd seen earlier (full and shameful disclosure: I don't like it myself. Perhaps it smokes incredibly. But for my tastes, it has two fatal problems: first, it's a full black stain, which I don't like, and second, the sand blast is too smooth. There aren't any interesting pits or ridges. That's my who-cares-what-toad-thinks review of the only Bo Nordh I've ever seen being smoked. I could tell it gave Uhle great joy to smoke it, so I'm glad it's in his collection and not mine!). He gave me a couple of tips on how to light a pipe, and lord help me, I've forgotten them, but I think they were things I already knew and was already doing. Or at least I hope I'm already doing them. Say what I will about one particular pipe, the guy owns 50 of the world's most valuable pipes, I figure he's someone who knows how not to ruin a pipe when smoking it.

The conversation turned to the Stanwell factory. Lasse had told us he got his wood from Stanwell, but can't anymore because the Danish factory had closed. I asked why everyone supposes the quality would suffer, since Castellos are made in Italty to high standards, and what's the point of moving a factory and then letting the brand go to shit?

Marty said that the folks who bought Stanwell consider them a nuisance to their bottom line. They're a cigarette conglomerate, and cigarettes are commoditized and very predictable. You make them, ship them to stores, and someone comes in and buys them. You don't need salesmen, people willing to spend a half hour selling an item to a buyer, fancy websites, etc. Contrasted to selling a pipe, it's easy to sell cigarettes, and since the pipes accounted for such a tiny percentage of the conglomerate's income, it was the table's consensus that the conglomerate wouldn't mind killing Stanwell just to be rid of the bother. A depressing and unfit end for a once great brand. Still, Stanwell's fate remains to be seen. I'm a positive person, unfamiliar with the industry (though Marty's insights went some length to cure my ignorance), and I remain hopeful that Stanwell quality will actually increase in the hands of the Italians.

Uhle passed around a Lars Ivarsson (I think) acorn, and someone commented on how the Danish masters could really bring grace to any pipe shape, and that others tried to imitate, but many of the imitators, notably the Italians, ended up making "clunky" pipes lacking the harmony and grace of the Danes. I puffed a little harder on my Dal Fiume, fatto a mano in Italia. Again, the Danish pipe was beautiful, and indeed graceful, but I didn't care for the finish, and given the choice, I'd take a similar pipe from Rad Davis, who produces some shapes that resemble this Dane, and whose finishes I like very much. I'm a barbarian, there's no getting around it.

After a while, the freshly honored Dr. of Pipes Fred Hanna came in, still with tears in his eyes (don't tell him I said so) from the award ceremony. Fred greeted everyone warmly, including me, personally. That's why he's the Dr. of Pipes, I reckon: he treats everyone like and old best friend. Everyone in that room treated me like an old best friend, and they continue to do so. Several of them admitted frankly that they're happy to see a young dude like myself taking up the pipe and bringing some new life to their hobby.

It was getting late, by which I mean not 3AM but merely midnight. Still, we wanted an early morning, so we said our farewells and thanked everyone thoroughly for their friendship and hospitality, and headed to bed.

The next day we got up bright and kind of early. Early enough that the Sunday buffet was not open for another hour. We ended up at the "fancy" hotel restaurant where we'd gotten our wine, and the only reason I mention this is because we ended up with the same smiling guy for a waiter that we'd had the two previous days at the buffet. He was following us! The breakfast was competent and more expensive than the equivalent breakfast at the buffet. That's the price of an early rise on a Sunday.

I wanted to go back and have another round of the tables in the mega center, maybe pick up that Neerup that I couldn't decide about, this thought probably implanted in my head by our pre-breakfast elevator ride with Peter Jeppesen and his wife. But I saved that for next year, and we drove to Chicago, encountering much traffic.

We saw Millennium Park, which has a ridiculously large fountain.

We saw Lake Michigan. We saw some people with orange shirts who were having a walk against some disease. We walked around lost in the neighborhood, looking for pizza, being led in circles by my god damned phone before giving up and heading for the bbq-and-pizza place that I had spotted right by where we parked.

The pizza here was different than the Chicago-style pizza in St. Charles, and I would say Geno's East in St. Chuck's was much better. Ironically, the pizza I had in Chicago was not as good as the Chicago-style pizza I had outside Chicago.

I did not say it was bad! It was still better than 50% of the pizza I can get delivered to my place, but Geno's was better than about 85%, so there you have it.

The waiter, a very young kid, asked us what we were in town for. I said we were there for the pipe show, assuming, uncharacteristically, that since I knew about it, everyone did, especially those in Chicago, where the show is nominally but not physically held. The kid cogitated for a moment, and asked, "Pipes... like steel plumbing pipes, or skating pipes?" I told him neither, the show was for smoking pipes. He cogitated for even longer on that one, the wheels spinning around and round up in his head, and then he lit up. "Are you guys like glass blowers or something?"

I disappointed the poor kid and told him that it was a show for tobacco pipes made from wood, and we joked about how even though that probably would bore him, a show of plumbing pipes would bore all three of us to tears.

We finished our pizza and took the long way to the airport, through the Chicago ghetto. I've now toured the ghettos in: Cathedral City (technically the barrios, there), Oakland, St. Louis, Chicago, and Atlanta (GPS error thanks to hops). This one was the scariest but there are still many exciting ghettos for my wife to drag me to, so I remain hopeful that it can be topped.

Okay, my meta-memory informs me that the ghetto tour took place on the way to Millennium Park, and that after pizza we went straight to the airport. Still, to revise is against the spirit of blogging, and thus the flow remains as it is.

And now, since I am late for my bike ride, the super condensed version of what happened next:

We flew to St. Louis. We ate the remainder of the Chicago pizza on the plane.

Arriving in St. Louis, Pappy's was closed on Sunday night, so we drove, me in hungry disappointment, and stopped at Missouri Hick BBQ instead, which we'd seen advertised on the highway (this should have been a clue). I ordered the 3-meat-sampler, which was advertised as ribs, brisket, and pulled pork. I got 2 baby back ribs (WHAT THE FUCK. TWO?!?!) which were relatively tasty, the worst executed pulled pork I've ever seen, and a chunk of mystery meat. Literally mystery meat. I've seen a lot of meat, and I've eaten a lot of meat. To this day I have no idea what this was in my sampler plate. It was certainly not brisket. It could have been pork, but it was a big chunk, not pulled, and besides, the pulled pork was definitely pork, poorly executed as it was. I tasted it, then thought again and decided I didn't want to eat meat I couldn't identify. The meal sucked. Don't go there.

DONT GO THERE.

hops' folks were doing well. We talked and went to bed.

The next day I smoked some free show cigars while hops' mom was at the dentist. I found some unidentified substance in the parking lot which hops claims was puke. You decide:

We went to lunch at "Southern Spice" in St. Robert. They were out of the pulled pork, the only really southern thing on their menu. I had the steak sandwich and chili, instead, and...

to my surprise, they were excellent. Excellent! Like really really good. In the middle of nowhere. I was blown away. hops and I concurred that this was the sort of good food we'd eat even in our hometown, so it wasn't just "better than the other crap out here", it was objectively good. You can see how surprised I am to have found such a place. hops' dad liked his food.

Her mom hated the food and told the waiter as much. Ha! I was in a good mood.

For dinner that night, at 4:30pm (argh!!!) was ribs that hops' dad picked up at hte local grocery store. They were smoked! To my surprise, they were good, too!

I spent the evening smoking cigars on the porch and reading my book. I finished two books on this trip, and I haven't really read books the last couple of years. Hopefully I'm on a trend. I also smoked some Squadron Leader in my new Radice and confirmed that it's an awesome pipe.

The next day we dined at Dr. Phil's in Waynesville.

Right off the bat hops' mom let Dr. Phil know that she didn't think highly of the Waynesville municipal water supply, and had brought her own water. Dr. Phil was a little too laid back to really care. Dr. Phil delivered EPIC awesome fried catfish to hops, and really poorly done ribs to me and hops' dad.

Hushpuppy bonus!

To be avoided!

You should probably avoid the Mexican food in Waynesville when you visit, but I'm sure you already knew that.

After that, we went back, and I enjoyed some more of Gabriele's FVF in the pipe he made, though I reconfirmed that FVF isn't my favorite tobacco. When I was done, we hit the road for the airport.

I later remarked that The Tao Of Missouri is a porch, a chair, a good book, and a good pipe. I actually enjoyed my stay in Waynesville. No internet, warm weather, a good porch and chair, and plenty of fine tobacco. Set and setting.

We stopped by Pappy's Smokehouse so I wouldn't whine all the way home, and I got myself a full rack.

I finished them in under 10 minutes. Good lord Pappy's is awesome.

I hosed myself down, and we got on the plane with minutes to spare. Badda bing, badda boom, we arrived home.

I had a great time, as you can tell. I kinda regret not getting more pipes, but I am very pleased with the ones I did get, and the prices I got them for.

The second day I was back, I went to Emergency BBQ a couple miles from home, and had the ribs, and told the ribmaster that I'd just come from St. Louis, rib capital of the world as I know it, and the Emergency ribs were the best ribs I'd ever had (in a restaurant).

It was good to be home.