With a soft gurgle of bubbling water and a puff, conversation fills the air along with an aromatic blend of tobacco in the hookah lounge of Smoke-N-Peace.
The newly opened 421 Wabash Ave. shop’s become a sanctuary for those who’d still like to smoke ‘em if they’ve got ‘em, a haven of hookahs in a country where smokers are drawing increasing fire.
Doug Horton, Dustin Allen and husband-and-wife Patrick and Mary Feild gathered around the hookah one January evening, their laughs and conversation filling the air quicker than the smoke.
The lounge, opened Oct. 30 – two months after the shop itself – resembles a well-apportioned common room in a college dorm, its comfy couches and leather hassocks designed in an array of dark reds and browns, a few islands of cracked white plaster in an otherwise red wall artfully emulating a friend’s college crash pad.
“It’s like smoking in your apartment,” Allen observes. “Except it’s not.”
Mary Feild concurs.
Smoke-N-Peace has become a home away from home, just as the name suggests, for those who want a place of their own. Some patrons find their habit is becoming increasingly less accepted. These days, even lighting up can mean taking a stand.
“I think persoanlly, it’s just nice to be able to go into a building and light a cigarette without ordering a beer,” Horton explains.
Mary Feild understands non-smokers’ logic. Some ex-smokers don’t want to be reminded of their past addictions, she says, while pregnant women may not want to be exposed to smoke.
Even so, the quartet agree it’s nice not to be hassled over their hookah.
Due north of the four, a cardboard cut-out of Lady Liberty stands watch next to a tie-dyed peace flag. On the south wall, sepia-tinted images of counterculture icons like Bob Marley and the Grateful Dead stand next to the famous image of a young Johnny Cash extending a middle finger.
The defiant stance the Man in Black exudes is paralleled by many here who feel their yen for a smoke is becoming increasingly taboo in a selectively health-focused society.
“You go into a bar, and people will complain about cigarettes,” Horton grimaces. “Meanwhile, they’re doing 14 shots of tequila, and they don’t care about their livers.”
Nor are efforts to curb smoking or make cigarettes safer something the quartet views without a measure of skepticism.
“If I’m smoking one of the new fire-safe cigarettes, I’m also smoking the chemical that is in the cigarettes,” Mary Feild says. Her husband notes all the sticky, resiny tobacco smoked in the hookah consists of is “basically, molasses, tobacco and flavors.”
Providing an alternative to the bar scene where patrons can enjoy cigarettes, coffee – cups abound from the neighboring Coffee Grounds – and conversation is the point, says owner Mike Wilson, who opened the shop with his brother Pete.
The shop, which only allows patrons ages 18 and older, provides an alternative to the bars, and gives those not yet 21 a social option, he suggests.
“People want to bitch about that, but kids come in here, sit down and for an hour or less, they’re smoking the hookah, listening to music, and enjoying themselves,” Wilson argues. “Guess what? When they’re walking out of here, they’re not getting in their car drunk and driving off and killing someone.”
While cigarettes, cigars and pipes are welcome, for many, the lounge is best experienced communally, with friends partaking of a shared smoke through the long metal hoses of the hookah pipes.
The colored glass and snaking hoses look at once like something the Cheshire Cat would enjoy while tormenting Alice in Wonderland, and a robot from some far-flung sci fi film. The hoses and mouthpieces are cleaned thoroughly after every use, Wilson said, and provide a communal experience unlike anything most smokers know.
“We’re hitting a hookah, whatever you’d call it: hookahing, I suppose,” Mary Feild observes. The Feilds, owners of the new Thriftstore Cowboy, were taking a break from their shop for a smoke, “playing hooky” they said, via hookah.
Enthusiasts say it’s the best way to enjoy a smoke. The secret? Shisha, a sticky, resiny tobacco, is placed into the pipe and heated.
The shop’s shisha selection boasts more flavors than Baskin-Robbins has ice cream choices, with 50 basic tastes that can be mixed into an array of options.
“Some people mix peanut butter and chocolate and make a Reese’s Cup,” Wilson laughs.
“It’s filtered through water, and not harsh at all,” observes Stacey Davis, 23 and a shop employee. “It’s more like smoking a cigar. You can roll it off your palate, or take it in.”
Davis abstains from cigarettes, but became enamored of hookah smoking through friends from the Middle East. Now, she has her own hookah at home.
However, the Wilson brothers can’t allow customers to bring in their own smoking gear, because the hookahs they use may have contained more illicit substances.
It’s a strange aspect of state law where mechanisms like hookahs and pipes can form the basis for prosecution via their mere existence and sale. The shop sells an array of accoutrements which could, conceivably, be used not just for tobacco, but also other substances.
Ultimately, it comes down to use and intended use.
For example, if a customer’s caught by police with a small stone pipe which legally can be sold in gas stations, smoke shops and carnivals, arrests can follow if the pipe tests positive for cannabis or other illegal substances.
“There’s nothing in this place that you can’t go out, sit down on the sidewalk and use, as long as you use it for its intended purpose, tobacco,” Wilson says.
The pipes, papers and other gear the store vends are street legal. That, however, doesn’t mean a smoker should express his intent to smoke illicit substances in the gear.
That leads, at least, to his ejection from the store. A sign on the door even warns, “Inappropriate language will not be tolerated.”
Other kinds of word play abound, however, a whimsical array of names for the favored flavors of tobacco the hookah smokers enjoy.
The shop even offers a brochure of shisha recipes, many reading more like a jukebox: “Mrs. Robinson,” “Yellow Submarine,” and “Champagne Supernova.”
That’s fitting. The shop opened Aug. 3, rising from the ashes of Revolutions, a former record store which previously occupied the site. Some of the store’s wares remain. Others, including the CDs and posters, were purchased by The J-Spot, 1202 Linden St., which also sells tobacco pipes and papers.
“All of the posters, and everything else that we’ve got except for basically the body jewelry is new,” Mike Wilson said. “He had clothing in here, T-shirts and posters, and we do too, but we wanted to bring in our own stuff.”
Davis also makes and vends her own crocheted hats and gloves through the shop, a colorful collection of artsy accessories she can make to order.
The shop no longer sells records, but does vend rock memorabilia, like the Rolling Stones flag which hangs proudly. Along with the photos of Cash, Garcia, Marley and the Dead, there’s a direct and deliberate link between shops like the now-defunct Revolutions and Penny Lane and the Wabash Valley’s 40-year-old mainstay, Headstone Friends, 1142 Poplar St.
“I grew up with Headstone, and I still love Headstone. It’s an institution, and I grew up with it,” he laughs. “But now, you know, if I’d have taken my parents in there in the 1960s, they’d have yanked me out of there by my hair. In here, I get people my age who say that, man, this takes them back. That’s intentional. That’s what I wanted.”

Other articles by Mark Stalcup

• Pop life - March 1st, 2010
• Cuba Libre - March 1st, 2010
• Blustery Sound - January 1st, 2010
• You and What Army? - January 1st, 2010
• The 12 Plays of Christmas - November 1st, 2009