When smoking was allowed everywhere, did you notice the smell?

"When smoking was allowed everywhere, did you notice the smell?" No, not if you were a smoker. If you weren't, of course you could.

I keep cars a long time. I smoked in a car for three years then quit smoking and drove the car for another five years.

I could still smell the smoke that had been absorbed by the interior until I traded it in. Neither little pine trees nor baking soda nor upholstery cleaner could change that.

Yes it's hard to believe how smokey this restaurant my parents frequented could be. The tables were about three steps lower than the entrance and you'd see a grey line of smoke at eye level. Barbers and any auto repair shop waiting room stank like an ashtray. I had an aunt an uncle who chain smoked and there house always smelled like cigarette smoke and brewing coffee.

The worst was the mechanic shop. Grease and tobacco smoke mixed together. The worst of all was filtered cigarette butts that never decompose

I didn’t smell it. Until I quit.

Yes. Both my parents smoked and I hated it. I'm prone to motion sickness and In the car cig. smoke used to make me carsick. I used to sit in the back seat with a side window open and the air blasting my face to keep away from the smoke. Just a whiff of cig. smoke now causes instant revulsion. On some people you can smell it on their clothes.

Gay bars were the worst in my opinion. I would come home and immediately take my clothes off and put them outside until I could launder them. (I made sure to only wear things that could go in the washer - nothing that required dry cleaning.)

Sidetrack in Chicago was the first gay bar I went to that - before it became the law - tried splitting the facility into smoking and nonsmoking sections. Pity the poor queen who tried to walk through the nonsmoking section with a lit cigarette.

Childhood was a series of attempts to escape the stink of cigarettes, butts in ashy ashtrays, cigars and pipes.

Bars, for sure. Also airports.

I didn’t smoke but I kind of liked the smell of smoke. Now it makes me feel nostalgic. I never thought they would be able to prohibit smoking in bars and restaurants. It was very controversial at first, but I do think it’s good that they did it. We know a lot more about the danger of second hand smoke now than we did then. Also, a lot of people were bothered by it

In the sixties one was a freak if they didn’t smoke. The air was yours to ensmoke it was a public space. We noticed that acrid stink but felt no power to lobby for air in its unpolluted state. The non smoker was so outnumbered.

I hated smoking mainly because I saw how much control it had over my dad and how it contributed to his ill health. And yet as a teen, all of my friends’ parents thought I smoked because literally everything I owned smelled like his two/three pack a day habit.

Cigarette smoke is still a big memory trigger for me. It's like smelling the 1970s. I was just a little kid but my aunt and uncle were both heavy smokers so their house always smelled of it. My parents always hated cigarettes and I can remember them bitching about going over there. My best friend's mom also smoked like a chimney so his house also stank of it. She was a tiny woman and I can remember her driving their giant old GM station wagon around town, a long cig dangling loosely from her lips.

When I was a kid cigarette smoke didn't bother me but it smells a lot different now.

On a cold night waiting in line to get into a happening gay bar, the whoosh of hot, smoky, perfumed air that enveloped you when somebody opened the door was intoxicating.

I remember well New Year's Eve 1997 when, at the stroke of midnight, bars in California became smoke free. Nobody anticipated that bar employees would actually enforce it, but the state threatened huge fines and loads of government agents would be out that night to cite bars. By 12:30, the bar was empty; the party moved to the sidewalks and streets.

In London recently, the smell of cigarette smoke out on the sidewalks was so pervasive you couldn’t catch a clean breath of fresh air anywhere. Everyone is smoking, smoking. London friends claim it's all the recently arrived Eastern Europeans, but it looks like everyone from anywhere just lights up as soon as they exit a building or the tube.

I was never a smoker, but you just expected / accepted it when you went to a bar.

Usually I wouldn’t really notice it while I was out having fun, but I’d always be amazed how much my clothes smelled of smoke when I picked them up off the floor the next morning.

Not if Cheryl was around.

My parents both hotboxed - they drove with the windows up while smoking tons of cigarettes. Their car stunk like an ashtray.

I have wondered this for years - WHERE did all of the cigarette machines go? I used to be a heavy smoker (I haven’t had one in more than 15 years) BUT I used to work in a nightclub - I have spent a billion dollars in quarters over the years on cigs from a cigarette machine. they were EVERYWHERE! Coffee shops, gas stations, hotel lobbies - everywhere. There must have been millions of them across the country - and then - GONE - oh - they are probably with all of the pay phones yanked out of the same places!

They’ve been repurposed to dispense power bars in gyms r19?

I’ve smelled ancient tar at horse tracks and bowling alleys. My smoking demon knows.

You noticed it, and maybe liked or disliked it, but really didn't give it much of a thought because it was always potentially part of the scene anywhere at any time. Nowadays people look at tobacco through a lens of DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER DANGER; but that wasn't the case back then.

I can remember the smoking rows on a 747. Usually at the back of each class of cabin. I was a kid so it didn’t bother me but now it seems insane.

I grew up in the 70's and my grandmother smoked until it killed her (lung cancer). I remember going to her house, sitting by her end table with a lamp that had a yellow shade...well that was until I ran my fingers down that shade one time and pulled off a thick layer of yellow gunk from all the smoke. The shade was actually white underneath! I hated the smell of smoke and yes, you could smell it everywhere. I remember leaving bars after a night with friends and feeling my chest hurt from all the smoke I inhaled. I also worked retail in my teens and have very vivid memories of walking into the break room at work which was like walking into a cloud of smoke. It was fucking awful.

Two years ago, I lost a good friend to small cell lung cancer which only has a 5% survival rate. He had just retired from being an Air Traffic Controller at age 56 and was looking forward to fishing and enjoying his retirement. He was also attempting to quit smoking when he began coughing up blood. They gave him 6 months to live but he managed to barely survive for two years.

Stop smoking.

Smoking slice of life: after 25 years of very heavy smoking, I took the plunge and gave it up COLD TURKEY. In late 80’s had been smoke free for less than one year when I flew to Italy on a “non-revenue “ pass, so was treated as less than cargo; seated at back of smoking section beside the toilets where all the smokers who did not want to fly in “smoking sections” would come back to stand in line for toilet and to smoke while waiting. Absolutely miserable for me, of course, but the flight cost me $25 each way, so…At one point a standing, smoking woman passed out and went to the floor, right beside my seat, “is a doctor on board” was called, and, of course, oxygen mask was released and placed on woman -OXYGEN ( you know, the kind that can BLOW UP) MASK. The mid-20’s couple sitting beside me REFUSED to stop smoking because THEY HAD PAID TO BE IN SMOKING SECTION, and , by god, they were going to smoke no matter what. Why the flight attendants did not INSIST on no lighted cigs, I have no idea; more important, when that plane did not go down as a fireball, I have no idea. Perhaps this is why I never expect to win a Powerball, or some such; I have already had my great lucky fortune.

This thread is GOLD.

My mother smoked when I was growing up and I only recall noticing if she had smoked in the bathroom — the smallest room in the house.

I remember, “It’s the butts; empty your ashtrays each day and the apartment/house won’t reek!”

My parents bowled on Friday nights. The air was so thick my eyes would burn and I'd get light headed. They didn't give a shit.

My mother smoked through my entire childhood. I'm quite certain that my Catholic school uniform reeked heavily of cigarette smoke. As the owner of some rental houses, I can vouch that the only way to get rid of lingering cigarette smoke is to paint the entire house with "KILZ"which is a heavily deodorizing paint with solvents in it. And before you paint, you'll need to go through the entire house and clean all the walls and ceilings with degreasing agents. Between the home I grew up in, and the time I spend in gay bars in my 20s and 30s, I feel certain I've been exposed to much more than my fair share of second-hand smoke.

R6 agree about gay bars being awful for smoke. I remember coming home and instantly throwing all my clothes into a trash bag until I could wash them. I ‘d then hop into the shower no matter how late it was.

I was living in London when the smoking ban came Into effect. One thing you quickly noticed is how smoke covered up many other smells. Suddenly, pubs smelled of funk and body odour. Establishments really had to up their general cleaning for what used to be masked by smoking.

Fuck yes, I noticed the smell alright and I hated it. Had to work around smokers for the earlier part of my work career, fortunately in situations where I generally wasnt hot boxed with them, usually only in proximity with one smoker at a time. Was so glad when indoor smoking was banned in the late 90's.

At my current work place smokers were relegated to a windowless room in the basement fitted out in lovely snot yellow formica and lino flooring with black vinyl furniture and flourescent strip lighting, I had a meeting in that room once shortly after the smokers had been pushed out to the filthy loading bay out the back, and it REEKED. The most hideous space you could imagine.

R1 is right, getting the smoke smell out of a car is difficult, it can be done though, just pull out the headliner, seats, carpets and any and every removable interior trim piece, wash thoroughly, get them soaking wet and scrub them hard, then rinse, and also thoroughly scrub every interior surface, including all the windows and interior plastics. Once its all dried out (best to sun dry everything you can) put the carpets back in and bolt the seats back in, reinsert the headliner and any other trim pieces removed. Then leave the car out in the full sun for at least a week or two with the windows cracked. Best to do all this at the height of summer. A lot of work! I've done it, and friends have done it with ex smokers cars they've bought. Ex smokers cars can be picked up cheaply, for 20-30% under market value because of this, so if you're willing to do the work there's bargains to be had

It wasn't so bad in New York. But everywhere in Paris was a dense cloud. Of course je l'ai adoré BUT even I was choked out of some of the smaller boîtes. And dinner parties, in winter, in anything smaller than an appartement Haussmannien, with high ceilings and an enfilade of salons, could be a slog. Most of my friends lived in tiny spaces.

I liked the retro movie houses then, sitting with a few other film freaks, smoking, smoking. The scene hung on longer in Paris than New York. San Francisco had two, if I remember, with very wild programming. Foreign art film masterpieces programmed with gay porn or gore movies. Cairo and Beirut had tiny movie palaces that programmed any old thing together. Shitty old prints. Often with light gay action going on. I fell in love with Egyptian cinema in this manner. Egypt naturally has their own brand of cigarettes. Cleopatra was $2 the carton, at the time. They were tasty, like Gitanes. I'm surprised my lungs have survived, knock on wood.

My parents smoked heavily in the house and car so I didn't really notice because it was smokey everywhere I went.

My grandfather was a very heavy smoker when I was a kid - at least a pack of Chesterfields a day, but my grandma was such a thorough, dedicated (not to say compulsive) housekeeper their apartment really didn’t smell strongly of smoke.

This was a woman who dusted daily and sat on second floor window ledges to wash all the windows every damn week. I’m sure she washed the walls every few months.

r26 stinks and types fat.

^^^ I need wextra Swour Cweem!!!!

A decade ago I used to frequent smoky bars in my small town, then they finally banned it. Recently I went to a little daiquiri shop outside the town limits where smoking was still allowed. I lit up thinking this was going to be a fun nostalgic moment. I couldn't take the smell and had to leave after a few minutes. Though I did go to a much larger bar that still allowed smoking and it wasn't as noticeable.

You can smell a smoker’s car when it passes by.

Are there still states in the US where smoking is allowed in bars?

I was just in Greece and it seems like everyone stills smokes. No smoking inside, but smoking everywhere else. Someone lit a cigarette in a long distance bus, no open windows, no one said anything. Vaping is very popular. It was like old times. I'm glad I quit 15 years ago.

Yes we noticed it. Also noticed for the first time addiction. Smoking the original crack. Now we have electronic crack the internet. Much better. Just turns people into zombies while keeping the biology running. Thanks.

R41 yes. In Louisiana each city decides whether to ban it. At least in my parish. Bars here still allowed it up until about 2015. Only bars, other businesses banned it by the 90s probably.

My parents played cards every weekend with a couple who smoked. The kids played in the living room, while the adults sat in the kitchen playing cards in a grey haze. Their house always smelled of smoke. That particular scent is still burned in my memory 45 years later. It’s funny how some smokers homes or cars would smell differently than other smoker’s. My friend’s cars always smelled like a gross, dirty ashtray, while my uncle's cars always seemed lightly scented with smoke in a way I almost liked.

Even nonsmokers kept an ashtray in the living room for smoking guests.

It would have been the height of rudeness to ask a guest to step outside to smoke.

r46 I was just going to post that. My parents, both nonsmokers, kept ashtrays under the kitchen sink for guests who smoked. Telling a smoker to take it outside was poor etiquette and being a bad host/hostess. This was in the 1980s. What a different world.

Smoking was just everywhere, all the time. IIRC it wasn't until the early/mid 90s that smoking indoors was considered unacceptable.

Certainly. My father used to smoke, and I would know when he was home from work just by the cigarette smoke. I recall sitting in the living room watching TV and the ever present smoke lingering around the room. Second hand smoke was not considered a health hazard in the 1960s and 1970s, but many non-smokers developed asthma, lung disorders, and even cancer from it.

[quote]That smell being everywhere.

Well, we got used to the coloreds.

People lit up cigarettes in hospitals, including doctors. It is insane to imagine the way it was now.

[quote] Are there still states in the US where smoking is allowed in bars?

In Las Vegas it’s illegal to not smoke in bars.

Yes, r48. My grandfather died from Lung Cancer and never smoked a day in his life. But he lived with my grandma who was a chain smoker and also died from Lung Cancer.

My aunt (father's sister) used to volunteer at the hospital, kinda an old-timey candy striper, in the 1950s and early 1960s. One of her duties was emptying ashtrays in patients' rooms as well as carrying a tray of packs of cigarettes, gum, mints, etc. to give out to patients who wanted them. In their beds. In the hospital.

Mostly on my clothing later that night or the day after. They would reek of cigarette smoke.

R36 My parents did not smoke, but my aunts and uncles were all heavy smokers. We usually gathered at one grandmother's house every Sunday (aunts, uncles, cousins) but when grandma was on vacation, the kids took turns hosting. So maybe 3-4 times a year our house was the gathering place. After they left, Mom sprinkled baking soda on the carpet then on Monday she washed the walls with Spic and Span and vacuumed up the baking soda. She also sprayed the drapes with nasty smelling Lysol (gold can). Our house smelled normal by Tuesday.

My last year of college I was really stuck for accommodation and ended up taking a room in what can only be described as a hovel. The Chinese guy who had the room before me smoked heavily and so the bedding and the mattress reeked of smoke. I tried everything Febreze, mothballs, spraying cheap cologne. Nothing would work and it really grossed me out. Though not as much as when I pulled the bed from the wall to change the bedding and found a lot of used tissues on the other side. Finding and disposing of those cumrags was a real low point in my life. And two weeks later I was out of there.

When I was a kid I didn’t smoke, obviously, yet I never noticed the smell of cigarettes, unless it was excessive, like at a wedding. Even then it was not the smell, it was more that it stung my eyes.

My grandfather’s place did smell of smoke but he smoked a pipe, also, and it smelled more like that. I guess i didn’t mind the smell. I can remember it now and it seems like a nice, not a bad, smell.

I think cigarettes today (or, since about the 90s) smell different.

Stealth smoker-phobic thread.

But, did the cumrags reek of cigarette smoke, R56?

Hotel rooms. A “non-smoking room” was not a concept. Every hotel room reeked.

[quote] Telling a smoker to take it outside was poor etiquette and being a bad host/hostess. This was in the 1980s. What a different world.

R47 If somebody lit up in my home in the 80's I'd tell them to fuck off outside with that shit ya cunt. I didnt tolerate it in my home then any more than I would now. Zero fucks given about being a good host

[quote]Stealth smoker-phobic thread.

Nothing "stealth" about it R58 I'm completely open and aggressively blunt about it, dont smoke around me motherfucker, it'll be bad for your health, especially the smack in the gob

Non smoker here. Child of smokers, both of whom sadly died in part from smoking related illnesses. Dad emphysema. Mom pulmonary fibrosis. I still remember cleaning the walls before painting their living room. Tar baked onto the walls. There was actually a product to remove tar & nicotine called Big Wally. Looking back it feels like Dickens. If smokers are reading this, please consider stopping. My mom was haunted by each cigarette when she died. “I did this to myself.” Tragic.

I came from a family that made their money in tobacco and everyone smoked when I was a child.

The men died and the women stopped. It’s a culture which is long gone where the tobacco was grown, never to be resurrected.

My grandfather smoked a pipe, which has a much more pleasant smell.

It certainly is a powerful addiction. I have a friend who smokes constantly and always has many complaints about her health. When I pointed out that there was a connection between smoking and her health problems, she told me never to mention that again or we couldn’t be friends. I wasn’t willing to agree to that, so we’re no longer friends.

r62, both my father and my aunt smoked. Aunt didn't quit, died of emphysema, father quit in his 50's, died of a heart attack from Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis when he was 73.

Even though both of my parents smoked (Mom quit in her 30's), I hated the smell of smoke, made me nauseous feeling.

Definitely a stealth anti-smoker thread.

Calling out that it's an anti-smoker thread would only come from a smoker, and their judgement is clouded by addiction.

Grew up in a smoking household and I smoked until age 30.

I never noticed a smell in the house. Maybe my sense of smell is lacking. Grew up in a mostly-warm climate, though, so windows were usually open.

In Las Vegas, I ended up in a smoking room at the Mirage. I could smell the smoke in that room.

After I quit smoking I had dinner with a former employee who I used to smoke with daily when he was back in town for work. I picked him up outside his hotel where he was standing by the entrance smoking. The first thing he said was "Don't tell Donna (his wife) you saw me smoking."

All I could do was look at him and say that if he didn't have the suit dry-cleaned and all his clothes washed before he went home, there would be no need to: I could smell the smoke the minute he opened the car door so I'm pretty sure his wife could, too.

When you smoke, you don't smell the rest of the smoke in the room. When you don't smoke, it's all you smell.

R69, I live in a no-smoking building. At 10pm someone lights up on a lower floor overlooking a courtyard shared by over two dozen units. It’s faint, but it wakes me up more than sirens.

R6 you forgot to mention you'd stripped off your clothes right away because you were entertaining a variety of men you'd picked up in said clubs.

R67 Totally wrong. I’m just one of those non-smokers who doesn’t enjoy bashing smokers. I don’t really get the holier-than-though pleasures you all derive from it.

"I don’t really get the holier-than-though pleasures you all derive from it."

Really? You can't understand why someone who chooses to not participate in a nasty, smelly habit that can kill you with a horrific, painful death would feel like we're smarter than those who do choose that?

Of course we are.

Yes, you could smell it everywhere. But being in places where you couldn't smell it wasn't an option, so it didn't bother me.

R73 No, I can’t understand that. But at least I’m smart enough to know how to use the quotation feature on this forum.

oooh, you told me!

You just keep on defending these smokers who are driving up the cost of health care! You're so smart!

This is not a stealth anti-smoking thread. It’s a blatant anti-smoking thread.

Which is good.

Smokers kill their own sense of smell, so they never realize how rank they are.

r72 is defending people who kill other people with their addiction.

You should really look into why that's ok to you.

I smoked from the time of high school until after college. Friends complained that they reeked of smoke after going out with me. I never believed them...

And then, I quit!!!

Omigod, is the smell horrible.

A guy hit on me many times on grindr, and I never replied. He is hot...but eventually I told him I'd seen him once and he chain smoked the entire night and there was no use in hooking up cos we aren't a match(ahem!!). His reply was, "I won't smoke before we meet". How do smokers not know how the smell encases them? And a mint or sprat doesn't work?

Wah wah he smokes wah wah

R79 The name of the thread is “When smoking was allowed everywhere, did you notice the smell?” Not whatever you’re talking about. That’s why I commented that it was a stealth anti-smoking thread. You people are boring. I didn’t “defend” smoking. But why don’t you expend your energy protesting and boycotting corporations and the US armed forces which are some of the biggest polluters in the world and cause a huge amount of deaths, of people and animals, and destroy the environment. Instead of one being so virulently hateful about some individual smoker somewhere?

Oh shut up and take a light 🚬

Someone needs a cigarette.

[quote] You people are boring.

Where the fuck did you get the idea that it was our job to entertain you?

I smoke but I can’t stand casinos and the smell is one of the reasons.