pipe elitism

Subject: Re: pipe elitism Tue May 27, 2008 10:11 pm

Looks like there's some life left in this topic after all Very Happy

I thought I was being careful enough to convey that the observation I made wasn't directed at anyone here. Guess not though. Either that or people are a little jumpy about it. (You think ? Maybe ?)

The goal of the exercise wasn't to ruffle anyone's feathers or to cast aspersions by implication. It was that since DPG 's 'I feel that I've actually been shunned on another pipes board simple because I smoke the higher end pipes!" was on the table, along with Winslow's "I can remember about 10 years ago on ASP there was resentment by some people about some of the members posting about high end pipes they owned," the subject was broached anyhow, so it might as well get aired out.

What a Face

_________________
All the old cliches are true.
That's why they're cliches.

Subject: Re: pipe elitism Wed May 28, 2008 5:59 pm

Subject: Re: pipe elitism Wed May 28, 2008 11:47 pm

I say congratulations to those who can afford such wonderful pieces. I may not be able to, but that's not their fault. If I actually bought a new pipe, ever really, I would post pictures of it eventually, but if it were a high end pipe, chances are it will look spectacular, thus making me want to share its beauty with others here.

I am happy for those who can enjoy such things, even if I can't. And, for all those beautiful pipes I don't own...

drool

Subject: Re: pipe elitism Thu May 29, 2008 10:03 am

For sure, anybody who looks at a blowsnail and finds rhapturous beauty in it keeps the ball rolling by posting pictures of it, educates people, maybe hustles the maker of it up a little business, and spreads joy in the world. All good things. I don't think anyone's "anti" that.

The title of the thread, though, is pipe elitism. That's a mindset. Whole diff'rent story.

Anybody old enough can remember when (same plot, different decade) it was Dunhills. And since there had to be a resistence movement to oppose the establishment, Charatans. Ford or Chevy --which side are you on ? You "are" (as the thinking went) (if you can even call it "thinking") what you smoked (in public). (Petersons seem to have identified you as a hippie. So declasse it was almost, but not quite, cool. You needed a set of functional stones to show up at the B&M on Saturday with one -- it being understood that you were kind of saluting establishment values with one finger).

Just because this is puerile (even silly) when it's considered in isolation doesn't mean it ever went away. People being people, the Law of the Conservation of Matter, Energy and Primate Hardwiring was not to be repealed by mere reason. Reason doesn't phase stuff like this. But it does develop coping skills.

Confession being good for the soul (even if a political blunder), I still lust after the good stuff at 60 as I did at 25. Only where a young bull would have rushed across the field to nail a cow in heat, the old bull takes his time, grazing as he goes. No sense getting carried away. Even though this end result is the point of the exercise in the first place.

Intending no offence (a preamble so utterly ineffectual it's comical -- offence will always be taken), it is interesting (a good, value-neutral term) to watch the debut of famous artisan A's new design. Followed, often in time for the next big show, by famous artisan B's, C's and D's takes on it. And thus a new idea establishes itself. Always from the top down. Edward VII once rolled his trouser bottoms up walking across a muddy lawn and forgot to un-roll them afterward. Thus trouser cuffs appeared in the world. Fashions in anything do not come from (hoping that no pipmakers live there to take umbrige at this) North Adams, Massachusitts or East Saint Louis.

Might one not unreasonably suspect that, when famous artisan A's blowsnail changes hands at $5,000, pretty famous artisan B's at $3,500, worthy artisan C's at $1,250, and hot up-and-comer D's at $375, with not all that much to distinguish them in terms of lines, material, craftsmanship or finish, we might have something going on that could be uncharitably construed as evidence of the dreaded "elitism" in disguise ? Have we met the enemy and he is us ?

Well, ask whether we still have heirarchies. And if we don't, when did we stop ? And why didn't somebody tell me about it ?

Years ago (back when people still read anything), you knew instantly who someone "was" by her coffee table. She announced her affiliation with this cast of mind or that one by her choice of magazines. Newsweek, Time, Rolling Stone, Ramparts and the rest of them were identity statements. You knew going in that your Guns & Ammo was probably going to clash with her New Republic. If you could imagine a joint coffee table working, the rest was pretty easy. Barron's told you what you were in for if you "went there." As did Mother Jones and The Watchtower.

Now take it from pulps on a coffee table to pipes in the "A" rack on said (imaginary) table with pipesmoking company coming. Or on a image hosting site entitled "My Collection." The essential difference would be . . . (?)

If you "are" what you eat, drive, wear and copulate with, then maybe it's disingenuous to dissemble about pipes ? (Hi. My name's Yak and I'm an elitist").

Yeah -- but it's ART ! (?)
When Picasso started fixating on blue, the art world did not enter a "blue period." Only Picasso did. Even Impressionism was a general idea with as many individual "takes" on it as there were artists involved in it. Nobody mistakes a Renoir for a Seurat. Nobody could.

Artistic ? We be cool, bro. "Art" (capital"A") ? We have a problem.

Can we just come clean here ?

Everybody alive divides the population of the world -- whether overtly or covertly -- into "the better sort of people" and "them." And the more pressure is exerted by Big Brother to deny this, the more (like elitism) it just goes underground and intensifies. For, as Richard Swartzbaugh pointed out (in The Mediator), "Every time two men meet on an instinctual level, a tiny but significant conspiracy is hatched." (It wouldn't BE a conspiracy in the first place if articulating it weren't persecuted).

"The better sort" (I have established this beyond question by years of research) are, with truly remarkable consistency, people like the one making the evaluation.

So skipping the "flavor of the week" observation, the "more expensive means better" one, the Mercedes Syndrome, the "embracing diversity" farce and the rest of it, what IS "the Good stuff" ?

Bwaaa Haaa Haaa ! I'm never going to tell you ! You know why ?

A diner in Kalamazoo
Found a big, hairy fly in his stew.
Said the waiter, "Don't shout
and wave it about,
Or the rest will be wanting one too."

Being an eBay shopper (a very occasional one), I don't need a horde of crazed suggestibles out-bidding me for something I've tipped them off about in the first place. Vee get too soon oldt und too late schmardt.

What a Face

ELITIST
NOT smoking a new Flying Esquimo Foot
_________________
All the old cliches are true.
That's why they're cliches.

Subject: Re: pipe elitism Thu May 29, 2008 10:50 pm

Yak, very true words.

Subject: Re: pipe elitism Fri May 30, 2008 8:01 am

well...isnt this exactly what i meant?? its the older more experienced pipe smokers and collectors hoarding and not letting anyone in to the secret of the worthiness of good tobaccos or good pipemakers that is abhorent and i might add childish. its EXACTLY this attitude that has made pipesmoking rarer and rarer over the years. If you tried pipesmoking for the first time and smoked generic cherry blend no# 1 and it burnt your tongue you might never smoke a pipe again and you might always think that pipesmokers are strange and weird because how can they like their mouths to feel like that?? do you know what happens to wisdom that isnt passed down?? its lost!!!!!!!! its this attitude that has led to the demise of many good ole tobaccos. if company "A" makes two thousand pounds of chery blend and it all sells well then it must be what pipesmokers like right?? well what if their version of a balkan blend is one of the legendary blends but only 5 guys buy it, guess what will eventually happen to that blend????????? i remember Three Nuns, i remember that i liked it, i remember that i bought a tin when i finished a tin. i also remember NEVER telling anyone how good i thought it was. where is Three Nuns today???

Subject: Re: pipe elitism Fri May 30, 2008 10:44 am

You need some history, VeePee.

In terms of volume produced and sold, the high water mark of pipes and pipe tobacco was (as I recall it), 1907. After that was a long, steady, irreversable slide into annihilation. What mostly did it was the effective marketing of cigarettes. Markets, volume and profits shrunk to the point where there was no alternative to packing it in.

It's not like nobody saw this happening, or did nothing to reverse the decline. On the contrary, they did everything they could imagine. But nothing worked well enough. In the end, inflation and increasing tax burdens drove up pipe prices to points people balked at, and marques like Barling, Charatan, Saseini, Comoy and the rest of them were sold for their equipment and the commercial value (such as it was) of the names themselves.

The only old-time players still standing on their own feet are Peterson and Stanwell.

Balkan Sobranie &c had all the market penetration that Lane could manage. But that wasn't enough. With rising costs and shrinking profits, even Sobraie House gave up.

I started with Cherry Blend too. Most of us probably did. So ?

Nobody needs (or wants) my advice on tobacco. Really ! There are people who do really good reviews. Go to TR if you want reviews. Everybody and his brother posts about pipes he likes anyhow. Both worlds are pretty crowded as it is. My 2c worth would only be superfluous. Very Happy

_________________
All the old cliches are true.
That's why they're cliches.

Subject: Re: pipe elitism Fri May 30, 2008 10:59 pm

Subject: Re: pipe elitism Sat May 31, 2008 10:13 am

We're ALL Bozos on This bus, Gents. And you don't have to get very far off the beaten path into the weeds to encounter proof of this anywhere. As here.

Specifically, we're jugglers. We have to be.

On one hand, being Americans, we're hereditary egalitarianists. We don't look down on the little guy -- we stick up for him. Nobody's "better than" anybody else because he has better looks or cooler toys.

But on the other hand, we're stuck in the biological situation of teenagers in church. The boys aren't supposed to be checking out the girls (and vice versa) -- but they are. Covertly and with a guilty conscience maybe, but doing it anyhow. Establishing heirarchies. And fashions, and the rest of it.

We don't reconcile these because we can't. So we juggle them. We're democrats (easy, JP) who want the cool toys. Individualists who form mini-communities (sometimes, cliques) with toy-centric common denominators.

"Sooner be Dead than Out of Fashion" (Aunt Isobel's ascerbic "take" on the phenomenon) :
Aspects like convenience were secondary factors in cigarettes running pipes off the road. Really. They were just as convenient in 1910. And cigars were never much less convenient. What put cigarettes over was what marketing people, I believe, call "positioning"

Once enough of tha cool guys people saw on the movie screen had cigarettes in their mouths, and ditto on TV when that came along, cigarettes were officially cool. Most of the formal advertising was pretty much lame and irrelevant -- what counted was that F.D.R., hat tipped back at a jaunty angle, had a cigarette burning in the other end of a jaunty cigarette holder (the Churchwarden of cigarette smoking) with his hat tipped back at a rakish, devil-may-care jaunty angle -- the very personification of the impossibly cool plutocrat. He was cool so his cigarette was cool. Johnny Carson was cool, and Johnny Carson was always smoking a cigarette. So cigarettes were cool and if I smoked them I was cool too. And if I wanted to suck up to the boss, the same brand he liked.

It all hinges on directing and focusing attention on an association with coolness. Ahhhnold and his cigars started a stampede that just about ruptured the cigar biz. (Get Ron Paul, Oprah Winfrey and Tom Brady puffing pipes in public and brace yourselves, artisans -- your ship just came in. Loaded so heavily the deck is awash).

The remarkable thing about attention is that, once it acheives critical mass, it is all but permanent. Pre-1960s Dunhills will always be cool. Ditto Castellos. Was Bo Nordh the Leonardo da Vinci of the modern pipe ? People whose judgement I respect who are familiar (I'm not) with what this involves seem to agree that this title would be more fittingly bestowed on someone else. But by now, this is a carping irrelevance. Bo Nordh is a Matterhorn of modern cool -- and his position is just as immobile.

This is the problem, IMO, the guys like Neil are up against. Their very advocacy makes stuff cool and, once it's cool, the coolness factor itself becomes problematic.

It is obviously both possible and admirable to fixate on the cutting edge of quality design and craftsmanship with absolute personal integrity. That at least some of this stuff is destined to join lava lamps and leisure suits in the annals of fashion yet to be written is irrelevant. The blowsnail will always have a constituency, because voluble appreciators of modern stuff like NAR and GLP have established one for it by now. Just as there will always be people collecting Empire furniture and driving Studebakers -- once cool, always (at least residually) cool.

At which point it seems we're back to the coffee table business . . .

It is, IMHO, the coolness factor that queers everything up. Even as it's propelling some of the good stuff into the commercial stratosphere, the human, all-too-human propensity to fixate on the cool stuff virtually guarantees death (at best, life in commercial Siberia) to arguably equal or even superior artisans who don't, for whatever reason (maybe for no reason) manage to catch a wave.

(Then again, whenever one door closes, another opens. The guys who sucked up scores of Leeds era Ben Wades on eBay for peanuts back when these were going unrecognized as unimaginably cool pipes really hit the lottery for the jackpot).

Follow-the-leader behavior necessitates leaders. There being no way around this, guys (who come to mind) like NAR and GLP who are aware of what time it is do what they can for whoever tweaks their twangers.
At the risk of being disparaged as show-offs.

Elitists.

And if the pipes-&-tobaccos world only had no show-offs to confuse them with . . . guys who buy cool stuff only because it's cool, flaunt it as an ersatz identity statement and keep score by how many they have and much they cost . . . But I'm daydreaming. "The one who dies with the most toys wins," like the principle of Conspicuous Consumption, really does describe one aspect of collective behavior we're pretty much stuck with.

Maybe the real problem isn't elitism per se ?

What a Face

_________________
All the old cliches are true.
That's why they're cliches.

Subject: Re: pipe elitism Sat May 31, 2008 10:45 am

The fun is in the journey not the destination cyclops

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Subject: Re: pipe elitism Sat May 31, 2008 11:25 pm

Subject: Re: pipe elitism Sun Jun 01, 2008 4:17 pm

How much of this is projection?

Subject: Re: pipe elitism Sun Jun 01, 2008 8:05 pm

I've been waiting to see whether somebody else would get an oar into the water on this -- monologues do tend to get tedious.

But since (apparently) not, about as much as projection is involved in everything that has to do with pipes, whether we will or no. The virtual certainty that a Stanwell is a better pipe than a "Made in Denmark," for an example. (The case I'm thinking of was actually Made in Denmark BY Stanwell). Or that an old Caminetto is, because it's an"original," a better pipe than one from Ascorti's son's resurrection of the marque.

We project what we imagine into the picture -- as we do with politics. We weave a world out of associative impressions, add enthusiasm, and move in. As far as we're concerned, the projection encapsulates the reality.

What the heck -- it works for choosing a career and a wife. Why not a pipe ?

Is there anything we do that projection isn't involved in ?

What a Face

_________________
All the old cliches are true.
That's why they're cliches.

Subject: Re: pipe elitism Sun Jun 01, 2008 8:51 pm

Yak, your observations about "projecting" preconceptions about brand onto our tastes have been stirring up a lot of discussion in the world of wine: a new book documents how low-price wines beat out similar high-ticket wines in blind tastings. The responses to this book sound familiar: discussions of elitism, expertise, envy, craft, consistency, reputation, price-point, and ultimately a lot of people saying de gustibus and continuing to drink whatever they want for what they can afford.

Subject: Re: pipe elitism Sun Jun 01, 2008 9:30 pm