Grew up in Asia. The less fancy one. Used to go buy my Dad cigarettes from across the street and toss out the filters when I was like 8 lol.
*He’s been smoke free for over 22 years. The amount of disinformation from Big tobacco, at least where I grew up, was insane. He is a very educated man and still… Cigarette was a status symbol, symbol of sophistication, when he was growing up.
i’m old enough to remember smoking sections on airplanes. Not to be dramatic but, I felt like I was going to die!
Even as a smoker I hated indoor smoking.
Wow that looks awful
It was absolutely disgusting. I only flew once as a kid prior to it being outlawed but I was sick from it.
Despite never having touched a cigarette in my life, my mom smokes pretty heavily… Knowing i probably stink to everyone else really sucks ;-;
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Since my colleagues have missed the invention of Deodorant and washing themselves I’d beg to differ.
I still remember when it was okay to smoke inside hospitals. Fun times…
When I quit, it took just a few weeks to recover my sense of smell, and I wish it didn’t because my house reeked of acrid smoke for months. Even my clean clothes smelt like unwashed smoked ass, it was sickening.I still remember when it was okay to smoke inside hospitals. Fun times…
All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.
Born in early 90’s. We were still responding “non” to the first question that was asked entering a restaurant.
Try working in a restaurant. I worked as a server for awhile, right at the tail end of when they still had smoking and nonsmoking sections. It was awful.
I was born in the early 80s. Yes I remember a time when so many people smoked and indoor smoking was extremely common.
Even children’s places were ok for adults to smoke in. You know on how many arcade bars today they have cup holders bolted onto the machines for people to put their drinks (alcoholic or otherwise)? Back in the 80s and 90s, they had the same thing in many of those arcades… but they were bolted on ashtrays.
I recently sat in a flight with a Boeing so old it still had ashtrays.
I can’t even Imagine this…
Edit: Of course none of them functional or used in any way… Same with the “non smoking” signs next to the “seatbelts” light up thingies on every seat group.
You’re probably talking about a plane so old it had ashtrays in the arm rests. Just as an interesting note, though, the FAA still requires ashtrays on new aircraft. Not in every seat, but they’re required to have one in each lavatory. They are also all required to have the no smoking signage as a constant reminder that there is absolutely no smoking.
Better to have an ashtray than to let someone who needs to light up set the bathroom trash on fire
I don’t get non-smoking signs in many places. Smoking bans have been around for so long that the signs almost feel redundant.
I remember that too!
I quite a pack a day habit 12 years ago and one of the first things I noticed when my sense of taste and smell returned was how aweful smokers smelled when they’d walk into a building after a cigarette. I had thought the smell was off me within maybe 10 minutes but I found out quick that the smell never really goes away. Feels like a previous life thinking I smoked because I can’t see myself ever smoking even a single cig for the rest of my life because it’s so revolting to me now. Oddly enough, however, sometimes I’ll see someone light up a fresh cig in a movie or something and I’ll get this strong 2-3 second craving for a smoke. It’s so strange how even over 12 years since my last one, I still get these strange urges for a cig by seeing someone of TV light one up.
My aunt hasn’t smoked in 40 years and she says she still gets the odd random moment like that, and she was really just a social smoker, it wasn’t a heavy habit for her. It’s funny.
In my Language there is a word for this, roughly translated into “Lung-Hunger”.
It’s not just the Nicotine.
Yeah I’ve got some herbal blend that I’ll roll up every now and again when my brother the smoker comes over, and I kind of get a pang like I’d also like one.
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Yeah, it was weird. Most restaurants had a non-smoking section because allowing people to smoke everywhere was the norm. Leaded gasoline. Little kids playing with real fireworks. The 70s and 80s were a wild ride of irresponsibility.
It wasn’t all bad, though. It was cool being a kid at times. Playing outside almost every day until dinner time with the other kids in the neighborhood.
Don’t forget no cell phones. It’s hard to overstate the (I believe negative) impact constant connection and notification has had on every aspect of our lives
Some boomer on Facebook recently posted a meme with a photo of a rotary phone and how those were better days, and I had to laugh because they decidedly weren’t. When we had no answering machine or call waiting, and had to hang around for phone calls that might come, or have the car break down on the side of the road and hope that someone would stop and help you and that they weren’t a serial killer, that was purely awful. We actually had a serial killer couple abducting and killing teenage girls in my city before cell phones existed, and they made tapes of them raping and torturing these girls before they killed them. A cell phone would probably have helped them a lot. Those girls went through hell, they even raped and ended up accidentally killing her teenage sister.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/paul-bernardo-and-karla-homolka-case
There also weren’t people broadcasting mass shootings live on Facebook and inspiring copycat shootings, or being indoctrinated into incel culture alone in their bedrooms. There are legitimate pros and legitimate cons to 24/7 connection, this isn’t just some “boomer yells at the sky” thing
That’s why I would say that cell phones are fine. It’s when they turned into smartphones where I would draw the line. I just get the feeling that we’d be a lot better off if mobile phone tech never advanced much further than the mid-2000’s flip phone.
Totally agree with this
YES. Flip phones were fine and were enough to handle all the problems mentioned about pre-cellphones. Calls, texts, voice mail. All the new problems mentioned are caused BY smartphones. If the meme showed a Nokia flip phone it would have been perfect.
It’s decidedly worse for mental health. Despite living in the safest times in living memory, we are biased to think our cities are dangerous and economies are failing because of doomscrolling and the dominance of online news.
It’s just I went to one of the victim’s funerals. I’ll never feel nostalgic for those days as a result.
Non smoking section with like an 18 inch wall separating it from the smoking section. My mom almost got into a fistfight at a couple of restaurants for seating us directly next to the smoking section instead of in the opposite corner with less secondhand smoke.
In most restaurants I saw there was no wall in between.
In most restaurants I saw there was no wall in between.
This was my experience as well. I can still see it today in some older restaurants that haven’t been renovated in years, where there’s an area of the dining room with a much higher ceiling.
I have never heard of this. And I’m a smoker and I was alive back then. (Though I was a kid.)
Does the higher ceiling go to the smoking section or the non-smoking section?
And it was usually next to the kitchen and the restrooms. Worst tables all around.
No one can win on this one.
Seat the smokers in back and “oh no, I have to sit next to the kitchen and restroom.”
Seat the smokers in front and “oh no, I have to walk through the smoking section to get to or from my seat, or go to the restroom.”
Or at least that’s how Denny’s was setup in our town.
I don’t know how it was in the U.S., but where I’m from it was like 10% of the seats only, so even if they put it all on good seats, there would still be plenty of good seats for smokers.
As a child of the 70s/80s, although I don’t remember a great deal of the 70s, your parents had no idea where you were until you came home when the streetlights went on, unless you happened to call from a friend’s house to ask if you could sleep over. I remember my friend getting run over by a car which broke her leg because there was no crossing guard on the busy street where the kids had to cross to go to school, and after that they hired one. I lived up the street from the school, and had a cat that went outside, on hot days the front doors were always open and sometimes she’d go nap in the library or show up in my classroom. Then the neighbour who hates animals and had lost his teaching job for exposing himself to students abducted her and dumped her way across town, but someone found her and put an ad in the list and found section of the paper so I got her back.
That poor cat went through so much.
She was happy as can be and loved visiting.
They had smoking/non-smoking sections into the 90s and early 2000s in Texas. I remember very clearly that my parents would have to ask for seats away from the bar if the restaurant had one, because they almost always allowed smoking. Also hotel rooms being smoking/non-smoking, and you could tell when a hotel was cheap and just swapped the door sign.
Little kids playing with real fireworks.
In the early 2000s as teenagers we’d go play in the town with bags of fireworks on new year lmao
From my experience, it’s always been the other way around. There usually were small smoking sections partitioned away from the rest of the restaurant. This was the norm. And it was usually a fraction of the tables compared to the non-smoking sections.
Source: Worked as a server through most of the 80’s-90’s.
Jokes on you. You also didn’t know how bad everyone smelled because you smelled just like them.
It’s totally true, we all smelled terrible.
I still do!
clubbing became pretty smelly after the smoking bans i think it forced most decent clubs to upgrade their AC
My neighbour smokes indoors. When she opens the door, I get the smell you are talking about.
My aunt smoked two packs a day, in the house, and when I visited I had to wear clothes I was ready to throw away, had to strip and shower when I got home, and once in the space of an hour she smoked seven cigarettes and finally one of my eyes swelled shut, and she demanded to know why I didn’t say anything. My husband pointed out the walls were yellow with tobacco, she lived in the house she grew up in and all the furniture was the same as when she was a child. When she died it all had to be junked, despite some of it probably being antique.
When she died it all had to be junked
The tar might have helped it burn better
In the 80s and 90s a cool ash tray was a good gift for literally anyone. Even teenagers since half of them were smoking reefer
It’s true! Making clay ashtrays for your parents in art class was a thing.
My mum kept the triangular one I made her for over 20 years. Still quite proud of it.
As a kid I liked the shitty little ashtrays they had in fast food restaurants. Like McDonald’s. I think they were aluminum and meant to be pretty much disposable. You could play with them like flying saucers. Or a shield for your GI Joe guys. Or if your GI Joe guys were going on vacation in the snow. They were maluable so you could shape them.
Before that, every place had these massive brown glass ashtrays.
Those were good for clubbin people over the head with.
Once in a great while, I have a brain fart and tell the restaurant host “two for non”.
That’s hilarious. Do they stare at you blankly?
Yup!
