I loved hookah. I loved Hookah Bars. I loved using pine-orange-banana or passion-fruit juice instead of water, in my hookah. Grape was a delicious, favorite flavor of Shisha. To make our evenings of hookah more communicative, we would add a little extreme to the party. Instead of just having a hookah party, we may have a vodka-hookah party; or we may have a saki-hookah party.
One party I remember was almost our entire floor. Three of the six apartments on the floor decided we could connect and just leave our doors open. Call it an open-floor-concept. Alcohol, shisha, and one of the apartments was the herb center for those who chose to go that path.
There must have be 45 people meandering throughout the top floor of our building. Never failed, our building manager showed up to limit the noise. He honestly did not mind of our open-floor-concept, just the noise level had to be controlled. He was offered a tall-boy PBR. Situation controlled. Other than him creeping out three, maybe four females, he was harmless and we decided he could chill for a while. When he entered apartment 406, his level of "chillaxin" intensified.
406 was the apartment with two lovely ladies; whose names I cannot recall. They had a two bedroom, one bedroom having quite the large closet space. You could fit a few random pieces of electrical furniture; likely lamps. For all their skill in swaying of gentlemen with their soft words (and breasts), they were evicted in a few months.
Back to hookah. Before I owned my own hookah we would frequent hookah bars. Hookah bars were great, lazy, usually middle-easternesqe locations, where you simply paid a small fee per person and smoked hookah all night. The establishments sometimes had strict rules, such as no alcohol (even if of age), or nothing in a hookah, but water and Shisha. Despite it all, we still enjoyed the atmosphere.
Washington state decided that every public building, or even covering, was to (unjustly) be smoke free. Thirty feet from any entrance to said public locale; that was the distance you must be before you light up. In parts of downtown Seattle, legally, you must stand in the middle of the road to reach said distance. Hogwash! To make it worse, what are hookah bars, but a place to smoke? They even smoke all natural, no 2000 chemical tobacco; which may not be healthy, but for sure is no Marb reds. Hookah bars would be no more, especially in the city; where it is too easy for an over-staffed Seattle PD to enforce such an unconstitutional declaration.
Hookah bars, were not the only businesses infected by this blister on the hand of the law. Cigar clubs; some of which being in the city for 100 years; most of which being a membership-only establishment; would also be closed. If you pay for a membership, to a cigar club, I am pretty sure you (and everyone else there) will be smoking; willingly. I understand the law is to help reduce second-hand smoke, and blah blah blah; but all that particular law has done is help shut down businesses. I can sense a second go at Prohibition; if at least in Seattle.
So once hookah bars were removed from the vicinity of my studio; we decided it was time to step-up and smoke ourselves. We researched, and budgeted, and soon enough I had purchased a handsome (I recently named him "Chet"), black and gun metal in color, two-hose hookah, standing 3.5 feet. Game-on Washington State.
I researched enough, and decided just to practice the art to get perfect smoke. It was relatively inexpensive to smoke; with the addition of juice costs rose, but the value of the juice proved worthy of our Lincolns. We even tried vodka in with the juice, which had no inebriational value, but added an extra twang to the taste. One day, I will smoke the hookah again; though my current employment doesn't disallow the use, it is not only a suspicious item to have in a barracks, and does impede physical fitness performance.
I recommend, if you have not, to try the hookah. A Million Jews and Muslims cannot be wrong about this staple device.
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