At an outdoor cafe in Pacific Beach, Ryan Sims is passed the pipe. Taking the mouthpiece, he sucks in the sweet scent, then pauses a moment. The 23-year-old exhales white wisps of strawberry, raspberry and pineapple.
"It's like smoking perfume," laughs his friend, Jaclyn Markle, 20.
In Egypt, it's called a sheesha. In Turkey, it's called a nargile. In California clubs and nightspots, it's called a hookah. Common throughout the Middle East where it originated several hundred years ago, the water pipe is popping up in American restaurants, coffeehouses and bars.
Many of the people lighting up are young--some still teens, most college age--and include not only those who smoke other tobacco products but those who consider themselves nonsmokers. Unlike smoking cigarettes, traditional pipes and cigars, smoking a hookah is a communal experience--more akin to the Native American tradition of passing a peace pipe than grabbing a smoke to satisfy a nicotine craving.
Many users say that the flavored tobacco is easier to inhale than that in cigarettes. The preferred pipe of the caterpillar in "Alice in Wonderland," water pipes call for a leisurely pull, and by the time the smoke is filtered through the water chamber and a long tube and hits the lungs, it is cool. Variations on the water pipe theme--especially the bong--have long been a staple of the head shops that count pot and hashish smokers among their clientele. But, for the generation currently discovering the pipes, this is not about using illegal drugs--though it is a way to toy with one of the symbols of that culture as well as sample a mild-tasting tobacco.
On a recent Friday night in Pasadena, Rachel Lesky, 25, smoked a hookah for the first time at an outside table--smoking being prohibited nearly everywhere indoors--at Equator coffeehouse. Though she is allergic to cigarette smoke, the fumes from the mixed fruit tobacco didn't bother her. "It's really mellow and very calming," Lesky said. A few tables over, a half-dozen high school students shared a hookah. The group usually gathers at the coffeehouse once a week to smoke and socialize. "I don't like the taste of cigarettes," said a La Canada 18-year-old who ordered a hookah and was sharing it with friends who were not old enough to buy tobacco, which is to say, under 18. "You don't even feel it ... It's a great social event."
