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Comment by ViktorRay | Hacker News Reader

It's so strange sometimes watching tv shows and movies from the 90's where you see characters smoking indoors in public places.

Like in Seinfeld you will have episodes where Kramer is smoking in offices....and even in the doctor's clinic! There was an episode where Kramer took out a cigar and smoked in a doctor's waiting room. I thought he would immediately get in trouble but none of the other characters cared.

And then you got movies from back then like Jackie Brown (which is a great movie by the way) where you see character's smoking in a mall cafeteria. A mall! A family friendly environment! And it's considered normal!?!?!? Blows my mind.

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It is hard to overstate how common that was in the nineties, at least here in Spain.

Clouds would come out of family bars and diners when you opened the door. Movie theaters and art galleries would have people smoking inside as it was part of their intellectual aesthetic. During weddings giving out Cuban style cigars as a present was assumed. Schools would not allow it officially, but every bathroom and teacher lounge would clearly smell from the people hiding for a smoke. Same for hospital waiting areas and bathrooms. Trains had smoking and non smoking wagons, which people complained about, feeling smokers were being ostracized. Beaches were full of cigarette buts to the point that accidentally stepping on a not yet cold one was a common concern. Not "going for a smoke" at work was considered socially isolating, and particularly for men saying you don't smoke would lead to others questioning your heterosexuality in a non PC manner. Teenagers would start smoking around the family as a "proof of adulthood" as soon as they had their first part time job to pay for it.

Same in Greece, that came last in banning smoking in closed spaces since the last 5-6 years! Funny thing, now our clothes in taverns don't smell smoke anymore, but meat and garlic.

Coming from an essentially smoke-free country I remember being in Europe 20-odd years ago, going out to dinner with friends, and having everything absolutely reek of stale cigarette smoke afterwards. It was quite a shock when you haven't smelled cigarette smoke for years to go into a restaurant where you could barely see from one end to the other through the haze.

I remember visiting a friend in California which I think was the first place to ban smoking in bars. Anyhow we want to some jazz club and no one was smoking. So weird. And I didn't and don't smoke.

If you had asked me I would have said, nah I don't smoke and I don't like the smell but I get used to it. When I got out of that place I suddenly realized that it I didn't "not like it" it really bugged me. And no, I never really got used to it.

So strange.

It is kind of weird but I have nostalgia for cigarette smoke smell. When I catch someone on the street smoking I take a big whiff.

I will say bars do not smell better now that the cigarette smoke is gone. At least for some dive bars. That smoke was doing some heavy lifting...

In college, we had two bars that still had smoking despite it being banned in our state. The exception was it had to have doors and a completely separate HVAC. One bar had a smoking second story that had most of the pool tables and TVs while downstairs was a more relaxed area. Another bar bought out the building directly behind them and put a door connecting the two buildings.

Hookah bars got wrapped up in the smoking ban too which I think was an overreach. You go to a hookah bar to smoke, you don't go there to watch a game, shoot pool, and have a beer. The one hookah bar in town actually sued the state over it. Because they also sold hookah supplies, they were exempted.

The hookah supply loophole is interesting. I guess that would also explain cigar lounges as these are cigar shops as well. Vegas still also allows it I believe at least in some casinos. Vegas airport had smoking sections last time I connected through there too.

Smoking on airplanes is the one that just seemed like an accident waiting to happen. And yet there were (relatively) few incidents caused by cigarettes.

I heard that air quality on planes was better back then (maybe someone who was alive then can confirm). Because of smoking they had to ventilate the whole aircraft much better. While these days I feel like they are just starving us for oxygen so as to not have to heat up fresh air.

Turns out using less engine bleed air is good for fuel economy, so now it's 50% recirculated HEPA filtered (which does nothing for the co2 contents) air.

How does this work for all-electric planes like the 787?

Nope, not better quality if you don't like the smell of cigarettes.

Lol. I was 14 when I took a long distance international flight on a 747 in 1979. The family was sitting in the “non-smoking section”. I can tell you for a fact that the air quality in that plane was terrible. Possibly because a number of passengers in the non-smoking section still deigned to smoke. Whaddaya do eh?

There seems to be a door smoker effect to this day, where smokers are drawn to smoke just inside of the areas you aren't supposed to smoke.

It's an addiction, they're compelled to smoke, and so at the edges of the area they'll light up.

That's how the Kings Cross Fire started. Escalator full of potential fuel, smoker drops a used match, it falls inside the machine, fire. It wasn't legal technically to be smoking on that escalator, but it would have been legal in a few paces so "everybody" did it. The investigators found signs that such fires had likely started or almost started many times before, the disaster was just that this time it burned for long enough to create a pool of extremely hot gas flowing up the inclined ceiling for the escalator, and we got to discover the Trench Effect in the least fun way possible.

I flew to Japan from US in the "non smoking section" and which the smoking section started in the row immediately behind me... A woman smoked in the seat behind me most of the trip.

Old person here. I think it's really hard to convey the extent to which smoke literally permeated everything. It's not just the immediate air quality aspects of it, but there was just a residue on all the surfaces, every cushion and fabric held onto the stuff.

I can recall the week that no-smoking indoors at restaurants/bars passed and it was literally shocking to walk into a place and not have it be hazy. It really felt weird.

Anyway, air quality + quality of life was much worse. Sometimes the future does get better.

Another old person here. At an office in Zurich I saw a layer of smoke filling the upper reaches of the atrium. I wondered how many working (i.e. smoking) hours it would take before it reached the balcony on which I was standing.

except for the dance bars. Dear lord the sweat smell during the transition was bizarre. It as always masked thanks to the smell of smoke. I think a lot places had to start thinking about adding nice parfumes, because almost at the end of that first year of zero tolerance inside bars, it was 'solved'.

I had also heard that during regular aircraft inspections, the residue from cigarette smoke made small cracks and such in the airframe obvious.

Today that sounds to me like urban folklore (or Big Tobacco folklore).

The airplanes were awful, usually with silly little signs stuck in some seats to designate the switchover which the smoke didn't seem to respect. I was in a train brought back to service from smoking times a few years ago and the stench still emanating from the fabric seats brought back those memories right away.

Or smoking a cigar in an oxygen rich spacecraft cabin, as per the opening scene of the original Planet of the Apes (released in Feb 1968, after the Apollo 1 fire in Jan 1967).

Even the hindenburg had a smoking lounge! Included a bunch of extra tech to make that less dangerous in a giant explosive balloon.

https://www.airships.net/hindenburg-smoking-room/

I like how they still have the ash trays in the bathroom. I get it, throwing the heater into the paper towel trash is a recipe for disaster. But still, the idea of taking a poop in this tiny little uncomfortable bathroom with 5 people waiting for you and sitting there demolishing an entire cigarette while you do it is sort of hilarious in its desperation.

I remember flying back then. I was young, and for some reason I got moved to First Class, wow!

But planes back then had smoking and non-smoking.

And the "first class row" behind me was smoking.

So imagine I was in first class row 3, and the people in first class row 4 were smoking.

I felt like I should try to go back to coach row 18 or whatever, which was probably 10 rows away from smoking in 28.

The Sixties where the time!

in the office: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/14040813590...

in university: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1315981/mediaviewer/rm154904524...

in airplanes: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/15032513024...

If you think that's strange. I remember work places with all kinds of alcohol, weed and live music.

A friend of mine from Yugoslavia described their lunchroom looking like a grand Caffe with walls full of strong liquor, various kinds of beer on the tap. They started drinking beer at 11 am in the sun in front of the building and kept going till 1-3 am (often talking about work!). He often slept on the sofa and didn't go home for weeks. His boss was always the first to arrive and was happy he wasn't the only one there. Sleeping at work showed a high level of dedication.

"You're too young to smoke. You're going to set this whole place on fire."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma_XNn1bwOM

https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/2620/how-do-they-...

We used to hang out in the smoking section of diners at 2am with friends slugging down coffee and chain smoking. The whole smoking section was packed with the rest of the place empty.

In a way I miss it because it was such a social thing to do. I have zero interest in smoking any more but the rituals around it were nice

But everyone knows they're healthy! It's a herbal remedy taken bronchially as an inhumnation, as this video by Dr.Fry indicates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XewVicFzRxw

I can remember there used to be a tube train set aside for smokers.

Sometimes it was thick with smoke and the walls would have tar.

After the Oxford St, Kings Cross Tube station fires, along with the Bradford stadium fire in the 80s they thought that safety could be improved a tad.

Personally, I like my air fresh.

You don't have to go back 30 years to see it. Just take a shared taxi in Sumatra. Most of the men and some women will be smoking. Inside the car. With the windows closed. Sitting next to babies and young children.

I was recently watching some TV show and there was this one scene in maternity hospital. The doctor(!) was smoking while talking to the main character. Insane for today's standards.

Like last year at a cafe in a small town somewhere in Greece.

You make it sound like indoor smoking in public places is a thing of a past.

You can still smoke indoors in public places in many places in the world

I remember transatlantic flights with smoking sections

The day they introduced non smoking (late nineties?) a friend of mine found out as the aeroport. He made a big stink, canceled his ticket and booked a new flight for Amsterdam - NYC with the only company still allowing smoking: Aeroflot.

He spent the better part of a day, flying via Moscow.

The next time he had to fly he grudgingly accepted it.

Sometimes even Shaw's unreasonable man has to come to terms with defeat.

The last hold out in the UK was the offices of BAT (British American Tobacco). They had ashtrays, spittoons and untold free cigarettes for their staff to help themselves to.

To spice it up a bit, they had lots of cigarettes to try from developing markets. Sometimes these had extra flavour that appealed to the smoker, so more nicotine and tar.

They had this 70s style going on in the early 2000s, at a time when smoking had been outlawed from enclosed public spaces plus lots of outdoor spaces such as sports grounds and train platforms.

Out of the 70s context, the dedication to normalising smoking in the BAT offices made the place sound like more of a cult. I did not work there myself but I had a friend that did. He didn't smoke once he left the 'cult'.

I feel like I was brainwashed so much harder by the anti-smoking and anti-tobacco lobby (i.e. state Departments of Health) over smoking in media. This is probably why it all disappeared...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Check_(program)

New York schools statewide constantly were and are bombarded with constant media and FUD that the single moment you see someone light a cigarette, that's marketing.

obviously it is marketing - it’s why cigarettes became popular in the first place. They had a “cool” factor. And most people are sheep so…makes sense?

Airplane!, 1980.

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