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Comment by shon | Hacker News Reader

When I was a 20-something big-4 consultant traveling weeks on end for work, I took up smoking for exactly the reasons you suggest. I had nothing to do in my down time and knew nobody, but I could sit in hotel bar with a smoke and strangers would trail over.

Yep, I’m old enough to have been working when you could still smoke in hotel bars. In Monaco you could order a pack of Marlboro Reds at your dinner table back in 2006.

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Some +20 years ago one day at a local radio show there was the daily topic about how people went into smoking. One guy called and told that he had to go everyday early to his classes at uni and before going in there was a kind of convenience store where people piled up and asked for a hot coffee and a cigarette.

But the thing is that, according to him, it was a lot. Lots of people went in and asked for the same thing, a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

Allegedly he went into smoking because he got so used to hear people saying "one cup of coffee and a cigarette, please" for so long that one day he, unconsciously, asked for the same.

Some of us are old enough to remember smoking sections on planes. (And yes it works out exactly as bad as you’d expect it … great way to past time on a transatlantic flight though!)

Yes! I remember. It was bad lol.

A different time. I remember the first question from the host at a restaurant being "smoking or non?"

I love going to restaurants that were built when smoking indoors was a thing and trying to figure out where the smoking section (or non-smoking section in older places) used to be. There are a few bars around that still have smoking sections in my area but the requirements are more stringent now (closed room, seperate air handling system).

One of my favorite bars in college allowed smoking upstairs (and still does, although how many college kids actually smoke?). I really do miss having a cigarette in one hand and a frosty beer in the other.

The good ole days ;)

In San Francisco, you can still find buildings where the elevators have ashtrays, though usually the actual tray is gone.

By FAA regulations, commercial flights can't take off in the US without functioning ashtrays in the restrooms.

Apparently the thought is: better a smoking cheater stubbing it out in the loo ashtray than hiding a burning ember in the seat backs.

Old enough!? I'm old enough to remember that and I'm only... nearly 40, damn.

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