Category: Hookah How To

Laws Forbidding Hookah Smoking Differ

Why is it that in some states you can puff away inside, and in others it is illegal? I spent much of the last two years in Arizona where you can sit inside and smoke all you want without a problem. The laws there don’t allow cigarettes inside, but they make an exception for hookahs. On the other hand, now that I’m in Poughkeepsie, New York, there aren’t really any hookah bars, and the one that is trying the take off… Zorona cafe in Arlington NY… can’t seem to get the city to OK it.

So, my question is, why the huge difference? I know state laws can be ignorant sometimes, but if you want to go into a hookah lounge, then you are taking your health in your own hands. Let people mandate themselves!

As a side note, there are some hookah bars in NYC that still allow smoking hookahs inside and just hope the health department doesn’t come around. I’d like to see that more often.

Going out to the Hookah BAR

It’s the end of a long week. Lots of work. I started a job and had to quit within two days because the food was awful. I can’t work at a restaurant that serves awful food. To boot, the food took forever to come out and the kitchen looked like a disaster area. Sadly, I signed something (tricky lawyers) when I started working there that forbids me from saying where it is. Let me just tell you that it is a BIG corporate restaurant giant. It’s good to stay away from those places….

Anyways, after a long week of work, I am good and ready to go to the hookah bar. I may work on this bottle of tequila I found in the back of my freezer first. Lord knows that a bit of hookah AFTER Tequila can make it a whole new experience. It adds a dimension of craziness. Also, (however this isn’t as well known) a bit of Turkish Coffee can get you going almost as well.

Those Turks surely know what they are doing.

Two Men Making Hookahs Out of Coconuts (People partied before electricity)

Two Men making hookahs out of coconuts

In this painting two men are making coconuts into hookah-bases. The origin of the hookah, narghile, sheesha, hubble-bubble or water-pipe device is uncertain; it is believed to have started in India, but with coconut shells as containers. Aromatic and medicinal herbs were smoked before the arrival of tobacco in the Indian sub-continent 500 years ago. The sophisticated version, widely used in Africa and Asia, developed with the spread of Turkish coffee-houses to smoke a compound of tobacco, spices, molasses and fruit. Charcoal embers heat the substances, smoke is inhaled through a mouthpiece attached to a hose after passing through a pipe and container filled with water, which refines and cools it. The containers, once of coconut shell, are now elaborate and of glass or metal. The term ‘narghile’ is from Persian while ‘hookah’ is from Arabic denoting a rounded casket. Hookahs were a common feature of 19th century European dining in India with hookahburdars, or hookah-bearers, tending the hookahs. It was a breach of etiquette to step over another’s hookah-carpet or hookah-snake.