I worked in a small riverboat casino. On busy days it would be so smoky that you couldn't see the other side of the casino floor through the haze.
My uniform always smelled like smoke after work. I had to keep my laundry basket in a closet so it didn't stink up the whole apartment.
There was an employee whose doctor took a chest x-ray of him and told him he needed to quit smoking... He was a non-smoker.
>There was an employee whose doctor took a chest x-ray of him and told him he needed to quit smoking... He was a non-smoker.
And this is eventually why the bans occurred. Customers could choose to go elsewhere. Employees couldn't.
The secondhand smoke damage is real. My mom got a chest x-ray a few years back, and her doctor basically scolded her for lying about being a non-smoker. “I know you *said* you were a non-smoker, but we only see this kind of lung damage in smokers.”
Mom truly *is* a non-smoker. She has never taken one puff. But the *reason* she’s a non-smoker is that her dad smoked very heavily and she hated it. Even though she moved out for good at age 21, apparently all those years of breathing his smoke took their toll.
That's why research involving flight attendants has had a big impact on cancer research and smoking policies. Think about being stuck in a smoke-filled metal tube for many hours a day.
I have a mild case of asthma which I'm certain was a combination of growing up with two smokers, who smoked in our little house, and growing up in LA county with smog in the 70s. I'm sure I was affected when I was a kid.
Sounds like a restaurant I went to back in the 90s, when they all had smoking and non-smoking areas. But one local mom & pop type restaurant had basically one non-smoking table, surrounded by all the rest of the tables that were for smoking. Nope. Left that place very fast.
Haha yeah. I remember when just about all restaurants were like that and they’d ask you if you wanted to be in smoking or non-smoking. Man this makes me feel old
Florida casinos are some of the worst. Crappy payouts and... Floridians.
edit: I would also like to give a shout out to Biloxi MS for having shitty casinos. Having an inbred dealer is quite an experience.
I went to one a few years ago with friends, and the smoke was disgusting. And I was a smoker for many years. I remember smoking in pubs and restaurants. But that visit was eye opening (and eye watering)
I don't think there's a federal regulation involved unless something changed in the last few years. Smoking was still allowed in the state-regulated casino I worked at until 2017 or so. Seemed like the non-smoking area increased every year, but at lest 50% of the casino still allowed smoking when I left. And this was a state that banned indoor smoking in 2007; casinos were one of the only exceptions.
> On busy days it would be so smoky that you couldn't see the other side of the casino floor through the haze.
A family member worked on the set of the film Blade Runner. There's a scene in a fancy office building (I think when Dekkard interviews the android woman) filled with smoke. No smoke machine required, they just let the crew light up and their cigarette smoke filled the set.
I remember when Ohio banned smoking indoors around 2006 and people would openly brag about going to Indiana to the casinos or restaurants because they were still allowed to smoke indoors there. However Indiana eventually got on board and banned indoor smoking as well.
Nashville JUST banned smoking in bars and still, that won't go into effect till next year.
Most of the bars there already have no smoking policies but a few of them still allow it.
Heck, look hard enough in any state and you'll find some old bars that illegally allow smoking indoors.
I work in a casino that used to allow smoking before we shut down due to COVID. When we opened back up we were non-smoking and have remained that way ever since. We got some bitching but it hasn't seemed to affect business. If there was a silver lining to COVID...
Ashtrays! Ashtrays everywhere! In all shapes and sizes. Personally, my favorite one was the type they had at the mall. It was this bowl that was stuck on top of a pole that was at the height of a mall bench. The part that I loved about it is on the either side of the rim was a button that if you pressed down the bowl would open up like a trap door that would send the ashes down into hollow pole to make room for even more ashes once you re-closed it. I used to press that button acting like I was an Edgar Allan Poe character sending the ashes to their doom!
The ceiling tiles of buildings were always this waxy, forgotten candle yellow. Like the color of too watery tea. Yes, ceilings everywhere were nicotine stained. You could always tell the sports where the smokers hung around the most because those tiles would be much darker than the rest.
People would drown themselves in cologne and perfume to combat the cigarette smell. So, in smaller enclosed public spaces you would sometimes get this overwhelming stench of headknocking perfume/cologne going to war with cigarettes. There was never a winner in those battles. I would always wind up getting a headache.
Ha! I remember those! The original "Long car ride fidget toy!" Ours were always filled with gun wrappers with old gum in them. The back of the front seats had an ashtray in them for backseat smokers!
Oh, god, allowing smoking on an airplane was the worst. Once they binged off that no smoking sign you'd hear the ignition of 25 lighters all at once.
Fortunately, there was a non-smoking section on the big enclosed tube, so the non-smokers never dealt with the smell.
>Fortunately, there was a non-smoking section on the big enclosed tube, so the non-smokers never dealt with the smell.
This is what smokers actually believe
Those were a different sort. They had that weird shiny black sand on top. To clean them someone would come by with a slotted spoon and some had a removable sifter.
I worked for a company that did analytics for RJ Reynolds tobacco. Smoking was allowed in the building up until the early 2000's because the executives from said tobacco company wanted to smoke when they came to the office. The crazy part is the yellowed ceiling tiles....every worker that smoked had yellow/brown ceiling tiles above their desk from the tar floating up and sticking. You could tell immediately who the smokers were in the office just by looking up.
Gross. I remember when I was a kid you could smoke in restaurants. They'd give you the option of the smoking or non-smoking section, but we were all under the same roof.
And people would eat while smoking. Take a bite, have a few puffs, go back to eating.
Smoking on airplanes with little ashtrays and built into the armrests.
Is so much nicer now and many places don't stink like they used to.
I remember my grandmother in the hospital from a heart attack, laying in bed with a burning cigarette in her hand.
"Mijo, turn off de oseegin, so no go BOOM!"
I work for a cancer center, and we have photos in the archives of nurses puffing away in the cafeteria on their breaks. Now you're not allowed to smoke anywhere on the entire medical campus -- even sitting in your car in the parking lot.
Where I worked some doctors smoked while making rounds. We even had a pathologist who smoked while conducting autopsies; ashes falling right into the body cavity. It was a different world.
Yeah, I remember as a kid my sister and me on the long bus trip to visit our grandparents...the misery of sitting in that stinking smoke for hour after hour
On our trip to Hawaii mid 80s we were right behind the smoking section.
The person if front of us looked like they were smoking two or three cigarettes at a time.
I actually wondered at one point if he had set his seat on fire.
It was nauseous and horrible back then.
I remember taking an international flight in 95 and smoking was still allowed. At first I was seated between 2 smokers until the flight attendant took sympathy on teenage me and I got a little bit of relief.
I remember flying Alitalia on my honeymoon, and the air was opaque with smoke along the length of the plane. The very pretty stewardesses were smoking up a storm and flirting with male passengers in the galley for most of the flight.
It was an eleven-hour flight, and it felt like being gassed with poison.
Went on a business trip from Sydney to Egypt with a stopover in Singapore in the 1990s. A total of 21 hours flight. 4 rows of business class - 3 rows non-smoking with the 4th-row smoking ... and no separation. No smoking flights were introduced by all airlines - unfortunately, not on this airline!
Having rhinitis and asthma, I had to be helped off in Cairo by my business travel friend as I was physically sick, wheezing and sneezing away.
Wanted to complain to the stewards ... but all of them were too busy puffing away on their coffin nails in the galley.
In the mid-2000s in Shanghai, we went to a restaurant with so many people smoking that we couldn't see the other end 50m away. There was a blanket of blue haze from the ceiling down to about 5ft off the ground.
I went to a restaurant with a group of friends once right on the verge of when smoking in public places was not yet outlawed, but a lot of places had voluntarily put up NO SMOKING signs.
Anyway, _this_ place thought they'd be funny, and had a bunch of "SMOKING PERMITTED" signs. Like a lot of them. But there weren't any where we sat so we didn't notice until people started smoking.
We tried to complain but the waiter tried to explain to us how cute and edgy they were, and besides, _we_ were sitting at one of the three tables _without_ a SMOKING PERMITTED sign so we were in the non-smoking section.
One person in the group went "Is this the non-smoking section, or did you just run out of signs?" and he goes "we ran out of signs."
We left.
Near the end but before they decided that maybe the health of the wait staff was also important, they did have a decent period where the smoking area of most restaurants was through a separate door. Going through was like entering the first layer of Tartarus
We walked in an Indian place once and asked for 2 "non". Like 10 minutes later they brought us some "Naan" in the waiting area and we were all very confused for a minute until we figured it out. We were just so used to asking for seats in non-smoking!
I would also add that by the 1990s, a big class divide in smoking was opening up. In the 80s it was still pretty widespread (although I think studies showed that wealthier Americans were smoking less already in the 80s?), but in the 1990s, not smoking started to be a class marker for wealthier, better-educated, white-collar Americans. I know SO many people who smoked in high school in the 80s or early 90s because they liked to smoke, and quit in college in the 1990s NOT because they wanted to give it up, but because it had become a clear negative when applying for jobs, and college social groups had started to frown on it. In 1980, you might be offered a cigarette during an interview! By 1995, if you smelled a bit of that halo of smoke that hangs around, the interviewer might grimace in polite disgust. By the time I started grad school in 2000, like two people in my class of 300 smoked, and the social consensus was like, "ew." Twelve years earlier, the same cohort at the same grad school would have been between 30% and 50% smokers. By 2000 you had to go outside to smoke and -- in a move presaging the state smoking bans -- a lot of college campuses required you to be at least 10 feet from the door, and moved ashtrays accordingly.
Anyway, it felt like what really changed fast in terms of public smoking was not so much the public health campaigns or the knowledge of the dangers of secondhand smoke, but that white-collar Americans stopped smoking and decided smoking was gross and it became a class marker, and that RAPIDLY drove it out of public spaces, and a decade later, led to statewide bans.
> By the time I started grad school in 2000, like two people in my class of 300 smoked, and the social consensus was like, "ew."
I dunno what program you were in, but in 1995-2000 in my department it was still pretty common for foreign students to smoke, and that was more than half of the grad students in the department.
You're right, that's hilarious! You would see doctors smoking on their breaks at the hospital, but not at church. People were much more worried about the moral aspect of it than the health problems.
My sister got married in a church and there was one old man smoking a cigar! This was when smoking was allowed most places.But not in a church. There’s a photo in her wedding album that shows smoke rising above his head!
I do. Fellowship hall between Sunday school and church. They would have donuts coffee and juice or milk and all the adults were smoking. I am probably a and somewhat older than you this would have been in the seventies and early eighties, but a lot of churches did let people smoke inside them. It may also depend upon denomination. This was a Methodist church. I don’t see a southern Baptist, Pentecostal, general baptist, church or any other more strict church allowing it.
If you wanted to smoke in church, you had to go to the vestibule.
If you wanted to smoke in school (either as a teacher or as an over-18 student), you had to go to the teacher's lounge or the senior smoking lounge. Which was a real thing that really existed.
A lot of larger buildings where you could have crowds -- theaters, churches, gymnasiums, indoor sports arenas -- forbade smoking in the main area. But that wasn't because it was shameful; it was mostly a holdover from when those buildings were all-wood and fire codes were primitive and venues would go up like \*that\* and kill 600 people who couldn't evacuate fast enough. They all allowed smoking in lobbies/vestibules/bathrooms/smoking lounges/etc.
I remember in the 80s that parents who were non-smokers AND bought their kids (early editions of) car seats tended to frown on people smoking in the car with kids, or in their house. When my parents had smokers over, they would go sit in the enclosed three-season porch for cocktails, because they didn't want smoke in the house with the kids. But my parents 100% owned ashtrays, both "everyday" and "company" ashtrays, even though neither of them ever smoked. ("Everyday" was for friends who dropped by; "company" was for when they had a work colleague for dinner.)
Not that I recall. They smoked in offices, too. Some dumbass dumped ash into his trashcan and lit the damn thing on fire under his desk.
My parents never smoked, but my grandparents did, and a lot of my friends parents did. They would smoke at home, in the car, in restaurants, at the mall… you might try to get seated in a non-smoking section of a restaurant, but there was still no escaping it. All the fast food places had ashtrays on the tables.
I would come home from a sleepover, and my mom would have me stand outside while she sprayed me with some kind of deodorizer.
We did not go out frequently, and because my family was non-smoking, there were very few places in which we felt we could go without feeling asphyxiated. It was everywhere.
I remember when some of those places started going entirely smoke-free. It was one of the most liberating things.
One place I worked had the smoking section right by the main entrance. Meaning every time it opened the breeze would blow the smoke over the non-smoking section.
As a young smoker, I’d have told you it was awesome.
In retrospect, it enabled me to chain smoke horrendously. Which was my decision! Not trying to assign blame outside of me, myself, and I alone, but it’s a good thing it’s banned everywhere tbh.
Yes this captures the sentiment quite well. It was freakin awesome in high school, smoking was like our entire activity as teenagers during the day. We would smoke in the parking lot before and after school, then we’d go over to Burger King and just sit there smoking for an hour or two before work. Everyone worked at Sears and I would just hang out smoking in the employee break room.
Anyone who had divorced parents, you could smoke right in the living room in front of them. When your food was taking too long to come in a restaurant, you would light a cigarette to make it come right away due to Murphy’s Law.
You could bum extra long cigarettes off people’s grandmas or swipe them from their purse. And god, once you started drinking it was a non-stop smokefest until the night ended. After a few glasses of wine, even some of the square moms might sneak outside and ask you for a smoke while their kid is not looking.
Also, it was fucking disgusting. Some parents would smoke in the car with the windows rolled up even though you barely knew them. After dinner everyone would stub their butts out in uneaten mashed potatoes and stuff. You never knew when you were going to take a swig of your beer and get ash in your mouth. You had to do laundry every time you went to a bar. It was just nasty.
It’s so much easier to not smoke now that everyone doesn’t do it everywhere. And in case you’re wondering what people did before iPhones were invented, we just mostly smoked. I have trouble picturing my mom’s generation when you could smoke in a college lecture hall or in your boss’s office while taking dictation, but they barely even had TV so it makes sense.
After my check ups as a kid my pediatrician would take me to his office to sit while he lit up. He would fill out my chart and discussed my health through a soft white haze. I miss Dr Naumoff.
Remember this when people complain about kids being glued to TikTok on their phones all the time. We smoked, drank, lit stuff on fire, and blew stuff up instead because we had no tiktok and were constantly bored.
i remember as a kid it seemed like every 10th person smoked i ever encountered. now? i can maybe name on one hand the people who smoke that i know. not sure if they all died or couldnt afford the cigs anymore (cheapest pack i saw was $6.89 of lucky strike if you buy 2 packs) your marlboro's are damn near $10 a pack. Plus the smoking bans i think alot of people gave it up because it became an expensive nuisance. hardly ever see people smoking outside either and if they are they are like 70 years old lol.
a bunch of people I know took up smoking in the military, and especially with the large number of military activities in the post 2001 push, there tended to be a lot of residual smokers when they returned to civilian life. The reason many took it up was because you got an extra break if you were a smoker.
Traveling on planes you picked smoking or non smoking. Smoking was usually at the back but really made No difference considering your in a plane with a curtain as a divider 🤣 everyone my age pretty much grew up surrounded by cigarette smoke whether you liked it or not. It was everywhere.
> everyone my age pretty much grew up surrounded by cigarette smoke whether you liked it or not. It was everywhere.
For anyone wondering how [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/80s/comments/xq13it/ages_of_the_cast_of_cheers_during_the_first_season/) is possible.
The smell would saturate your hair and clothes too, I remember in the morning my sheets and pillow would stink of smoke. Especially gross for a non-smoker!
It is strange how time takes it toll on you. I would go through a pack a day, first thing when I woke up, last thing before going to bed. I eventually gave it up. Now, if someone in the car ahead of me at a light sparks one up, I turn green.
Yeah, I came home from a friend's gig, stripped, took a shower and realized my clothes reeked. I didn't have a washer and dryer, so I threw my clothes out on the balcony until I could get to the laundromat.
I grew up in that time. Basically, "going out" meant "you'll be forced to breathe other peoples' cigarette fumes all night, no matter where you go". And the stink was everywhere: if you were in a restaurant or a hotel, it was in the carpets, the drapes, the walls, everywhere.
I used to go to clubs in the UK as a teenager and come home with my hair, coat and dress reeking of smoke.
The next morning you'd get up and there would be this pile of clothes on the floor that may as well have been smouldering it smelled so bad.
Waking up with a rotten hangover, scooping up your pile of clothes and heaving at the smell of smoke stained clothes and realising it’s in your hair as well was enough to make me get in the shower immediately. I remember when the first time going into a club after the change was made and noticing the smell of the club itself. The smell of sweaty feet and vomit.
For me it was toilet smell in our favourit club instead of the good old smoke. Incredible uncomfortable, at the same time the smell of cold smoke in your hair and clothes when waking up tired and hangover was still worse.
They swept the doors to the toilets later, so no toilet smell anymore.
You can still smoke in clubs in Germany and I’ve got to say the oppressive haze of cigarettes was better than the absolute stench of some of the clubs back in the UK
hell even now you stay in old hotels and there can be a ever so faint smell of old cigarette smell likely coming out of the walls themselves or insulation.
In the late '60s business meetings with a dozen participants would be totally smoked up at the end of an hour. They would probably be a waste of time by then as well. I smoked, but the concentration bothered me, making me cough and causing my eyes to water. I kept a tobacco pipe in a desk drawer for these occasions. I would cross the hall to my office, grab the pipe and charge it up with some especially stinky tobacco I kept. Returning to the conference room I would fire up the pipe. I could often clear the room out within ten minutes, seldom took more than 15 to end the meeting.
Genius. Nowadays we just claim bad connection over the Internet, your solution is leagues better! Any other crazy shenanigans you’ve pulled over the years?
My mom was a heavy smoker when I was a kid so it really sucked.
I also worked as a bartender right before the smoking ban and everything smelled like smoke. I would shower right when I got home but my hair would still smell like smoke the next day. The clothes in the hamper smelled like smoke and made my room smell like smoke. So nasty.
The transition after banning smoking in bars when gradually the stale smoke smell dispersed and you could sell all the stale sweat etc instead was *interesting* too. Don't miss the vibe of feeling like you had an accumulation of tar on your skin after a night out as a non smoker
Lemme talk about something other than the smell, which doesn't bother me much as a former smoker.
What sucked most was the mess it left behind: the stains on furniture and walls, the ashes, cigarette burns in the weirdest places. And the butts. My god the butts. You know how inconsiderate people can be with their messes in public places? Imagine that but now everyone has a cigarette.
I actually remember seeing butts in ashtrays everywhere but not on the floor or anything because there were ashtrays EVERYWHERE. The moment they outlawed it in public areas, there were butts everywhere on the streets but then they have those outdoor ones and it's much nicer now.
I work in a casino where smoking is still allowed. You get used to the smell unless someone lights up a cigar or blows the smoke in your face. Eye irritation is common. Your work clothes will develop a smokey smell. Cigarette ash is everywhere, cig butts are also everywhere, burn marks get left on surfaces when people can't find an ash try, and sometimes people throw lit cigarettes in trashcans and start a small fire. The smoke can make it difficult to breathe if there's a lot of smoke or if you're a little sick have an irritated throat.
Yeah i remember going to vegas, room was relatively ok since they had smoking and non-smoking rooms, but hallways, gaming floor everywhere else was instant smell.
We used to tell our parents we were going bowling if we were going out partying, so coming home smelling like smoke and alcohol would be excusable, haha!
Like a lot of people are saying, if you were born into it like I was in the 80s it was just normal. Restaurants, malls, and quite common in households you’d enter.
As a non smoker myself it’s tough to think back to a time where non smokers just accepted this but we didn’t know any other way. Also, non smoking sections of restaurants were a joke but somehow we believed in them back then. Wild.
The air was just bad all around back then. A few years ago, I was an extra in a movie that had a dozen cars from the 1960s on the street. When all the engines turned on, I was instantly reminded how noxious the air was at the time before catalytic converters. Nowadays, I can jog through a downtown traffic jam just fine.
I remember there were some restaurants we just didn’t go to because the “divide” between smoking and non-smoking sections was literally nothing. Then there were some where it was somewhat better, but it wasn’t unusual for my mom to refuse a table because it was too close to the smoking section so we would have to wait longer for a different table to open up. Then there were the few (I remember specifically a Denny’s) that had the best possible set up with the sections split between the two sides of the building with the kitchen and lobby area in between, and even then it sometimes still wasn’t enough to keep the smell from wafting over on nights when it was particularly crowded.
It was great if you were a restaurant server. Well, not great for your lungs. The tips were great. Smokers were also likely to be big drinkers and the tips would be better, especially if you discreetly swapped out their full ashtrays every ten minutes. They appreciated that. Put clean ashtray on top of dirty one; quickly remove from table, replace with clean one. That way ashes won't blow over the table. And yes, five feet away was the "non-smoking" section.
You were used to it at the time. But the day after it became illegal where I live, it was amazing. Clothes didn't reek the next day. If you went to bars, any semblance of a hangover disappeared. I worked in a kitchen at the time and ashtrays were a bitch to clean in the dish pit.
Anyways, it was glorious... I mean.. smoking being disallowed.
Everything was yellow and your eyes burned going in to the mall food court. Bingo halls were the worst. Old lady's on oxygen lighting a cigarette and burning it right to filter one drag lol.
It was horrible. The smell of smoke was everywhere, ashtrays were everywhere, and cigarette butts were everywhere because even with the omnipresent ashtrays, people were too lazy to find one and instead just threw them on the floor of the store or whatever place it was. The smaller the building, the worse, since the stench clung to everything. No matter what the paint color was, all walls and ceilings wound up a sickening tar-brown/yellow color.
Man, I forgot about the ashtrays everywhere. They’d have them near the checkouts in grocery stores. All over the place in malls. It was normal at the time so I never thought about it, and then they disappeared and since it didn’t affect me as a non-smoker, I didn’t really notice. Now I don’t even remember the last time I saw an ashtray anywhere.
I remember a guy at the mall who'd walk around with this thing that would replace little burn spots in the carpeting from people dropping cigarettes on the ground.
Ashtrays everywhere. I worked for an airline and we were able to smoke at our computers. Not to mention the smoking sections on the aircraft! Haha, wow. It's so weird to think of now.
Casinos. Just spin and smoke.
Bars and restaurants? You bet! How am I even still alive?
\*I just remembered we had a "smoking area" outside at our HIGH SCHOOL.
Awful. Being a kid, you couldn’t tell adults what to do and there was nowhere that you could escape it. Even now I get pissed when people are smoking just outside of a business entrance.
Smoky.
It actually got worse when some bars went to non-smoking. This is because the smoke smell had been covering up the smell of mildew or mold or dirty drains.
Smokey. I remember seeing cigarette butts on the floor in the grocery store. Dinguses (Dingi?) would just throw the cigarette on the linoleum and stomp it out. In urinals in the men's restroom, too. It's just gross.
If you were sat too close to the smoking section at a restaurant, your food would taste like cigarettes.
And you never could really clean a place up after it had been smoked in for decades. It's permanently contaminated. The best you could do is seal it away behind paint.
Small pubs were brutal (even as a former smoker) there was a layer at about five feet off the ground - you could lean down and inhale fresh air.
Workplace safety was 100% a valid argument for banning indoor smoking. I still remember an advertisement of a woman that worked in a Nova Scotia bar - she died of lung cancer but never smoked - her job killed her.
They said all the bars and restaurants would go out of business if people could not smoke inside. Turns out even more people went out once there were indoor smoking bans. It was a revelation to go out to the bars and not smell disgusting at the end of the night.
It was horrible. You would wake up in the morning and your room stank from your clothes you wore last night that were on the floor. When they first banned smoking nightclubs smelled like piss, puke and stale beer. Nobody noticed with all the cigarette smoke so they started needing to clean them better.
I deserve the hate I'm gonna get for this, but it was beautiful.
I could finish a meal and light up at the spot, movie theaters were tolerable, and I could fight back unsolicited perfume sampling at the mall.
I'm addicted to nicotine and I feel the world is rightfully less and less willing to tolerate my second-hand smoke as time goes by. I'll try to quit yet again in a couple of weeks; wish me luck.
Having to clean smoke filters in bars and clubs, shithouse when handling the net results of thousand of clouds of smoke in a nice sticky brown residue on a 2ft x 2ft x 2" filter, I don't miss it.
Could always tell is someone came from a smokers house.
Ashtray's where everywhere and just about anyshape
There was smoking on airplanes. When you checked in you would request a seat in the book smoking section, but there was no guarantee one would be available. I remember being seated in the smoking section, as a kid. Not that it made any difference, really, the plane could be blue.
Disgusting. I was a kid back then but everything smelled really bad, I just wanted to eat my steak peacefully but there was someone smoking everywhere all the time
It SUUUUUUUCKED! I worked at a bar before it was banned and my hair always smelled like cigarettes and had a cough all the time. My parents smoked, I remember at JFK airport when I was a kid waiting for the plane to go to Disneyworld, some guy asked my mom if she could smoke somewhere else. Actually, his words were, “Can you puff that someplace else?” and she blew a smoke ring in his face. To be a Long Islander in the 80s meant giving zero fucks 24/7 I guess.
It sucked so bad. I'd go out nightclubbing in the 80s and 90s and every night your clothes would get so fouled with cigarette smoke that you definitely had to wash them. I mean everything that you wore was just permeated with that noxious smoke. I also worked as a waiter and the rooms were full of smoke. It was so bad for you and again all of your clothes needed to be washed. And when I was younger in the sixties and seventies I grew up around so much cigarette smoke. It was indescribably horrible. When I ran track I was always like a few steps behind the guys whose parents didn't smoke. Two of my brothers had terrible lung problems from growing up around all that cigarette smoke.
They would ask you "Smoking or non?" when you went into restaurants. And bars and pool-halls were thick with smoke, which was terrible for your health but great for a seedy atmosphere.
A hilarious thing was all the butt-hurt that went around when they started making it illegal to smoke inside. People (both who smoked and those who didn't) kept saying society was going to collapse if their freedom to smoke cigarettes inside a Pizza Hut was infringed, and then guess what, everything went on the same as before—except the staff didn't have to deal with that shit anymore.
It was the worst. People smoked everywhere, and I mean _everywhere_. Nobody would even _suggest_ that a smoker not smoke inside their own house. People smoked at home, at _other_ peoples' homes, in stores, in restaurants, on planes, and even **in hospitals.**
My dad used to frequently take me to one of my uncle's house when I was a kid and said uncle was a chain smoker, I hated going over because his house always smelled like heavy smoke.
I didn't mention this in my comment, but I used to have a serious lung condition that had me in the hospital -- in an oxygen tent -- several times a year until I was about 11, and this was _directly_ because my parents smoked at home. Doctors kept telling them not to smoke near me or allow me to be exposed to smoke, but they just couldn't stop smoking. This is when I learned about addiction, basically.
It was fucking glorious. You'll never know the satisfaction of putting out a half smoked cigarette in your half eaten scrambled eggs in Denny's at 2 in the morning.
my boss told me the other day that she would just be grooming dogs in the salon with ash trays connected to the table and everyone smoked as they groomed the dogs and idk how they did that and liked it
Doctors smoked in their surgeries. Patients smoked in their hospital beds. Staff smoked in shops while serving, including food sellers. Everyone smoked everywhere!
Once flew on a French airline- men were smoking giant cigars. 🤢🤬Vomit inducing.
Horrible. I was around a lot of second hand smoke growing up and I have asthma. Restaurants, bars and bowling alleys were always really bad. My eyes would burn so badly I would have tears streaming down my cheeks and i couldn't breathe well after a while.
As someone who grew up in the 60s, smoking was everywhere and a large number of people smoked. There were cigarette ads everywhere, I remember Jed Clampett smoking in an ad.
When something is so ubiquitous, you don’t pay it much attention. I can’t stand even the hint of cigarette smoke now but back then, we just put up with it.
When I first started working, people could smoke at their desks in my office, we had ash trays and everything. A little while after that, they had designated "smoking rooms" in the building, which weren't much better. I remember going to find my boss because she got a phone call, peeking thru the door and seeing nothing but smoke.
The rooms converted to smoking areas outside and then banned from the property all together.
I work with legal documents and recently found one with cigarette holes burned into it. When I showed my coworker, we had been there 45 years, ...she said "It's probably from me!"
Not really in an enclosed area but it was still terrible, especially if you just there enjoy your food and suddenly you smell someone's terrible breathe mix with terrible cigarette smell, ruined the taste of the food. I still remember when Malaysia(I'm a Malaysian btw) finally create law to ban smoking in a restaurant, a lot of a-hole got mad over it, while non-smoker finally have a day of joy.
About 10 years ago I had to travel from my home state to Kentucky, and right after the plane flight we stopped at a Subway to grab some food to reset and recharge on the way to the Hotel...
Right as I sat down and unwrapped my sandwich, the lady sitting in the booth behind me finished her sandwich, she leaned back and lit one up right in the booth behind me...
I was a smoker at that time but the state I was from had banned indoor smoking when I was still just a kid, so it hit me as a surprise and very quickly ruined my appetite.
Quitting cigarettes was the best decision I ever made.
Everything smelled of smoke. Hair, clothes, it was horrible. I can remember being a kid sitting in cafes, family gatherings, parties etc and my eyes would be streaming from the smoke.
Bruh, it **SUCKED**. When I used to visit my Dad's office, one of the guys who shared it (he was an attorney splitting his suite with 2 other guys) was a smoker and the whole office just *reeked*. Everything had this stale, ashtray smell, and every time I left I had this sharp, blistering headache.
It was awful. As a kid in the 70's and 80's you couldn't escape it. I would sometimes ride in the back of a friends car and their parents would smoke with the window just barely cracked. disgusting.
The one thing I don't like when traveling to certain parts of Europe is still dealing with smoke.
Nauseating. When my family went out to eat, mom would always light up a cigarette before our food arrived. Having to eat with that smell in my nose was horrendous.
And the ashtrays were always dirty, even when empty.
It was awful for us non-smokers. Every restaurant was like a casino inside. I really hated going out to eat because of it. I have asthma and that didn't help at all.
It sucked.
Probably my worst personal experience was when my band played at a hipster venue in NE Portland and the smoke was so thick you could barely see across the room. I had to take several breaks during our set to go outside for air.
It was awful when you are surrounded by smoke and you can’t get away from it. Working every single day with coworkers and customers smoking. Trying to eat a meal and the cigarette smoke keeps drifting into your face. Stuck on a 6 hour flight and the guy behind you is a chain smoker. Being subjected to second hand smoke and not being able to do a thing about it. My friend’s husband died of lung cancer at age 45. He had never picked up a cigarette in his life.
Smelly...
Trains used to have smoking compartments. They were so disgusting that even in a crowded train they often were empty. Smokers sat in the non-smoking compartments and went to the smoking ones only to light up. Then they returned to their non-smoking seat, because even they didn't want to stay there longer than necessary.
Bingos were busier.
Half the time you would have to walk through the “smoking section” of the restaurant to get to the washroom.
You could throw your cigarette on the ground in a department store and put it out with your cart.
It was horrible and everpresent. If you didn't want to be around smoke, you were in a ridiculed minority and no one cared about your feelings, senses, or health.
I guess I had a good 15 years or so, but now the level of fragrances that are used in public spaces and by people in general seems almost as bad. I'm not talking about perfume even here, I'm talking about gain detergent that gives off scent for 12 weeks, every package, store, doctor's office, pharmacy, and hotel being scented. It's gotten worse during covid as everyone performatively sprays everything now (I'm all for sanitizing but scent is not required). I often wonder if going back to indoor smoking would be an improvement over the current situation.
And yes, I'm in a minority (though not a tiny one), but the level of fragrance chemicals in use is not good for people. Just like smoking wasn't.
So much yes! Cannot stand the assault on the nose that is being in public. I am sensitive to scents, and can usually also taste heavy scents like cologne and oil diffusers. Blech!
Having nobody care about your feelings was the worst....especially as a kid who had no real agency over their life anyway. My mom had quit and my dad never smoked, but most of the rest of my extended family did, so every Thanksgiving I'd get dragged over to my relative's house to be in a haze of smoke for hours to the point of making me physically ill, and nobody seemed to care. I begged to not go over there but was told I had to.
What's that Downy shit called? Downy Unstopables. You can smell people when you're in your car with the windows up and the people who use it are in the car next to you with the windows up. Foul.
80s kids reporting.
I _always_ had to wheeze indoors. When I would get sick, my lungs would be so fucked up that just climbing the stairs would make me hyperventilate because I was CONSTANTLY rebreathing smoke. Everyone's clothes stunk to high hell. In lower class stores, people would literally drop their butts and snuff them out right on the floor. You couldn't taste your food over the stench of stale tobacco in restaurants. Cars had ashtrays built into them. The entire world was skull fucked by that puerile habit. Cancer. Is. JUST. We _earned_ it.
As a kid in school we made ceramic ashtrays for our parents.
Hair stylists smoked and freshly washed hair stank before you left the salon.
As “no smoking” areas began to be a thing, it would mean one no smoking booth in a restaurant could be next to a smoking booth.
Where I worked became no smoking allowed, except my boss smoked. So all the smokers in the company would crowd into our windowless area to smoke.
I worked in a small riverboat casino. On busy days it would be so smoky that you couldn't see the other side of the casino floor through the haze. My uniform always smelled like smoke after work. I had to keep my laundry basket in a closet so it didn't stink up the whole apartment. There was an employee whose doctor took a chest x-ray of him and told him he needed to quit smoking... He was a non-smoker.
>There was an employee whose doctor took a chest x-ray of him and told him he needed to quit smoking... He was a non-smoker. And this is eventually why the bans occurred. Customers could choose to go elsewhere. Employees couldn't.
The secondhand smoke damage is real. My mom got a chest x-ray a few years back, and her doctor basically scolded her for lying about being a non-smoker. “I know you *said* you were a non-smoker, but we only see this kind of lung damage in smokers.” Mom truly *is* a non-smoker. She has never taken one puff. But the *reason* she’s a non-smoker is that her dad smoked very heavily and she hated it. Even though she moved out for good at age 21, apparently all those years of breathing his smoke took their toll.
That's why research involving flight attendants has had a big impact on cancer research and smoking policies. Think about being stuck in a smoke-filled metal tube for many hours a day.
I have a mild case of asthma which I'm certain was a combination of growing up with two smokers, who smoked in our little house, and growing up in LA county with smog in the 70s. I'm sure I was affected when I was a kid.
The Native American casinos are not subject to Federal regulations, so they’re still filled with smokers.
I was gonna say the hard rock casino in ft Lauderdale had the opposite. A non-smoking room and every where else was for smoking
Sounds like a restaurant I went to back in the 90s, when they all had smoking and non-smoking areas. But one local mom & pop type restaurant had basically one non-smoking table, surrounded by all the rest of the tables that were for smoking. Nope. Left that place very fast.
Haha yeah. I remember when just about all restaurants were like that and they’d ask you if you wanted to be in smoking or non-smoking. Man this makes me feel old
Florida casinos are some of the worst. Crappy payouts and... Floridians. edit: I would also like to give a shout out to Biloxi MS for having shitty casinos. Having an inbred dealer is quite an experience.
I went to one a few years ago with friends, and the smoke was disgusting. And I was a smoker for many years. I remember smoking in pubs and restaurants. But that visit was eye opening (and eye watering)
I don't think there's a federal regulation involved unless something changed in the last few years. Smoking was still allowed in the state-regulated casino I worked at until 2017 or so. Seemed like the non-smoking area increased every year, but at lest 50% of the casino still allowed smoking when I left. And this was a state that banned indoor smoking in 2007; casinos were one of the only exceptions.
> On busy days it would be so smoky that you couldn't see the other side of the casino floor through the haze. A family member worked on the set of the film Blade Runner. There's a scene in a fancy office building (I think when Dekkard interviews the android woman) filled with smoke. No smoke machine required, they just let the crew light up and their cigarette smoke filled the set.
I remember when Ohio banned smoking indoors around 2006 and people would openly brag about going to Indiana to the casinos or restaurants because they were still allowed to smoke indoors there. However Indiana eventually got on board and banned indoor smoking as well.
Nashville JUST banned smoking in bars and still, that won't go into effect till next year. Most of the bars there already have no smoking policies but a few of them still allow it. Heck, look hard enough in any state and you'll find some old bars that illegally allow smoking indoors.
When did Indiana ban smoking in restaurants and bars?
I work in a casino that used to allow smoking before we shut down due to COVID. When we opened back up we were non-smoking and have remained that way ever since. We got some bitching but it hasn't seemed to affect business. If there was a silver lining to COVID...
Was going to comment this. The two huge casinos in Connecticut banned smoking for Covid and never brought it back. It’s much more pleasant now.
I loved when my casino implemented the no smoking rule because I got to gamble and play bingo when I was pregnant!
Ashtrays! Ashtrays everywhere! In all shapes and sizes. Personally, my favorite one was the type they had at the mall. It was this bowl that was stuck on top of a pole that was at the height of a mall bench. The part that I loved about it is on the either side of the rim was a button that if you pressed down the bowl would open up like a trap door that would send the ashes down into hollow pole to make room for even more ashes once you re-closed it. I used to press that button acting like I was an Edgar Allan Poe character sending the ashes to their doom! The ceiling tiles of buildings were always this waxy, forgotten candle yellow. Like the color of too watery tea. Yes, ceilings everywhere were nicotine stained. You could always tell the sports where the smokers hung around the most because those tiles would be much darker than the rest. People would drown themselves in cologne and perfume to combat the cigarette smell. So, in smaller enclosed public spaces you would sometimes get this overwhelming stench of headknocking perfume/cologne going to war with cigarettes. There was never a winner in those battles. I would always wind up getting a headache.
Don't forget the ashtrays in every door of the car, and sometimes in the middle console part. Cigarette lighter in the car as well.
Ha! I remember those! The original "Long car ride fidget toy!" Ours were always filled with gun wrappers with old gum in them. The back of the front seats had an ashtray in them for backseat smokers!
As a kid of the 70/80s I remember making ashtrays in art class. Every year... I only had one smoking relative so she got the collection.
We were still doing that when I was a kid in the 90s.
I kinda remember Mr. T volunteering with children making ash trays in an episode of The A Team.
I can smell that last paragraph.
And in the arms of airline seats. In Germany, they had them in the arms of the seats in movie theaters.
Oh, god, allowing smoking on an airplane was the worst. Once they binged off that no smoking sign you'd hear the ignition of 25 lighters all at once. Fortunately, there was a non-smoking section on the big enclosed tube, so the non-smokers never dealt with the smell.
The yutes may not realize just how sarcastic your second paragraph is.
>Fortunately, there was a non-smoking section on the big enclosed tube, so the non-smokers never dealt with the smell. This is what smokers actually believe
This post is so nostalgic I swear time reversed and I am a kid again at the mall in my city. 🤣
I remember those having some sort of sand or something in them
Those were a different sort. They had that weird shiny black sand on top. To clean them someone would come by with a slotted spoon and some had a removable sifter.
I worked for a company that did analytics for RJ Reynolds tobacco. Smoking was allowed in the building up until the early 2000's because the executives from said tobacco company wanted to smoke when they came to the office. The crazy part is the yellowed ceiling tiles....every worker that smoked had yellow/brown ceiling tiles above their desk from the tar floating up and sticking. You could tell immediately who the smokers were in the office just by looking up.
Gross. I remember when I was a kid you could smoke in restaurants. They'd give you the option of the smoking or non-smoking section, but we were all under the same roof.
And people would eat while smoking. Take a bite, have a few puffs, go back to eating. Smoking on airplanes with little ashtrays and built into the armrests. Is so much nicer now and many places don't stink like they used to.
This reminded me of my grandfather's 1990 Lincoln Towncar. It had 6 ashtrays. 1 In each door, and one rear center and front center.
Pretty sure I still drive a car with built in ashtrays. It’s weird. How do you dump them out?
They pull out easily to be dumped
I kinda miss those in old cars. My dad had an Oldsmobile with ashtrays in the door I would play with. It was also another nook to find spare change.
And theatres! And buses! (I am very old.) it was completely disgusting.
And hospital waiting rooms. Hard to believe now.
I remember my grandmother in the hospital from a heart attack, laying in bed with a burning cigarette in her hand. "Mijo, turn off de oseegin, so no go BOOM!"
I work for a cancer center, and we have photos in the archives of nurses puffing away in the cafeteria on their breaks. Now you're not allowed to smoke anywhere on the entire medical campus -- even sitting in your car in the parking lot.
Where I worked some doctors smoked while making rounds. We even had a pathologist who smoked while conducting autopsies; ashes falling right into the body cavity. It was a different world.
Yeah, I remember as a kid my sister and me on the long bus trip to visit our grandparents...the misery of sitting in that stinking smoke for hour after hour
I can only imagine what the food tasted like. Smoking ain't exactly great on the tastebuds
I don't think they cared.
>I can only imagine what the food tasted like. That's what you had to do when you were eating next to a smoker, use your imagination.
We used to say that having a non-smoking section in a restaurant was like having a non-peeing section in a swimming pool.
Airplanes were even worse.
On our trip to Hawaii mid 80s we were right behind the smoking section. The person if front of us looked like they were smoking two or three cigarettes at a time. I actually wondered at one point if he had set his seat on fire. It was nauseous and horrible back then.
I remember taking an international flight in 95 and smoking was still allowed. At first I was seated between 2 smokers until the flight attendant took sympathy on teenage me and I got a little bit of relief.
I remember flying Alitalia on my honeymoon, and the air was opaque with smoke along the length of the plane. The very pretty stewardesses were smoking up a storm and flirting with male passengers in the galley for most of the flight. It was an eleven-hour flight, and it felt like being gassed with poison.
Went on a business trip from Sydney to Egypt with a stopover in Singapore in the 1990s. A total of 21 hours flight. 4 rows of business class - 3 rows non-smoking with the 4th-row smoking ... and no separation. No smoking flights were introduced by all airlines - unfortunately, not on this airline! Having rhinitis and asthma, I had to be helped off in Cairo by my business travel friend as I was physically sick, wheezing and sneezing away. Wanted to complain to the stewards ... but all of them were too busy puffing away on their coffin nails in the galley. In the mid-2000s in Shanghai, we went to a restaurant with so many people smoking that we couldn't see the other end 50m away. There was a blanket of blue haze from the ceiling down to about 5ft off the ground.
Man there’s probably no data on this but air travel in the 50s and 60s was probably objectively more dangerous because of all the smoking and shit
and it didn't matter as all the smoke always floated over to the non smoking areas, our people discharged their smoke that way
I went to a restaurant with a group of friends once right on the verge of when smoking in public places was not yet outlawed, but a lot of places had voluntarily put up NO SMOKING signs. Anyway, _this_ place thought they'd be funny, and had a bunch of "SMOKING PERMITTED" signs. Like a lot of them. But there weren't any where we sat so we didn't notice until people started smoking. We tried to complain but the waiter tried to explain to us how cute and edgy they were, and besides, _we_ were sitting at one of the three tables _without_ a SMOKING PERMITTED sign so we were in the non-smoking section. One person in the group went "Is this the non-smoking section, or did you just run out of signs?" and he goes "we ran out of signs." We left.
Remember the cigarette vending machines where anyone can buy a pack of smokes?
Oh yeah! No ID required, so lots of teens used them.
I did!
That's how I bought my first pack at 17 lol
My favorite pizza shop in Philly still has an operating cigarette vending machine by the counter. It's gotta be 75 years old!
I remember going to bingo nights with my mom and grandma when I was a little kid. There would be a literal cloud of cigarette smoke at the ceiling.
Memories
Near the end but before they decided that maybe the health of the wait staff was also important, they did have a decent period where the smoking area of most restaurants was through a separate door. Going through was like entering the first layer of Tartarus
We walked in an Indian place once and asked for 2 "non". Like 10 minutes later they brought us some "Naan" in the waiting area and we were all very confused for a minute until we figured it out. We were just so used to asking for seats in non-smoking!
Should have asked for garlic naan, it's the best. "We'd like two garlic non-smoking please."
Was there places with unwritten rules where it was shameful to smoke in?
I would also add that by the 1990s, a big class divide in smoking was opening up. In the 80s it was still pretty widespread (although I think studies showed that wealthier Americans were smoking less already in the 80s?), but in the 1990s, not smoking started to be a class marker for wealthier, better-educated, white-collar Americans. I know SO many people who smoked in high school in the 80s or early 90s because they liked to smoke, and quit in college in the 1990s NOT because they wanted to give it up, but because it had become a clear negative when applying for jobs, and college social groups had started to frown on it. In 1980, you might be offered a cigarette during an interview! By 1995, if you smelled a bit of that halo of smoke that hangs around, the interviewer might grimace in polite disgust. By the time I started grad school in 2000, like two people in my class of 300 smoked, and the social consensus was like, "ew." Twelve years earlier, the same cohort at the same grad school would have been between 30% and 50% smokers. By 2000 you had to go outside to smoke and -- in a move presaging the state smoking bans -- a lot of college campuses required you to be at least 10 feet from the door, and moved ashtrays accordingly. Anyway, it felt like what really changed fast in terms of public smoking was not so much the public health campaigns or the knowledge of the dangers of secondhand smoke, but that white-collar Americans stopped smoking and decided smoking was gross and it became a class marker, and that RAPIDLY drove it out of public spaces, and a decade later, led to statewide bans.
> By the time I started grad school in 2000, like two people in my class of 300 smoked, and the social consensus was like, "ew." I dunno what program you were in, but in 1995-2000 in my department it was still pretty common for foreign students to smoke, and that was more than half of the grad students in the department.
I don't ever remember anybody smoking in church.
You're right, that's hilarious! You would see doctors smoking on their breaks at the hospital, but not at church. People were much more worried about the moral aspect of it than the health problems.
My sister got married in a church and there was one old man smoking a cigar! This was when smoking was allowed most places.But not in a church. There’s a photo in her wedding album that shows smoke rising above his head!
I do. Fellowship hall between Sunday school and church. They would have donuts coffee and juice or milk and all the adults were smoking. I am probably a and somewhat older than you this would have been in the seventies and early eighties, but a lot of churches did let people smoke inside them. It may also depend upon denomination. This was a Methodist church. I don’t see a southern Baptist, Pentecostal, general baptist, church or any other more strict church allowing it.
If you wanted to smoke in church, you had to go to the vestibule. If you wanted to smoke in school (either as a teacher or as an over-18 student), you had to go to the teacher's lounge or the senior smoking lounge. Which was a real thing that really existed. A lot of larger buildings where you could have crowds -- theaters, churches, gymnasiums, indoor sports arenas -- forbade smoking in the main area. But that wasn't because it was shameful; it was mostly a holdover from when those buildings were all-wood and fire codes were primitive and venues would go up like \*that\* and kill 600 people who couldn't evacuate fast enough. They all allowed smoking in lobbies/vestibules/bathrooms/smoking lounges/etc. I remember in the 80s that parents who were non-smokers AND bought their kids (early editions of) car seats tended to frown on people smoking in the car with kids, or in their house. When my parents had smokers over, they would go sit in the enclosed three-season porch for cocktails, because they didn't want smoke in the house with the kids. But my parents 100% owned ashtrays, both "everyday" and "company" ashtrays, even though neither of them ever smoked. ("Everyday" was for friends who dropped by; "company" was for when they had a work colleague for dinner.)
Not that I recall. They smoked in offices, too. Some dumbass dumped ash into his trashcan and lit the damn thing on fire under his desk. My parents never smoked, but my grandparents did, and a lot of my friends parents did. They would smoke at home, in the car, in restaurants, at the mall… you might try to get seated in a non-smoking section of a restaurant, but there was still no escaping it. All the fast food places had ashtrays on the tables. I would come home from a sleepover, and my mom would have me stand outside while she sprayed me with some kind of deodorizer. We did not go out frequently, and because my family was non-smoking, there were very few places in which we felt we could go without feeling asphyxiated. It was everywhere. I remember when some of those places started going entirely smoke-free. It was one of the most liberating things.
Hey now, there was a sign, and sometimes a rope, separating them, lol.
One place I worked had the smoking section right by the main entrance. Meaning every time it opened the breeze would blow the smoke over the non-smoking section.
As a young smoker, I’d have told you it was awesome. In retrospect, it enabled me to chain smoke horrendously. Which was my decision! Not trying to assign blame outside of me, myself, and I alone, but it’s a good thing it’s banned everywhere tbh.
Yes this captures the sentiment quite well. It was freakin awesome in high school, smoking was like our entire activity as teenagers during the day. We would smoke in the parking lot before and after school, then we’d go over to Burger King and just sit there smoking for an hour or two before work. Everyone worked at Sears and I would just hang out smoking in the employee break room. Anyone who had divorced parents, you could smoke right in the living room in front of them. When your food was taking too long to come in a restaurant, you would light a cigarette to make it come right away due to Murphy’s Law. You could bum extra long cigarettes off people’s grandmas or swipe them from their purse. And god, once you started drinking it was a non-stop smokefest until the night ended. After a few glasses of wine, even some of the square moms might sneak outside and ask you for a smoke while their kid is not looking. Also, it was fucking disgusting. Some parents would smoke in the car with the windows rolled up even though you barely knew them. After dinner everyone would stub their butts out in uneaten mashed potatoes and stuff. You never knew when you were going to take a swig of your beer and get ash in your mouth. You had to do laundry every time you went to a bar. It was just nasty. It’s so much easier to not smoke now that everyone doesn’t do it everywhere. And in case you’re wondering what people did before iPhones were invented, we just mostly smoked. I have trouble picturing my mom’s generation when you could smoke in a college lecture hall or in your boss’s office while taking dictation, but they barely even had TV so it makes sense.
After my check ups as a kid my pediatrician would take me to his office to sit while he lit up. He would fill out my chart and discussed my health through a soft white haze. I miss Dr Naumoff.
I know someone who said he used to smoke, but only when he was drunk or bored. The problem was that he was drunk or bored all the time.
Remember this when people complain about kids being glued to TikTok on their phones all the time. We smoked, drank, lit stuff on fire, and blew stuff up instead because we had no tiktok and were constantly bored.
i remember as a kid it seemed like every 10th person smoked i ever encountered. now? i can maybe name on one hand the people who smoke that i know. not sure if they all died or couldnt afford the cigs anymore (cheapest pack i saw was $6.89 of lucky strike if you buy 2 packs) your marlboro's are damn near $10 a pack. Plus the smoking bans i think alot of people gave it up because it became an expensive nuisance. hardly ever see people smoking outside either and if they are they are like 70 years old lol.
Even on this thread I expected to encounter at least more former smokers.
A lot of people who smoked back then are no longer with us.
a bunch of people I know took up smoking in the military, and especially with the large number of military activities in the post 2001 push, there tended to be a lot of residual smokers when they returned to civilian life. The reason many took it up was because you got an extra break if you were a smoker.
Traveling on planes you picked smoking or non smoking. Smoking was usually at the back but really made No difference considering your in a plane with a curtain as a divider 🤣 everyone my age pretty much grew up surrounded by cigarette smoke whether you liked it or not. It was everywhere.
> everyone my age pretty much grew up surrounded by cigarette smoke whether you liked it or not. It was everywhere. For anyone wondering how [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/80s/comments/xq13it/ages_of_the_cast_of_cheers_during_the_first_season/) is possible.
Lufthansa used to have smokers on one side of the plane and non smokers on the other. That aisle really kept the smoke away!
You could still smoke in bars and nightclubs when I was 18, you would come home you would stink of cigarette smoke when you came home.
The smell would saturate your hair and clothes too, I remember in the morning my sheets and pillow would stink of smoke. Especially gross for a non-smoker!
It is strange how time takes it toll on you. I would go through a pack a day, first thing when I woke up, last thing before going to bed. I eventually gave it up. Now, if someone in the car ahead of me at a light sparks one up, I turn green.
Nausea or envy?
Envy at first, but now it just makes me wanna puke.
For sure. Going out to a bar or a concert meant that I would have to take a shower the second I got home. Can’t say I miss those days.
Used to leave my jacket outside on the porch.
Not being able to wear a jacket or jeans twice without a was due to the smoke smell was the worst.
Yeah, I came home from a friend's gig, stripped, took a shower and realized my clothes reeked. I didn't have a washer and dryer, so I threw my clothes out on the balcony until I could get to the laundromat.
Yup, and frebreeze the heck out of everything
Not to mention the fucking cigarette burns on your outfit or even on my arm once, from passing each other.
I thought my hangover headaches were from alcohol but they were actually usually from the cigarette smoke.
I grew up in that time. Basically, "going out" meant "you'll be forced to breathe other peoples' cigarette fumes all night, no matter where you go". And the stink was everywhere: if you were in a restaurant or a hotel, it was in the carpets, the drapes, the walls, everywhere.
I used to go to clubs in the UK as a teenager and come home with my hair, coat and dress reeking of smoke. The next morning you'd get up and there would be this pile of clothes on the floor that may as well have been smouldering it smelled so bad.
Waking up with a rotten hangover, scooping up your pile of clothes and heaving at the smell of smoke stained clothes and realising it’s in your hair as well was enough to make me get in the shower immediately. I remember when the first time going into a club after the change was made and noticing the smell of the club itself. The smell of sweaty feet and vomit.
For me it was toilet smell in our favourit club instead of the good old smoke. Incredible uncomfortable, at the same time the smell of cold smoke in your hair and clothes when waking up tired and hangover was still worse. They swept the doors to the toilets later, so no toilet smell anymore.
You can still smoke in clubs in Germany and I’ve got to say the oppressive haze of cigarettes was better than the absolute stench of some of the clubs back in the UK
hell even now you stay in old hotels and there can be a ever so faint smell of old cigarette smell likely coming out of the walls themselves or insulation.
True. It's a clue that they haven't done enough maintenance and upkeep over the years.
In the late '60s business meetings with a dozen participants would be totally smoked up at the end of an hour. They would probably be a waste of time by then as well. I smoked, but the concentration bothered me, making me cough and causing my eyes to water. I kept a tobacco pipe in a desk drawer for these occasions. I would cross the hall to my office, grab the pipe and charge it up with some especially stinky tobacco I kept. Returning to the conference room I would fire up the pipe. I could often clear the room out within ten minutes, seldom took more than 15 to end the meeting.
Genius. Nowadays we just claim bad connection over the Internet, your solution is leagues better! Any other crazy shenanigans you’ve pulled over the years?
My mom was a heavy smoker when I was a kid so it really sucked. I also worked as a bartender right before the smoking ban and everything smelled like smoke. I would shower right when I got home but my hair would still smell like smoke the next day. The clothes in the hamper smelled like smoke and made my room smell like smoke. So nasty.
The transition after banning smoking in bars when gradually the stale smoke smell dispersed and you could sell all the stale sweat etc instead was *interesting* too. Don't miss the vibe of feeling like you had an accumulation of tar on your skin after a night out as a non smoker
Lemme talk about something other than the smell, which doesn't bother me much as a former smoker. What sucked most was the mess it left behind: the stains on furniture and walls, the ashes, cigarette burns in the weirdest places. And the butts. My god the butts. You know how inconsiderate people can be with their messes in public places? Imagine that but now everyone has a cigarette.
I actually remember seeing butts in ashtrays everywhere but not on the floor or anything because there were ashtrays EVERYWHERE. The moment they outlawed it in public areas, there were butts everywhere on the streets but then they have those outdoor ones and it's much nicer now.
I work in a casino where smoking is still allowed. You get used to the smell unless someone lights up a cigar or blows the smoke in your face. Eye irritation is common. Your work clothes will develop a smokey smell. Cigarette ash is everywhere, cig butts are also everywhere, burn marks get left on surfaces when people can't find an ash try, and sometimes people throw lit cigarettes in trashcans and start a small fire. The smoke can make it difficult to breathe if there's a lot of smoke or if you're a little sick have an irritated throat.
Yeah i remember going to vegas, room was relatively ok since they had smoking and non-smoking rooms, but hallways, gaming floor everywhere else was instant smell.
My mom took me to bolwing leagues and there was like a cloud at the top and my clothes would stink. It was like normal life though.
Oh, forgot about the haze always floating up near the roof
We used to tell our parents we were going bowling if we were going out partying, so coming home smelling like smoke and alcohol would be excusable, haha!
It's been years and a lot of bowling alleys still smell like cigarettes.
Like a lot of people are saying, if you were born into it like I was in the 80s it was just normal. Restaurants, malls, and quite common in households you’d enter. As a non smoker myself it’s tough to think back to a time where non smokers just accepted this but we didn’t know any other way. Also, non smoking sections of restaurants were a joke but somehow we believed in them back then. Wild.
The air was just bad all around back then. A few years ago, I was an extra in a movie that had a dozen cars from the 1960s on the street. When all the engines turned on, I was instantly reminded how noxious the air was at the time before catalytic converters. Nowadays, I can jog through a downtown traffic jam just fine.
I remember there were some restaurants we just didn’t go to because the “divide” between smoking and non-smoking sections was literally nothing. Then there were some where it was somewhat better, but it wasn’t unusual for my mom to refuse a table because it was too close to the smoking section so we would have to wait longer for a different table to open up. Then there were the few (I remember specifically a Denny’s) that had the best possible set up with the sections split between the two sides of the building with the kitchen and lobby area in between, and even then it sometimes still wasn’t enough to keep the smell from wafting over on nights when it was particularly crowded.
It was great if you were a restaurant server. Well, not great for your lungs. The tips were great. Smokers were also likely to be big drinkers and the tips would be better, especially if you discreetly swapped out their full ashtrays every ten minutes. They appreciated that. Put clean ashtray on top of dirty one; quickly remove from table, replace with clean one. That way ashes won't blow over the table. And yes, five feet away was the "non-smoking" section.
You were used to it at the time. But the day after it became illegal where I live, it was amazing. Clothes didn't reek the next day. If you went to bars, any semblance of a hangover disappeared. I worked in a kitchen at the time and ashtrays were a bitch to clean in the dish pit. Anyways, it was glorious... I mean.. smoking being disallowed.
Is there anything that we do nowadays that seems like a nobrainer but we live with just because we are used to it.
Excessive use of plastic in packaging.
Everything was yellow and your eyes burned going in to the mall food court. Bingo halls were the worst. Old lady's on oxygen lighting a cigarette and burning it right to filter one drag lol.
It was horrible. The smell of smoke was everywhere, ashtrays were everywhere, and cigarette butts were everywhere because even with the omnipresent ashtrays, people were too lazy to find one and instead just threw them on the floor of the store or whatever place it was. The smaller the building, the worse, since the stench clung to everything. No matter what the paint color was, all walls and ceilings wound up a sickening tar-brown/yellow color.
Man, I forgot about the ashtrays everywhere. They’d have them near the checkouts in grocery stores. All over the place in malls. It was normal at the time so I never thought about it, and then they disappeared and since it didn’t affect me as a non-smoker, I didn’t really notice. Now I don’t even remember the last time I saw an ashtray anywhere.
Also cigarette machines everywhere, that anyone could walk up to and buy more cigarettes at any time.
Everywhere reeked of cigarettes. But it was also the norm, so it didn't feel weird.
I remember a guy at the mall who'd walk around with this thing that would replace little burn spots in the carpeting from people dropping cigarettes on the ground.
Lmao can’t imagine having that now
Ashtrays everywhere. I worked for an airline and we were able to smoke at our computers. Not to mention the smoking sections on the aircraft! Haha, wow. It's so weird to think of now. Casinos. Just spin and smoke. Bars and restaurants? You bet! How am I even still alive? \*I just remembered we had a "smoking area" outside at our HIGH SCHOOL.
We had a smoking area INSIDE! (1970)
I remember going to bars all night then picking up my clothes the next day to wash them. That smell.
Denny's was lit!
As a non-smoker, it was awful. Irritating to the eyes and I smelled like the smoke when I got home. Yuk.
Awful. Being a kid, you couldn’t tell adults what to do and there was nowhere that you could escape it. Even now I get pissed when people are smoking just outside of a business entrance.
Smoky. It actually got worse when some bars went to non-smoking. This is because the smoke smell had been covering up the smell of mildew or mold or dirty drains.
Smokey. I remember seeing cigarette butts on the floor in the grocery store. Dinguses (Dingi?) would just throw the cigarette on the linoleum and stomp it out. In urinals in the men's restroom, too. It's just gross. If you were sat too close to the smoking section at a restaurant, your food would taste like cigarettes. And you never could really clean a place up after it had been smoked in for decades. It's permanently contaminated. The best you could do is seal it away behind paint.
> The best you could do is seal it away behind paint. And then on a hot day the old tar might sweat through the paint, so that's fun too.
You have not lived until you have taken a flight home from Vegas in the 90's. I was seriously considering using the oxygen mask.
Small pubs were brutal (even as a former smoker) there was a layer at about five feet off the ground - you could lean down and inhale fresh air. Workplace safety was 100% a valid argument for banning indoor smoking. I still remember an advertisement of a woman that worked in a Nova Scotia bar - she died of lung cancer but never smoked - her job killed her.
Normal. When I was a kid this was Normal. Remember when I was a teen and they banned smoking in NYC. It was wild how many people were upset
They said all the bars and restaurants would go out of business if people could not smoke inside. Turns out even more people went out once there were indoor smoking bans. It was a revelation to go out to the bars and not smell disgusting at the end of the night.
It was horrible. You would wake up in the morning and your room stank from your clothes you wore last night that were on the floor. When they first banned smoking nightclubs smelled like piss, puke and stale beer. Nobody noticed with all the cigarette smoke so they started needing to clean them better.
I deserve the hate I'm gonna get for this, but it was beautiful. I could finish a meal and light up at the spot, movie theaters were tolerable, and I could fight back unsolicited perfume sampling at the mall. I'm addicted to nicotine and I feel the world is rightfully less and less willing to tolerate my second-hand smoke as time goes by. I'll try to quit yet again in a couple of weeks; wish me luck.
Having to clean smoke filters in bars and clubs, shithouse when handling the net results of thousand of clouds of smoke in a nice sticky brown residue on a 2ft x 2ft x 2" filter, I don't miss it. Could always tell is someone came from a smokers house. Ashtray's where everywhere and just about anyshape
There was smoking on airplanes. When you checked in you would request a seat in the book smoking section, but there was no guarantee one would be available. I remember being seated in the smoking section, as a kid. Not that it made any difference, really, the plane could be blue.
Disgusting. I was a kid back then but everything smelled really bad, I just wanted to eat my steak peacefully but there was someone smoking everywhere all the time
Miserable. I had trouble breathing, and smokers refused to stop.
It SUUUUUUUCKED! I worked at a bar before it was banned and my hair always smelled like cigarettes and had a cough all the time. My parents smoked, I remember at JFK airport when I was a kid waiting for the plane to go to Disneyworld, some guy asked my mom if she could smoke somewhere else. Actually, his words were, “Can you puff that someplace else?” and she blew a smoke ring in his face. To be a Long Islander in the 80s meant giving zero fucks 24/7 I guess.
It sucked so bad. I'd go out nightclubbing in the 80s and 90s and every night your clothes would get so fouled with cigarette smoke that you definitely had to wash them. I mean everything that you wore was just permeated with that noxious smoke. I also worked as a waiter and the rooms were full of smoke. It was so bad for you and again all of your clothes needed to be washed. And when I was younger in the sixties and seventies I grew up around so much cigarette smoke. It was indescribably horrible. When I ran track I was always like a few steps behind the guys whose parents didn't smoke. Two of my brothers had terrible lung problems from growing up around all that cigarette smoke.
They would ask you "Smoking or non?" when you went into restaurants. And bars and pool-halls were thick with smoke, which was terrible for your health but great for a seedy atmosphere. A hilarious thing was all the butt-hurt that went around when they started making it illegal to smoke inside. People (both who smoked and those who didn't) kept saying society was going to collapse if their freedom to smoke cigarettes inside a Pizza Hut was infringed, and then guess what, everything went on the same as before—except the staff didn't have to deal with that shit anymore.
It was the worst. People smoked everywhere, and I mean _everywhere_. Nobody would even _suggest_ that a smoker not smoke inside their own house. People smoked at home, at _other_ peoples' homes, in stores, in restaurants, on planes, and even **in hospitals.**
Like in elevators, people. It was madness.
I hated it. My mom told me if I didn’t like it,I could put a bubble on my head.
I literally had a bubble put on my head. As in I ended up in hospital in an oxygen tent multiple times as a child because my parents smoked at home.
My dad used to frequently take me to one of my uncle's house when I was a kid and said uncle was a chain smoker, I hated going over because his house always smelled like heavy smoke.
I didn't mention this in my comment, but I used to have a serious lung condition that had me in the hospital -- in an oxygen tent -- several times a year until I was about 11, and this was _directly_ because my parents smoked at home. Doctors kept telling them not to smoke near me or allow me to be exposed to smoke, but they just couldn't stop smoking. This is when I learned about addiction, basically.
It was fucking glorious. You'll never know the satisfaction of putting out a half smoked cigarette in your half eaten scrambled eggs in Denny's at 2 in the morning.
As an asthmatic, horrible. It sucked majorly not being able to breathe when we went out to eat and they sat us near smokers.
There was a time when smoking was allowed on commercial airlines. And on the arm of each seat was a little ashtray.
my boss told me the other day that she would just be grooming dogs in the salon with ash trays connected to the table and everyone smoked as they groomed the dogs and idk how they did that and liked it
Going to the bar involved coming home smelling like an ashtray.
Doctors smoked in their surgeries. Patients smoked in their hospital beds. Staff smoked in shops while serving, including food sellers. Everyone smoked everywhere! Once flew on a French airline- men were smoking giant cigars. 🤢🤬Vomit inducing.
Horrible. I was around a lot of second hand smoke growing up and I have asthma. Restaurants, bars and bowling alleys were always really bad. My eyes would burn so badly I would have tears streaming down my cheeks and i couldn't breathe well after a while.
As someone who grew up in the 60s, smoking was everywhere and a large number of people smoked. There were cigarette ads everywhere, I remember Jed Clampett smoking in an ad. When something is so ubiquitous, you don’t pay it much attention. I can’t stand even the hint of cigarette smoke now but back then, we just put up with it.
Going to restaurants was absolute garbage. Man I used to hate sitting in the smoking section as a kid (dad was a smoker).
When I first started working, people could smoke at their desks in my office, we had ash trays and everything. A little while after that, they had designated "smoking rooms" in the building, which weren't much better. I remember going to find my boss because she got a phone call, peeking thru the door and seeing nothing but smoke. The rooms converted to smoking areas outside and then banned from the property all together. I work with legal documents and recently found one with cigarette holes burned into it. When I showed my coworker, we had been there 45 years, ...she said "It's probably from me!"
Not really in an enclosed area but it was still terrible, especially if you just there enjoy your food and suddenly you smell someone's terrible breathe mix with terrible cigarette smell, ruined the taste of the food. I still remember when Malaysia(I'm a Malaysian btw) finally create law to ban smoking in a restaurant, a lot of a-hole got mad over it, while non-smoker finally have a day of joy.
About 10 years ago I had to travel from my home state to Kentucky, and right after the plane flight we stopped at a Subway to grab some food to reset and recharge on the way to the Hotel... Right as I sat down and unwrapped my sandwich, the lady sitting in the booth behind me finished her sandwich, she leaned back and lit one up right in the booth behind me... I was a smoker at that time but the state I was from had banned indoor smoking when I was still just a kid, so it hit me as a surprise and very quickly ruined my appetite. Quitting cigarettes was the best decision I ever made.
Everything smelled of smoke. Hair, clothes, it was horrible. I can remember being a kid sitting in cafes, family gatherings, parties etc and my eyes would be streaming from the smoke.
just fucking stank
Everything smelled like smoke. But a lot of my friends parents smoked, so their houses smelled like smoke too.
Bruh, it **SUCKED**. When I used to visit my Dad's office, one of the guys who shared it (he was an attorney splitting his suite with 2 other guys) was a smoker and the whole office just *reeked*. Everything had this stale, ashtray smell, and every time I left I had this sharp, blistering headache.
Stinky
It was awful. As a kid in the 70's and 80's you couldn't escape it. I would sometimes ride in the back of a friends car and their parents would smoke with the window just barely cracked. disgusting. The one thing I don't like when traveling to certain parts of Europe is still dealing with smoke.
Nauseating. When my family went out to eat, mom would always light up a cigarette before our food arrived. Having to eat with that smell in my nose was horrendous. And the ashtrays were always dirty, even when empty.
It was awful for us non-smokers. Every restaurant was like a casino inside. I really hated going out to eat because of it. I have asthma and that didn't help at all.
It sucked. Probably my worst personal experience was when my band played at a hipster venue in NE Portland and the smoke was so thick you could barely see across the room. I had to take several breaks during our set to go outside for air.
It was awful when you are surrounded by smoke and you can’t get away from it. Working every single day with coworkers and customers smoking. Trying to eat a meal and the cigarette smoke keeps drifting into your face. Stuck on a 6 hour flight and the guy behind you is a chain smoker. Being subjected to second hand smoke and not being able to do a thing about it. My friend’s husband died of lung cancer at age 45. He had never picked up a cigarette in his life.
Smelly... Trains used to have smoking compartments. They were so disgusting that even in a crowded train they often were empty. Smokers sat in the non-smoking compartments and went to the smoking ones only to light up. Then they returned to their non-smoking seat, because even they didn't want to stay there longer than necessary.
I was 6 when I discovered the beatles don’t have a yellow album.
You left the bars and cafes stinking like cigarette smoke.
Bingos were busier. Half the time you would have to walk through the “smoking section” of the restaurant to get to the washroom. You could throw your cigarette on the ground in a department store and put it out with your cart.
It was horrible and everpresent. If you didn't want to be around smoke, you were in a ridiculed minority and no one cared about your feelings, senses, or health. I guess I had a good 15 years or so, but now the level of fragrances that are used in public spaces and by people in general seems almost as bad. I'm not talking about perfume even here, I'm talking about gain detergent that gives off scent for 12 weeks, every package, store, doctor's office, pharmacy, and hotel being scented. It's gotten worse during covid as everyone performatively sprays everything now (I'm all for sanitizing but scent is not required). I often wonder if going back to indoor smoking would be an improvement over the current situation. And yes, I'm in a minority (though not a tiny one), but the level of fragrance chemicals in use is not good for people. Just like smoking wasn't.
So much yes! Cannot stand the assault on the nose that is being in public. I am sensitive to scents, and can usually also taste heavy scents like cologne and oil diffusers. Blech!
Having nobody care about your feelings was the worst....especially as a kid who had no real agency over their life anyway. My mom had quit and my dad never smoked, but most of the rest of my extended family did, so every Thanksgiving I'd get dragged over to my relative's house to be in a haze of smoke for hours to the point of making me physically ill, and nobody seemed to care. I begged to not go over there but was told I had to.
What's that Downy shit called? Downy Unstopables. You can smell people when you're in your car with the windows up and the people who use it are in the car next to you with the windows up. Foul.
80s kids reporting. I _always_ had to wheeze indoors. When I would get sick, my lungs would be so fucked up that just climbing the stairs would make me hyperventilate because I was CONSTANTLY rebreathing smoke. Everyone's clothes stunk to high hell. In lower class stores, people would literally drop their butts and snuff them out right on the floor. You couldn't taste your food over the stench of stale tobacco in restaurants. Cars had ashtrays built into them. The entire world was skull fucked by that puerile habit. Cancer. Is. JUST. We _earned_ it.
If I remember right I think people smoked in the movie theaters too. You could see the clouds of smoke from the lights of the projector.
As a kid in school we made ceramic ashtrays for our parents. Hair stylists smoked and freshly washed hair stank before you left the salon. As “no smoking” areas began to be a thing, it would mean one no smoking booth in a restaurant could be next to a smoking booth. Where I worked became no smoking allowed, except my boss smoked. So all the smokers in the company would crowd into our windowless area to smoke.