I sure do, and back when I was a smoker. Still remember a minor incident flying from Brussels to Newark in 1986 where one passenger who had requested the non-smoking section complained to a stewardess that the guy sitting right behind her was smoking (not me). It turned out she was in the last row of non-smoking and he in the first row of smoking, so she was just out of luck. That was the old People’s Express.
Do you remember smoking sections on airplanes?
I remember, age 12, flying on a charter flight from Saskatoon to London, and getting off the plane in London with a blazing headache from the guy across the aisle who chain smoked the entire flight.
(Except when my tough-as-nails-Cockney-aunt shamed him into stopping for a bit: “Don’t you see my nephew has a headache from your smoking!!!”)
Kelbo’s! I remember it kept burning down. Did they do flaming cocktails or something? My parents would never take me even though I begged like crazy. It changed into a strip club many, many years ago. I’m not sure if the building is still there or not.
If you’re from Los Angeles and you (or your parents) were/are into tiki even a smidgen, do read that whole thread. It’s a treat.
I initially parsed that as the “Old People’s Express”, like a plane entirely filled with senior citizens.
I went to the site (didn’t have time to investigate it at the time), but it was in Hollywood. I never knew there were two Kelbo’s! I googled to find “my” Kelbo’s was the one on Pico (WLA), but there were four of them.
My folks were not into tiki at all. I wanted to be, but had to settle for Bahooka’s in the SGV. It’s gone now, too, of course. I’d think retro tiki could be an idea whose time has come (again).
One interesting thing in another Kelbo’s article was that the decor mostly came from the old “The Akron” stores. Remember those???
I remember my first Trans Atlantic flight 1962, plush seats smoking everywhere. Then flying to and from Saudi Arabia in the 90s, there were the no smoking sections…I always sat in the row just ahead…or so it seemed.
Something just made me think of the old Simon and Garfunkel song “America”, and it hit me that in the lines:
“Toss me a cigarette, I think there’s one in my raincoat”
“We smoked the last one an hour ago”
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
…They’re referencing smoking on a Greyhound bus. Or at least they would have been had they not run out of cigarettes (But that one they smoked an hour ago was probably on the bus, too). My how times have changed.
Contrast that with when I took an Amtrak train a couple of years ago. The guy sitting across the aisle from me was apparently so desperate for a cigarette at every stop he would hop off the train, light up his cigarette, take a couple of puffs while passengers were boarding, extinguish the cigarette, and hop back on the train.
Heck, I remember smoking sections at high school.
I was on a plane earlier this year that still had the openings for ash receptacles in the arm rests, though they were now capped with stainless steel plates.
The ash tray in the restroom was still fully functional. But clean.
CLean is good. Me from further upthread: