I still work at a company that allows smoking. You can’t in the main office area anymore, but the execs smoke in their offices and you can smoke in the plant. Our HR director literally chain smokes in his office, and he doesn’t close the door.
We are moving to a new building next month and that is the end of the smoking, though. There are going to be a lot of cranky people in a few weeks.
That’s true! My 98 Civic has no ashtrays, but you can special order an adapter for one of the cupholders. (My husband’s 00 Ranger came with the adapter, but still has no fixed ashtray.) In the 70s our family had a huge old station wagon (Plymouth, if memory serves) that had ashtrays everywhere. If I’m remembering right (and I might not be considering it was 30+ years ago) I’m thinking there were even flipout ashtrays in the very rear section, where only kids could fit to begin with, yikes!
In continental toilets (and some Irish ones) there are ashtrays at a convenient level for those who need a little nicotinal “oomph” to assist their proceedings.
It used to be possible to smoke on the London Underground - there was a carriage set aside for this. It was unspeakable.
It was only stopped because of safety fears (there was a huge fire) not for other reasons.
And I have been on an aeroplane full of turks - ALL of whom (even little kids) smoked.
Nah, they’re there for the two-flushers after they’ve finished the sports section.
I used to smoke while cooking in restaurants. We all did. Ashtray right next to your cutting board. As well, I would have a smoke while shopping for whatever bits we needed at the supermarket down the street.
I remember my parents having really nice ashtrays.
I also remember (in Kindergarten and 1st grade) making ashtrays as art projects. Because even if your parents didn’t smoke, they’d probably need one anyway when their friends who did smoke visited. And it’s hard to make a bad ashtray. (Bowls can go incredibly wrong.) No matter what it looked like, it was always readily recognizeable and generally useful as an ashtray.
What on earth do children these days for clay art projects?
I believe my friends flying Condor Airlines from Frankfurt to Las Vegas told me they are still allowed to smoke in the back ten rows.
In Las Vegas casinos, they still have the ashtrays by the urinals in the men’s room.
I saw an old episode of I’ve Got A Secret and Gary Moore was smoking at his desk and jokingly asked a little 3 years old contestant if he wanted a cigarette.
You used to be able to smoke in the balcony at the movie theater in my home town. And in Berlin, there was/is an all-smoking movie theater, cleverly named, “Smoky”.
Weren’t the subways in NY divided? One car non-smoking, the next smoking? Or am I confusing that with the Berlin subway system?
Back about 25 years ago, I used to make extra money in the summertimes by “caddying” at the bridge tournaments (card-game bridge) my parents would attend. The money was very nice, but I distinctly remembered two things:
After about an hour, the layer of smoke near the ceiling would start to form. After about 2 hours, it was a definite visible layer, and it would drift up and down, growing ever thicker, with each passing minute. No matter what arena, or venue, the air-change systems could never keep up.
I always had to wash my clothes as soon as I got home, or the stench of smoke would never leave the fabric, no matter how long I had the garment. I lost my favorite Star Wars - Chewbacca T-shirt that way.
Nowadays, the sessions are non-smoking, here in California. Most tournaments have made provisions for smoking/non-smoking sections in other towns, but mostly they are held as non-smoking events, to my knowledge.
Man, if you can remember the sixties, you weren’t there, man!
Oh, wait …
What were we talking about?
my mother started smoking because her doctor prescribed it for nerves - along with vicodin (sp?). She was up to a 2-pack-a-day habit when she became pregnant with me and then quit cold turkey.
incidentally, i am a smoker.
Back when I was, oh, twelve or thirteen (early eighties) my sister’s husband smoked a pipe. I asked her what he’d like for Christmas, and she said probably some pipe tobacco. So I went to the local Shopko and I bought some. The checkout guy paused and said “Is this a gift for someone?” I answered yes and he let me buy it. When I told my sister about it she said that it never even occurred to her that they might not let a twelve-year-old buy tobacco. Time marches on.
yeah, what’s up with the no ashtrays in cars thing? Even before I smoked I used the ash tray for loose change, and odds and ends. My new car doesn’t have an ashtray or a lighter.
At my former workplace, we manufactured devices for treating cancer and, ironically, we were all (well, mostly) smokers. As soon as the clock hit 5, anyone who was working late was granted smoking privlidges.
I remember my parents, who have both since given up smoking, bitching about a cousin of ours who put up “thank you for not smoking” signs in her house. They thought it was anti-social of her. How times change!
I remember when people used to smoke everywhere! Planes, buses, trains, hospitals, dentists waiting rooms, standing in line at the bank or at the post office, and hair salons- who would stand for that now? Some Spanish airlines still have smoking rows at the back, and in Spain people still smoke almost everywhere.
Yes. Bowls can go incredibly wrong! (I’m a potter. I know!)
This mention of kid’s ashtray projects reminded me of something–while I grew up in a time where there smoking is more mainstream than it is now (even in California) my family kept us as insulated from it as possible. Never did anyone smoke in our house or car. I remember that it was shocking concept to think that anyone would even ask. I don’t remember anyone ever asking, or even smoking outside of our home, though I know that in other households, smoking guests probably assumed they would be able to smoke inside.
Now, this is mostly because we didn’t have a lot of friends who smoked, and partly because I just don’t think that a huge percentage of Californians smoked at that time (but more smoked then than now, of course). My dad was especially a “rebel” and didn’t care who he offended when it came to keeping smoke away from his kids. He used to tell a story about being at someone else’s house, and family friend was holding my sister (she was a baby at the time) while she (the friend) had a cigarrette in her hand. My sister (as a baby) was trying to get away from the smoke, and as soon as my dad saw this, he yanked the kid away from the smoking friend. The friend, of course, was offended. But my dad was even more offended that she’d smoke so close to a baby.
My dad was definitely a “militant” (he could be an obnoxious old coot) and he was definitely ahead of his time.
One place that I do remember a lot of smoking was at my old art school. The lounge area was full of smokers. It seemed to me to be so strange. I was so insulated from smokers most of my life, and all of a sudden I was surrounded by all these cough cough smoke! (But I wasn’t the rebel that my dad was, so I didn’t complain or anything!)
When I moved to Hooterville (out of state) a few years ago, I noticed how many people smoked. A lot more people smoke here, or at least at the places where I worked. It was a real shock to me.
Another 70s movie with one of those smoking moments is The Exorcist, where the doctor steps out of the examining room after seeing Regan and immediately lights a cig before talking to her mother.
Yay! You’ve just reminded me: when I was 6 I made a clay ashtray in the shape of a volcano. You put the cigarette in a hole in the base, and the smoke came out the vent at the top. 
Neither of my parents ever smoked, but they had several ashtrays for guests. I used to like the way the house smelled the morning after they’d had a cocktail party.
Right now on TCM they are showing the 1944 film about the WWII homefront, Since You Went Away (starring Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten and Robert Walker).
During one of the scenes, somewhat mild-mannered Robert Walker is out on a date with Jennifer Jones, and he asks her, “Is it okay if I smoke?” Jennifer Jones then spends a little while admonishing Walker’s character, saying something like, “Why are you so meek? Nobody else I know asks if they can smoke!” And she jokes later with him about “Not asking if you can smoke again” as if that is a sign of wimpiness–to ask if you can smoke!
Wow. Times sure have changed.
On the ashtrays in cars thing, a good few years ago a friend of mine bought a used car. It was cutting out repeatedly and the garage couldn’t figure out what was going on. Eventually it emerged that an immobiliser had been installed and the button was in the ashtray. Presumably, unlike my friend, the previous owner had been a non-smoker.
I distinctly remember people smoking in the vestibule of our church, and I’m only 32. So this was probably the late 70’s at the latest.
I was just talking to my brother about how the coolest “toy” at our grandmother’s house was the ashtray she had which was on this huge brass stand, and when you hit this sort of plunger on the top, the thing would rapidly spin, and sort of “flush” all the ashes and butts down. We’d play with that all the time. She also had those little beanbag-type ashtrays in every room of the house, and she wasn’t even a smoker; it was just to be a good hostess to her guests. Attitudes were a lot different then, too. My grandmother would cheerfully offer her smoker guests an ashtray or a light, rather than look at them funny for having this habit, as would likely happen today.
We bought cigarettes at the store when around 7 or 8 years old because we told the cashier (truthfully) that they weren’t for us.
My wife was mentioning the other day how one of her fourth-grade students smells like smoke all the time because the parents smoke in the house and it gets on the clothes, etc. This is unusual or noteworthy now, I guess, but I must have smelled that way every day when I was a kid. I wonder if my teachers thought it was odd or that I came from a bad home or something? (I didn’t, by the way, but my dad was/is a smoker.)
I also remember being in NYC for the first time as a little kid and being in a restaurant that had a cigarette machine. We were all aghast that the price for a pack was 75 cents. So expensive! Now it’s close to six bucks around here.
Oh, I just remembered one more–a cousin of ours received a carton of cigarettes for Christmas from his father. He must have been around 14-15 at the time.