Plain and simple, smoking makes you look refined. Stick a pipe in your mouth, rock a robe, and you can come off as the mysterious lay about who hides his or her secrets in the deep chambers of their innermost mind. Or you could just be leaning against a wall, pull out your pipe, and bystanders will instantly think, “Wow, that’s a classy gent, I’d like to know what they’re thinking, but I don’t want to disturb them. They look like they’re in deep thought.” Little did they know that the contemplative look you displayed between puffs was because you were wondering what to eat for dinner, and that’s the great part about smoking; it always gives you the air of someone who can’t be figured out, someone others can never quite figure out. Even if you just like this particular pipe or whatever because it was the shade of blue you’ve always liked since you were a kid.

With marijuana being legalized in New York State, expect to see a lot more casual smokers about posturing themselves against cafe chairs and the sides of building as if they came out of a French film. So now’s your chance to get in on the action before it becomes over-saturated and your grandma starts smoking a pipe (the death rattle of anything cool starts when the grandparents get involved. It’s a fact of life!) If you intend to beat the rush, stop by one of the many head shops in Buffalo Niagara!

The smoke shop used to be a thing reserved solely for the enthusiast crowd (people who paid exorbitant amounts of cash to get cigars straight from Cuba so they can sit in their man cave with friends and discuss times past as they blow smoke that engulfs the room in a blue haze. You know the type). But those days are gone. The luxury of smoking is readily available to the public like never before. You just walk into one of the stores and ask the person at the counter what you’d like and they just give it to you. (You no longer have to hire a guy to smuggle Cuban Cigars on a freighter off the Florida Coast, if that’s not a sign of progress, I fail to see what is).

Now you might think, and with good reason I might add, that since smoking paraphernalia is so readily available that shops would mainly cater to college students looking to do bong rips immediately after doing a wicked session at the keg stand. But that’s where you’re wrong. The head shop is a middle ground where the college students of today coexist with the leisure smokers of yesterday, creating a place that has something for everyone!

Although the increased popularity of smoke shops will surely increase the amount of money coming into the city regularly, I see its positive effect having another layer as well – that of community. In recent years smoking in its many forms has been frowned upon by everyone ranging from TV newscasters to your neighbor (who you know just to ignore now because she’s just a noisy lady with too much time on her hands). Despite all the nay saying and health risks you’ve heard over and over at this point, you feel like you could recite them accurately from memory. It doesn’t deter from the fact that people will continue to smoke, so why not have more hubs where people can talk and find better ways to enjoy what they like?

Granted, your local smoke shop is far from a grimy drug den, but if we pull the clock back just 40 years or so, you’d have Nancy Reagan on TV crying tears the size of dinner plates over such establishments. Since then, the people have made a case that the majority of responsible, hardworking adults take part in a recreational smoke, or dab, or what have you from time to time, and in most cases, they’re all the better for it. The unwarranted stigma of “the lazy smoker” is dead and gone just by the mere fact a great deal of the population partakes in such practices, and we have yet to see society’s gears come to a screeching halt and crumble before our very eyes.