Ring Home: http://www.jack-tompkins.com/Pipes
Ringmaster: Jack Tompkins
Join: PipeSmoke Ring
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Pipes and cigars provide a rich tradition that has survived the ups and downs of fashion and politics. The Southwest Pipe & Cigar League is an organization dedicated to defending and promoting that tradition. Although the SWPCL has been mainly a social club, we have joined the cybercommunity of like-minded individuals in using the power of the Internet to make sure that our special way of life continues into the future.
"; tx += "After eight years in Sacramento, the Northern California Pipe Show moved its venue to Merced in 2006. I had to miss that show due to prior commitments, so I was very pleased to make the show\'s 2nd year in its new home. NCPS X took place on November 10, 2007 at the Grizzly Creek Grange Hall, and was sponsored by the Fresno and Merced pipe clubs.
" +loadFrame("article.html")+ "(more on Merced...)
| ";
tx += "PipeSmoke Ring Provided by: Spiderlinks.Org Ring Home: http://www.jack-tompkins.com/Pipes Ringmaster: Jack Tompkins Join: PipeSmoke Ring PREVIOUS:NEXT:RANDOM:SITE-LIST | ";
tx += "
Meetings are held on the second Sunday of the month, unless otherwise noted.
Click on confirmed dates for the printable meeting flyer.
Date | ";
tx += "Location | ";
tx += "|
June 8 | ";
tx += loadFrame(printFlyer3)+ "||
" +"June 8 | ";
tx += "Tobacco Barn (Lake Forest) | ";
tx += "confirmed |
July 13 | ";
tx += loadFrame(printFlyer4)+ "||
July 13 | ";
tx += "Dreux\'s Place | ";
tx += "confirmed |
August 10 | ";
tx += loadFrame(printFlyer5)+ "||
August 10 | ";
tx += "JT Schmid\'s Restaurant & Brewery (Anaheim) | ";
tx += "confirmed |
September 14 | ";
tx += loadFrame(printFlyer6)+ "||
September 14 | ";
tx += "Joe R\'s Churchills (Long Beach) | ";
tx += "confirmed |
October 12 | ";
// tx += loadFrame(printFlyer1)+ "||
October 12 | ";
tx += "Briar Rose Tobacco Shop (Carson) | ";
tx += "tentative |
November 9 | ";
// tx += loadFrame(printFlyer2)+ "||
November 9 | ";
tx += "Cigar Company (Thousand Oaks) | ";
tx += "tentative |
December 9 | ";
tx += "SWPCL Club Meeting. Hosted by Marty\'s Cigar & Divan in Glendora. Convenes at 12pm. Everyone is welcome to attend our meetings. Get the " +loadFrame(printFlyer3)+ "meeting flyer. |
January 13 | ";
tx += "SWPCL Club Meeting. Hosted by Tobacco Barn in Lake Forest. Convenes at 12pm. Everyone is welcome to attend our meetings. Get the " +loadFrame(printFlyer4)+ "meeting flyer. |
February 10 | ";
tx += "SWPCL Club Meeting and Pipe Swap. Hosted by JT Schmid\'s Restaurant & Brewery in Anaheim. Convenes at 12pm. Everyone is welcome to attend our meetings. Get the " +loadFrame(printFlyer5)+ "meeting flyer. |
";
tx += linkOut(bonfiglioli)+ "Alberto Bonfiglioli | ";
tx += linkOut(oldPueblo)+ "Old Pueblo Pipe Club |
Maybe some of you out there tend to think that pipe and cigar clubs are a waste of time. But this is definitely not the case, so let's just summarize why pipe and cigar clubs are important, and why your participation in one is too.
"; tx += "1. Club meetings are an opportunity for people to get together and swap or buy and sell pipes, cigars, or other tobacco-related products with other members, as well as share favorite tobaccos while enjoying a friendly social setting with like-minded people. Just as important, meetings are a great way to pass on information relating in one way or another to our pursuit.
"; tx += "2. The social aspect of pipe and cigar clubs also offers a way to combat the relentless negativity of the anti-smoking movement. If some of that negativity happens to live in your own home, then you'll especially appreciate being among people who not only won't give you grief for lighting up, but are joining you.
"; tx += "3. Pipe and cigar clubs give us the chance to help support the retail business that is so important to what we enjoy. Retailers in turn can support clubs and help build membership. In other words, this is a "win-win" situation for all concerned.
"; tx += "4. Clubs can be a focal point for organizing pipe and cigar shows, which are vital to the promotion of pipes and cigars. Besides the successful shows that the Southwest Pipe & Cigar League has sponsored, three other excellent examples are the events sponsored by Chicagoland Pipe Collectors Club (Chicago, IL), C.O.R.P.S. (Richmond, VA), and the North American Society of Pipe Collectors (Columbus, OH).
"; tx += "Okay, so what if you'd like to join a pipe and cigar club, but there isn't one in your area? You can organize it yourself, and it's not that difficult. A good place to start is with your local retailers. If they have their heads on straight, they'll understand the mutual benefits of club involvement, and can help you build membership from their customers. With the explosion of the internet, online resources such as alt.smokers.pipes and alt.smokers.cigars can also give you avenues for finding other pipe and cigar smokers in your area who'd like to be a part of your club.
"; tx += "Once you've got some members, the next thing to do is find someplace where you can hold meetings. If you live in one of the few places left in America where you can smoke in restaurants, then you may find one which is willing to accommodate you. Otherwise, you could hold meetings either at a local retailer who both supports you and has the room, or at members' houses.
"; tx += "Finally, after you have your members and a meeting place lined up, it's time to decide whether or not to charge dues, have a regular newsletter (in which case, you'll need the dues money to cover costs), and also decide who will do what.
"; tx += "This gets us to the leadership issue. If your club is small, you can probably get by with an informal kind of organization. However, if your club gets big, or wants to become involved with putting together shows, then you'll need to have more. In this case you should have a president, vice-president, and a secretary-treasurer to handle club finances and mailings (such as newsletters, announcements, etc). If your club is going to do shows, then good organization is especially important.
"; tx += "Clubs have a very important role to play in the present and future of pipes and cigars. As the anti-smoking movement continues to hammer away at us, they become a "grass roots" expression of our resolve to continue enjoying our unique way of life. It doesn't matter if a club has 10 members or 100: large and small, they do their part.
"; } if (na == "join"){ ti = "Join the SWPCL"; gt = ""; tx = ""; tx += "Annual dues for membership in the Southwest Pipe and Cigar League are $10.
That\'s only 84¢ a month! Less than a small cup of coffee at Starbucks.
To receive postal notifications, membership dues are $12.
"; tx += "The term of membership is April 1st, 2006 to March 31st, 2007.
"; tx += "| Get the Membership Application | ||
| " +linkOut("swpcl-app07.htm")+ "Web Page (htm) | "; tx += "" +linkOut("swpcl-app07.pdf")+ "Adobe Acrobat (pdf) | "; tx += "|
For further information about membership, email info@swpcl.org
"; } if (na == "about"){ ti = ""; gt = ""; tx = ""; /* tx += "| " +loadFrame("why.html")+ "Why Join a Club? | "; tx += "" +loadFrame("join.html")+ "Join the SWPCL | "; tx += "
About the SWPCL
by Steve Johnson, President
The Southwest Pipe & Cigar League (SWPCL) had its humble beginnings in 1984 as a small group of pipe collectors meeting in the back room of the (now defunct) Century City Tobacco Shop. I joined the club in 1986, at which time the membership had grown to the point that meetings were being held in area restaurants (back in the good old days, when you could still smoke in restaurants here in California!). Different locations were found for culinary variety or to replace a business that went under. At that time, we really had no leadership (a subject I'll come back to), so it was up to individual club members to help us get a spot for meetings if we lost the use of wherever we were going at the time. Because of this, our get-togethers became sporadic, and finally the club went dormant in 1990.
What got us back on track were the efforts and initiative of Jon Werner, who had been a very dedicated member since the time I joined up. He saw the value of trying to keep our club going, and found a restaurant in West Los Angeles that not only didn't mind a bunch of guys getting together and smoking pipes and cigars, but actually welcomed our presence once a month. (It was an Italian restaurant, owned by a family from Italy, which meant they didn't have the uptight attitudes about smoking afflicting Americans. This probably explains why it was the only place we could find in an area that has been especially snooty towards smokers - no other restaurant we approached in the westside wanted anything to do with us.) Jon did a great job of keeping the club together, and he was the de facto president until the economic situation in southern California forced him to move back to his native Minnesota for better job opportunities in 1993.
"; tx += "When Jon left, I took his place and shortly thereafter, the club made me the duly elected president, a post which I occupy today. During the '80s, I saw the anti-smoking movement almost kill pipe and cigar smoking. The experience made me something of an activist in challenging what officialdom had to say about the health aspects of pipes and cigars, and when I became the president of our club, it was decided by our key members that the club should likewise take something of a more activist role in defending and promoting our way of life. Our club had gone from a small group of guys getting together to swap pipes, to become an organization of people dedicated to actively ENJOYING our pursuit in the face of all attempts to destroy that enjoyment through brainwashing of both us and the nonsmoking public. This change of focus was reflected in the name we chose as the official one for our club - the Southwest Pipe & Cigar League.
"; tx += "If you're interested in promoting pipes and pipe smoking, what can you do? The answer - do a pipe show. Another one of our longtime loyal members, Mr. Roy Fazalare, put on a show in 1992, the first pipe show in Los Angeles since 1984. While the event was moderately successful, Roy experienced some major limitations being the only one to organize and run the show. The following year, we had the opportunity to put together another pipe show, but this time it was to be a club-sponsored event. Roy had some valuable experience to pass on, which helped me out a great deal since I headed up the organizing. But having the club behind me on publicizing and running the show made all the difference in the world, and the group effort paid off. Although organizing the show was still hell on wheels (if I had known what I was getting myself into, I probably wouldn't have done it!), our success inspired us to do it again, and we ended up putting on 5 annual shows from '93 until '97. By the way, one of the keys to our success was that we promoted not just pipes and pipe smoking, but also a sense of positivism about our pursuit which we felt was needed to counteract the massive negativity being forced on us by the anti-smoking movement.
"; tx += "In 1995, the cigar boom was in full swing, and at the suggestion of then-owner of the Briar Rose in Carson, CA, Shane Pappas, we decided to make our shows both a pipe and cigar event to boost attendance and stimulate crossover interest among people who were exclusively either pipe or cigar smokers. Shane proved to be a major asset to us, and he performed brilliantly in bringing together the cigar side of the show. His ideas worked very well, and in '96 our show's formula resulted in the most successful event we'd ever had, with over 2,000 people attending over the weekend. Our '97 show also did very well, but by then it was becoming pretty much impossible to deal with the smoker-very unfriendly attitudes which kept us from being able to find a venue that would have us back a second time. Will we have another show sometime? I wouldn't rule it out, but clearly it's quite a challenge doing it in California these days!
"; tx += "During the years we had the shows, we also noticed an interesting shift taking place among retailers. Before that time, almost all retail tobacconists were hostile towards the existence of pipe clubs. When things were so tough for the business back in the '80s, it would seem logical that retailers would've welcomed the pipe clubs' help in promoting pipe smoking. That's why we were always surprised the attitudes towards us were exactly the opposite. Indeed, the "bunker mentality" of those days caused retailers to view anyone outside their shops as competitors, us included. However, this situation has improved substantially, and while there are still some holdouts, most retailers now understand that there's real benefit to be gained from mutual support among pipe clubs and smoke shops.
"; tx += "For us the shift couldn't have come at a better time. During our show years, our supporting retailers provided us with a lot of help in publicizing our events, and also provided us with places where we could hold our monthly meetings. Since smoking in restaurants was banned here in California a few years ago, it has been our friends in the business who have made it possible for our club to continue on through our regular get-togethers. It's also given our club members the opportunity to participate in promotional events held at smoke shops. For example, in October of '99, one of our longtime and very loyal friends in the business, Poor Richard's Pipe & Tobacco Shoppe (San Bernardino, CA), had an event with CAO. This show included, of course, CAO meerschaums (some by retiring master carver Ismet Bekler), and also featured samplings of cigars and pipe tobaccos being introduced by CAO for the first time. More recently (in March 2000, to be precise), Marty's Cigar & Divan (Glendora, CA) had a showing of pipes by Ferndown, Caminetto, Barling, Armellini and Cassano, with samplings of new tobaccos by Caminetto and Ferndown. The rep, Tom Fitzpatrick, was knowledgeable and a great guy to spend time with. Being a part of these special events made those meetings two of the most enjoyable we've ever had.
"; tx += "The Future is Now
Before the Internet age, having a pipe club meant keeping it local. But now, we have the ability to reach people across the country and around the world. For those of you who either live in southern California or are visiting the area, the Southwest Pipe & Cigar League will continue to offer monthly opportunities to gather and enjoy the company of like-minded individuals. But even if you can't make any of our meetings, we hope that our efforts to promote our pursuit will encourage you to join.