by Shaman Chad
Maybe you’ve seen a lot of wannabe shamans (like myself) smoking mapacho or using a Native American peace pipe. I picked up pipe smoking in the Peruvian Amazon when the ayahuasqueros I was working with, gave me my first pipe. Here’s a quick guide on giving yourself that wizardly mystique while not looking like a total dumbass to real tobacco aficionados.
Be Rad Like Chad
CLICK HERE to search for tobacco pipes on Amazon.com, such as this starter kit!
Materials
There are 4 materials tobacco pipes are made of –meerschaum (a mineral), wood, corn cob, and clay. Only two of these are really viable for the regular lifestyle toker.
Meerschaum is very expensive and fragile, you need a fucking glove to smoke with it. Not worth it to me. Clay pipes are kind of cool in a weird stone age throwback kind of way but clay is fragile as well. Go with wood or corn cob.
Corn cob pipes are cheap and don’t last long but they’re still acceptable as classics. Corn cob also changes the taste of the smoke, making it a little sweeter. So even if it’s going to crumble in a year, it didn’t cost you much. Corn cobs are about $20-30.
Mediterranean briarwood is what you want. If you’re going to spend the dough on a decent pipe, all that chinese peach wood or whatever is just gonna crack in a year. At least get briarwood. These are gonna start around $100.
Stem Types
Stem types really come down to two different styles. Straights or church wardens. Church wardens are your classic Gandalf-type pipes. They’re very long-stemmed which means you have to hold the bowl in your hand constantly. They can look pretty cool and are guaranteed to garner you some comments but I find them too much to manage. They’re harder to clean and store. I like straights because I can buy a rubber tip to put over the mouthpiece and just hold it in my mouth.
“Look Mom, No hands!”
Cleaning and Scheduling
I have three wooden pipes and two corn cobs. If you’re a regular smoker you’ll ideally want 7 pipes. One for each day of the week. That’s the best way to make them all last and give each plenty of rest between smokes. It’s a pretty penny though. Make sure you clean your pipes well with real pipe cleaners and not ‘crafting’ pipe cleaners from Hobby Lobby. Complete your mysterious city park hobo ensemble with a pipe nail and specialized Zippo for pipes. ■
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