LOS ANGELES -- Scott Nelson leans back in his chair as
he blows smoke rings in the air. The smell of apple and
peach tobacco inside the Gypsy Cafe, a hookah bar located
just steps away from the University of California at Los
Angeles campus, is so thick you can almost taste it as
it escapes from the tall water pipes on top of nearly
every table.
For hundreds of years, Middle Eastern men
have flocked to water pipes -- also known as hookahs
or nargiles -- to smoke fruit-flavored
tobacco, talk and watch the world pass by. Now hookah
bars are appearing in U.S. cities, including Jacksonville,
Fla.; Evanston, Ill.; and Madison, Wis.
In college towns or big cities such as Chicago,
San Diego and Washington, these hookah bars aren't looking
to attract older Middle Eastern clientele content to smoke
and play chess through the night. Cafe owners want their
walls bursting with trend-seeking college students and
twentysomethings eager to try the newest thing and tell
their friends about it.
"It's just relaxing," said Nelson,
19, who drives more than a half-hour every Friday night
to hang out at the Gypsy hookah bar.
"We're addicted to the hookah,"
said Catherine Rieder, 18, as she puffed away. "With
a cigarette, you can take it with you, but with the hookah,
you can only do it once in a while. It's special."
Nestled between a movie theater and a cookie
store, the Gypsy Cafe, with the feel of an unhurried European
coffee shop, attempts to seduce its clients with the taste
of another world. Lush purple draperies envelop the richly
textured walls, as hookahs -- with elegant necks and glass
bodies that seem to dance in the light -- sit with their
hoses wrapped around their necks like exotic snakes, waiting
for someone to pluck them from the counter.
Hookah enthusiasts say tobacco smoked from
the water pipe contains a small proportion of the nicotine
and none of the tar and chemicals found in American cigarettes.
Some people even make their way into the dimly lighted
lounges to stop smoking cigarettes. But health officials
aren't ready to give the hookah their seal of approval
as a healthful way to smoke.
Several studies have indicated that hookah
smoke contains significant amounts of nicotine and high
amounts of arsenic and other heavy metals, said Tom Houston,
director of science and community health advocacy for
the American Medical Association. Incidences of lip and
tongue cancer among hookah users are reasonably high,
and the effect on the heart of using hookahs is the same
as that of cigarette smoking, he said.
"They're only deluding themselves if
they think it is a safe way to smoke," Houston said.
Because smoking hookahs is touted as nonaddictive, Houston
said he worries about young people who develop a taste
for nicotine through smoking a hookah, and "when
they can't find a hookah bar they borrow a cigarette,
and there they go."
The flavored mixture, shisha,
is tobacco combined with fruit and molasses or honey.
Flavors include mint, jasmine and mango. Double apple
-- a mixture of red and green apples -- remains a bestseller.
To use the hookah, tobacco is placed on
a metal plate with a hole in the bottom that connects
to a water-filled metal container below and is heated
by special charcoal.
When the smoker inhales, smoke travels through the water,
down the tube and into the smoker's mouth. The result,
enthusiasts say, is a delicious assault on the senses
that has none of the harshness of cigarette or cigar smoking.
And the experience is easy on the pocketbook.
A bowl of tobacco averages $10 and lasts about 45 minutes
between two people, leaving plenty of time for conversation
and dessert. Many hookah lounges stay open until the wee
hours of the morning.
At the Gypsy lounge and its neighbor, the
Habibi Cafe, the demand for hookahs is so great that customers
often wait more than an hour for a table. The Gypsy experienced
a slight dip in business during the early days of the
war in Iraq but quickly recovered.
More than 13,000 customers have made their
way through the doors of Cafe Hookah in Madison, Wis.,
since it opened six months ago, owner Vartan Seferian
said. With business booming, he plans to open four more
Midwest locations in the next few months, all in college
towns.
"Having a hookah bar is like going
to a mountain with a little hammer and shovel, and finding
gold and thinking, how am I going to get all this gold
down?" Seferian said. "It has been crazy. Just
crazy."
Seferian is not the only one profiting from
the biggest smoking trend since the cigar craze of the
mid-1990s. Hookah-related sales grew 500 percent each
year over the past three years, even though the earnings
of the tobacco industry
as a whole has declined slightly.
The Casbah in Jacksonville, Fla., draws
a wide range of customers, from men in tuxedoes on their
way home from the symphony to college kids looking to
try something new, said the owner, Jason Bajalai.
"I guess it's the fad of the moment,"
said Bajalai, the son of Palestinian immigrants.
Cafe owners and enthusiasts attribute the
sudden surge in popularity of hookahs to factors including
a weak economy and an increased interest in the Middle
East.
"We used to see a hookah in the backpack
of every tourist, so we decided to bring them here,"
Hookah Brothers co-owner Ahmed Roushdy said. The socializing
that accompanies a hookah is a big draw, he said. "You
might find someone at a bar drinking alone, but you would
never find someone sitting alone smoking a hookah."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
|
