Cultural shifts

[ashnistrike]

Okay, it's time to do a pass for smoking, and for the minefield that is women's choices of hats (or no hats) in 1949.

Does anyone know:

...whether smoking would have been permitted in a library--in this case an ivy league academic library?

...in bookstores?

My instinct is what the hell are you thinking, but I can only just remember what it was like to have everyone smoking inside in the first place?  (It sucked, that's what I remember.  But people mostly got used to it.)

Comments

[erik]

Bookstores (especially used bookstores), yes certainly. I have many memories from even the 70s and 80s of bookstore owners with pipes.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Thank you--that's helpful, and a pipe actually fits the character better than cigarettes.

[negothick.livejournal.com]

When I was partner in a used bookstore in Providence in 1980, our friendly competitors, the Sewards of Sewards Folly Used Books, smoked incessantly--cigarettes AND pipe. Every book in that store smelled like an ashtray (nothing more porous than an old book).