Yes, for those under 30 you have no idea how normalized smoking was right thru the 90s. Restaurants reeked of it, bars more so. A ridiculous percent of men smoked.
I have memories of being quite young sitting in a relatives lap at a baseball game while they smoked. Or my coach in little league smoking a pipe in the dugout filled with 11 year olds.
I was explaining this to my elementary school aged kids just a few days ago. We were eating in a restaurant and I told them that when I was their age most restaurants had a smoking and non-smoking section. Of course the smoke did not respect the invisible barrier. The idea that people could just smoke indoors and it was normal really blew their minds.
High school boys bathroom was basically a de-facto smoking lounge. It was banned but kids still did it. They occasionally cracked down, but the smell was permanent.
There was also an unwritten understanding that it was preferred the boys went out back to a certain door to smoke outside there instead and wouldn't get in trouble if caught.
I went to bingo years ago and there was a glass partition between the smoking and non, but it didn't go to the ceiling. So you'd sit in the non and just watch a wave of cigarette smoke roll over the top of the glass into your area... I only went once because of that.
I distinctly remember one Christmas in the mid-70s where my grandfather and uncles all got these ash trays shaped like a house (when you set your pipe/cigarette/cigar down the smoke coiled out the chimney). Everyone was smoking indoors, despite my grandmother was quite fussy and tidy about pretty much everything.
For that matter, my childhood art classes almost always included making an ashtray.
My grandparents didn’t smoke. They didn’t allow smoking in their house and that was seen as super weird in Texas. Even if you didn’t smoke, it was just expected that smokers can smoke wherever. Having ashtrays in the common area was the normal polite thing.
The first time I ever flew as a kid, I was so excited to be on a plane! And then it turned out to be a 5 hour+ flight with negligible entertainment options and I was so bored...
And then, another dude got bored so he moved to the empty back rows of the plane and smoked for the rest of the flight, and the whole plane was suffused with the smell, and I was so sick.
Like, even those who smoke generally hate the smell of that stale second-hand smoke, especially if locked up in an enclosed space for hours.
Never mind the automobile smoke. (Thankfully we dropped leaded gasoline but) have you ever found yourself following a vintage 1970's-era muscle car or similar down the road today?
Wow, that non-catalytically-converted smoke brings back the memories…
I spent two weeks in Caracas in 2000, and was shocked by the amount car exhaust. It probably wasn't excessive, but compared the US city I lived in it was always noticable.
Every vehicle came with an electric lighter and plenty of ash trays. One of the more common crafts kids used to do was making ash trays for their parents.
On the Underground there were two carriages for smokers, they were usually a bit more empty, and they were browned with tar on the walls and ceiling.
The ban on smoking on the Underground was after the second tube station fire when they realised it might be dangerous, there was also a football stadium that caught fire around the same time too.
The root cause seem to be a build up of rubbish, along with a cigarette but starting it.
