CORPS Report No. 1
A Pipesmokers Dream
As I wrote earlier, I plan to give you several updates from my attendance at the Conclave of Richmond Pipe Smokers, or C.O.R.P.S., from Richmond, Va., capital of the Old Confederacy (and, yes, I’m letting my cultural and heritage bias show) and now the Tobacco Capital of America.
First, let me just say that I learned much from the two days I was able to spend there. In fact, I gathered so much news that I was unable to “blog” from Richmond, as I had promised. My fault entirely, but I hope the wait is worthwhile. I was overwhelmed, and discovered I am not as fast as I once was. Age, of course, is the great equalizer.
Report No. 1:
CORPS officials told me that overall attendance was up from about 76 exhibitors to more than 120 this year. The Koger South Conference Center inside the Holiday Inn Select was generally filled Friday night, all day Saturday and much of Sunday.
That’s roughly a 63 percent increase, which is an indication that pipe smoking and the pipesmoking community is on the upswing, if my math is correct.
Most of all, CORPS President Craig Norris told me that exhibitors arrive from all over the world and, of course, the U.S. to attend the show, which is second only to the Chicago Pipe Show in terms of exhibitors and attendance by the public.
There were heavy hitter tobacco manufacturers present, including McClelland Tobacco, McCranie’s Tobacco Shop, Hermit Tobacco, Altadis, Cornell & Diehl, 2 Daughters LLC.
Big name distributor XYZ Direct from Atlanta, Ga., was there as well was a who’s who of pipe makers, including Paul Bonaquisti, J.T. Cooke, in addition to pipe retailers, such as Steve Monjure of Monjure International, Radice Pipes, Rinaldi Pipes, Pipes and Tobacco Magazine, Tad Gage with his 3 Oaks Tobacco, Smoking Pipes.com, and just a slew of others, names you recognize from all the pipe publications that around these days.
The Friday night dinner was a special tribute event to the late Bill Ashton-Taylor, the longtime pipe maker from England, who died Sept. 16, 2009, after a long illness. Bill was a grand human being and a master pipe maker, whose skills were a gift from the gods. Everyone will miss him. I will have much more to say on Bill Ashton-Taylor in another CORPS Report.
In addition, the Friday night dinner also produced another stunner: Craig Tarler, owner, creator, and, yes, (as I promised sometime back to identify) Master of the Universe, announced that he is supporting Pipesmokers Intelligencer on the Internet. It was a kind and generous introduction to the many pipesmokers present.
Also, Stephen A. Ross, a major player in the pipesmoking world as an Associate Editor of P&T Magazine, gave an eye-opening speech about the future of our hobby and love of smoking pipes. More of that in another CORPS Report as well.
There is so much more. I promise to be busy the next several days working on the CORPS Reports. Some of the news is a bit scary and depressing, while other viewpoints take a much optimistic view.
Also, I hope to produce a photo page from the event itself. That is in the works.
As always, stay tuned, and let me hear from you about these CORPS Reports.