In most restaurants, right next to the candy machines. Theaters, bowling alleys, bus stops, gas stations, hardware stores, most stores actually, usually near the entrance, sometimes outside the front door.

Fucking everywhere.

I’m not nostalgic for them, I’ve never smoked, and I was happy when the bans started. My god, we used to put up with that in theaters and restaurants, hard to believe.

I remember back around 1984, I was flying on stand-by, which meant I could only get a seat if there was one free just before takeoff. There was one seat available, and it was in the smoking section. I had already spent the previous night in the airport and I was anxious to get home, so I took it. Fortunately, I was exhausted and fell asleep soon after takeoff and slept the entire trip. It took a full day to get that crap out of my lungs, I could smell it the entire time, it was disgusting.

Always wanted to refurbish one and rig it to dispense magic the gathering decks.

My parents tell the story of the time, before I was born, that they were totally out of money and cigarettes but managed to scrape together just enough for a pack from the machine at the bar. My dad put the money in and the machine jammed. He fought with it until it started spitting money out of the coin return at him. Someone put a Susan B Anthony dollar in, right after they were introduced, and it blocked it up. There was like $10 backed up behind it and it carried them to payday.

But that particular one is an art dispenser at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. Or at least they were installed there before the pandemic, I think the hotel has had 2 new owners since then.

That looks like an Art-O-Mat, they have them all over North Carolina. They don’t sell smokes out of them anymore, but local artists make little $5 knick knacks (cigarette pack sized) that you can buy out of them.

I’m just old enough to have been a smoker while it didn’t carry quite the same stigma that it does today. I remember using these machines in hotel lobbies and gas stations, and they were always so bad. It’s bad enough as it is but these were on another level of bad in every dimension. Dry, dusty, probably fully decayed in parts, probably peed on a few times and left out in the sun/rain to dry/rinse. My parents didn’t really care that I was a smoker, but I can’t imagine my reaction if my kid started smoking and buying dead cigarette packs from motels. I am glad these things are gone.

I was working as a card dealer at a casino when the indoor smoking ban went through in my state. I was so glad assholes wouldn’t be blowing smoke in my face when they lost a hand.

The day the ban went through, the first table I worked was lined with 7 dip cups and I immediately wished we could go back to blowing smoke in my face.