I was in Blackpool at the weekend and as My Smoking Shop is only 18 miles away in Preston I figured a pilgrimage would be in order. It’s in an unassuming location on the edge of town in a converted mill. I suspect they don’t get much passing traffic as it’s set away from the main road. Most of their snuff stock is in a rear storeroom (“over 5000” items I was told) but they have a cabinet full of Gawith Hoggarth, Fribourg and Treyer and Wilsons which is still the largest selection of snuff I’ve seen in any tobacconists for quite some time. I picked up a few GH tubs, a tin of O&G, a tin of Hedges, a tub of Taxi Red and a tap box of Bernard Double Fermented, along with half a dozen handkerchiefs. It was quite a novelty being able to choose from such an excellent range of snuffs in a brick and mortar store !

Love that second pic. Damn.

lets go right now. That second picture is awesome. The only reason I wish snuff was more common was so a picture like that would get the response of so what instead of awesome. Beautifull. Brad you’ve filled my heart with joy or some such emotion.

I’ve been considering an order from My Smoking Shop but now might actually go there myself, just didn’t notice earlier how close it is from here and easy to get to. Tacky weekend in Blackpool with field trip to Preston is my next holiday! Do old men still listen organ music fully clothed on the pier there with a hankie over their heads? I want to do THAT.

@cstokes: You love it because it looks like home to you. There is almost as much snuff there as is in your own photos! I agree that is absolutley beautiful though. Brad, if I had gone with you you could not have taken those photos, because you would not have gotten me away from the cabinet.

My brother lives just along the road from Preston, in Lytham. Next time I’m over there I can see I’ll have to make that slight detour. Or send him to get some for me!

ive just ordered a couple of pipes from them and three bags of pipe tobacco, i,d like to get up there trouble is its miles away from dartford :@(

Those pics make me hungry(?). edited: Actually, just the 2nd one does.

Thanks for the great scouting report. Maybe that’s what the guys around here that sell it should do, publish some pictures of stock to make us all drool!

I just realised I missed the top of the cabinet in the second picture - you can just see the edges of the Wilsons cans though. @ermtony: You’d have to go through Preston to get to Lytham anyway wouldn’t you ? Well worth stopping off. I’d have thought they must have the largest selection of snuffs of any B&M store in the country, if not the world. @AllanH: “Do old men still listen organ music fully clothed on the pier there with a hankie over their heads?” I don’t know about that as I was there for a punk festival at the Winter Gardens. But I can report that old punks don’t stop going to gigs in their late fifties. I saw two old fellers with mohicans and walking sticks !

I usually use the bypass - the middle of Preston is a good place to get stuck in a traffic jam! Definitely worth a visit anyway, and I do use MSS a lot for mail orders, both for snuff and pipe tobacco.

I have a friend I’ve not see for a little while in Preston… I guess I can kill two birds with one stone now!

poor bird friend ):

brad as far as the old punks with canes you could be right but they could also just be meth heads. They tend to age like complete shit.

@bob: It’s feasible I guess but they both looked a little too tubby to be meth heads !

Damn. If I could get to that much snuff, I wouldn’t know where to start!

true true. Do you think that both groups of old men might have some cross over??? you know the organ music crowd and the mohawk crowd?

@bob: Heh, you might have something there :o) Speaking of crossovers in musical tastes, the funniest event of the weekend was the appearance of an Abba tribute band. They were late onstage in one of the smaller venues at around 1.35 a.m. and came on to face a packed crowd of about 300 punks who were pretty much all totally inebriated. Being used to playing at weddings and such I can pretty much guarantee they’d never faced an audience anything like this before. And they went down a storm. A Scottish skinhead behind me who was built like a brick shithouse and who you probably wouldn’t like to meet down a dark alley knew every single lyric and was singing his heart out. Towards the end of the act there was even a mosh pit forming in front of the stage. Hilarious.

@Alexander: The GH tubs were a delight to behold, and at only £2.09 per tub a bit of a bargain too !

@BradMajors - Well, you never know. Chris Carter from Throbbing Gristle has a huge collection of Abba records, an absurd thought if you ever heard one of TG´s songs. Can´t help myself, even I like a lot of their songs. What´s keeping me from ordering is that they don´t offer the whole range in tubs. But then again, it´s a good source for the G&H pipe tobaccos, maybe I´ll do a mixed order.

I always wanted to be in an Abba tribute band…gimmie, gimmie, gimme a man after mindnight…de de de da dee dee…

Bless you Xander after all isn’t that what we all want lololol Stefan

yeah for some reason lots of punks I’ve known have really like abba. I don’t get it but it’s true. @ Red Star that isn’t too strange as with throbbing gristle you can tell who brought what to the table and the Chris and Cosi albums are kind of like abba on a bad acid trip which is too say I’d rather listen to abba.

@Xander: Here’s the tribute band in action. Do you want to be the blonde or the redhead ?

I’ll be the redhead. My hair is not the right color or length for either, though. You can be the blonde.

I appreciate it. Nobody fancies the redhead.

I always fancied Frida.

Pervert

I like Bjork.