Jonathan Brilliant has never been much of one for the bar scene.
Too much shouting. Too much posing. Too many people acting like
morons.
The San Jose State graduate student prefers to spend his time
playing cards and talking with friends at coffee shops, but tonight
he’s trying something different.
Jonathan Brilliant has never been much of one for the bar scene. Too much shouting. Too much posing. Too many people acting like morons.
The San Jose State graduate student prefers to spend his time playing cards and talking with friends at coffee shops, but tonight he’s trying something different.
“I smoked hookah with a Bedouin in the Sinai while I was on a trip there in 1999, but I haven’t really done it since,” said Brilliant. The 28-year-old was persuaded to come out by friend Keith Hudson, a 3-D model and animation major at Cogswell Polytechnical College in Sunnyvale.
“A friend of mine just got a job here,” said Hudson, gesturing to the storefront behind him. “I stopped by a few days ago to see the place, and I liked it so much I’ve been here the last three days in a row. Everyone’s really friendly and after a hard day it’s nice – tea, cards, friends and smoke.”
Hookah smoking is a Middle Eastern tradition whose history extends back to the turn of the 17 century or before.
The primitive beginnings of smoking tobacco from a water pipe were brought from India – with water pipes made from the shell of a coconut – but found their final form in Turkey around 1623, according to the Turkish Daily News.
Since then they have been an integral part of the coffee shop experience in that part of the world.
In Jordan, especially, hookah bars offer a meeting place for people young and old to congregate, sit and chat, said Paul Zumot, owner of Hookah Nites Cafe in San Jose along with his brother.
“(In Jordan) this is like Starbucks in Seattle – every corner,” said Zumot, a Jordanian immigrant who recently took his first trip back in 12 years.
The trend has found a burgeoning number of adopters stateside in places like South Beach, Chicago and Los Angeles’ Westwood area, with similar shops popping
up near university campuses and 20-something hangouts throughout the surrounding suburban areas.
The water pipe, also known as a narghile or shisha, offers users light, mild flavoring, and smokers can choose from tastes like apple, blueberry, lemon mint, rose,
vanilla and papaya tobacco while getting a product that is tar-free and low in nicotine (.05 percent per pound).
First-timers often become converts. Heather Brown, 18, brought two of her friends to try the place on a recent evening.
The friends were so enamored they decided to purchase their own hookah, the prices of which range anywhere from $20 to $100 depending on size and artistry.
“I prefer this over cigarettes,” said Michael Barrios, 19. “It’s good and you don’t go home smelling (bad).”
You don’t need to bring your own hookah to the cafe, which has its own. The cafe also provides protective disposable mouthpieces and washes the pipes’ hoses each night.
Still, hookah smoking gets a bad wrap. People unfamiliar with the tradition of smoking wet tobacco, which is pressed into a bowl-like head and heated by mesquite charcoal placed on top of the hookah, often assume that something else must be in the mix.
This isn’t surprising since the last surge in U.S. hookah use was during the 1970s, almost exclusively as a vehicle for drugs like marijuana. Prior to that it had also been used for opium smoking.
“The guys walk out of the club and some of them say stuff like, ‘What are you smoking in there?'” said Yasir Hanafy, a club regular. The 27-year-old financial analyst is here five to six nights a week, settling down in a chair and relaxing his neck against the tight collar of his suit while taking calls on a BlueTooth earpiece. “For me it’s mostly a cultural thing,” said Hanafy, who is originally from Egypt.
“It’s relaxing and depending on what mood you’re in, you can smoke a different flavor. If I’m down I smoke a heavier flavor than if I’m feeling really good.”
Hookah Nites has a distinct flair, with a menu offering up Falafel, Gyros and Turkish coffee alongside more mainstream items like lattes, sodas and cheesecake.
Zumot plays mostly Arab and international music on nights when no sporting events are on.
And while it’s an Arab tradition, he said his clientele is only about five percent Arab.
The bulk of his client base are local students, as well as spillover from neighborhood nightspots like Pete Escovedo’s Latin Jazz Club and the trendy Glo.
Since opening last year, Zumot has used only his sidewalk space for smokers, because the coffee shop storefront did not have proper ventilation, despite its 21-foot ceilings.
But as of Monday, the ventilation has been installed and smokers can now repose inside the shop.
“Who wants to come into an area that smells like you’re in a cloud of it?” asked Zumot, a former Boeing design engineer. “I decided to wait until we could do it right.”
The change will be a welcome one for patrons, many of whom line up on the weekends to get a seat before closing time at 2am.
Sunday through Wednesday, things stay relatively small, with around 80 to 100 people showing up in a night, but Thursday through Saturday nights are a bit more hectic, with 200 to 400 people coming through each shift.
“I keep nine people on during those times, but we’ll have 11 soon,” said Zumot. “I don’t want people to have to wait.”
Zumot’s shop also offers a variety of other attraction points, including free high-speed DSL connections for customers, live bands and hefty price breaks for San Jose State University students.
The shop will even come to you since he offers catering for parties and weddings. Full price smoke sessions on site are $10, and the place is crowd-free before 9:30pm.
For more information visit www.hookahnites.com or call (408) 286-0800. Hookah Nites is located at 371 S. First Street in San Jose.
