The ubiquity of ashtrays feels surreal and I keep forgetting about it, but I know I saw it. They were EVERYWHERE. The brown glass three-notch ones and the plastic ones with a notched ridge in the center. So much smoke.
Replies
My parents smoked nonstop in the car as well, and at home even in the BATHROOM! All the towels stank, and when they were damp... 🤢
aug 29, 2025, 8:31 am • 1 0 • view
I can smell and feel the tarry residue just from this description.
aug 29, 2025, 5:17 pm • 1 0 • view
On the bright side, I never touched a cigarette myself as a result. So lucky.
aug 29, 2025, 7:36 pm • 1 0 • view
My parents are both lifelong non-smokers, but they had some ashtrays for company. I don't recall ever seeing them used; they must have been cleaned immediately afterwards. The idea of that social expectation is bizarre now.
aug 29, 2025, 9:41 am • 4 0 • view
I think my mom may have gotten the ashtrays after a guest put out a cigarette in a pewter bowl she used for rubber bands, ruining several bands and causing a nasty burnt rubber and cigarette stench.
aug 29, 2025, 9:43 am • 5 0 • view
They kept those things for years after the social convention turned to smoker guests voluntarily going outside. They had, after all, chosen ones that could be mistaken for objets d'art: heavy flower-like things of coloured glass.
aug 29, 2025, 9:47 am • 3 0 • view
Yeah, there were some very artistically made ashtrays. Also souvenir ones from tourist traps, which had nostalgic qualities.
aug 30, 2025, 10:49 am • 1 0 • view
If someone just decided to put a lit cigarette out in a bowl of rubber bands in my house I simply couldn’t be held responsible for what I did next. Absolute sociopath shit.
aug 29, 2025, 1:33 pm • 3 0 • view
The family car I grew up driving around in had ashtrays built into the doors in the backseats (they were full of gum).
aug 29, 2025, 9:25 pm • 2 0 • view
It was always the first thing you made of clay in elementary school art class. Very simple shape and didn’t really matter if it had imperfections.
aug 31, 2025, 3:36 am • 0 0 • view
It’s so wild to remember how smoking was fucking EVERYWHERE until the 2000s.
aug 29, 2025, 6:24 am • 64 0 • view
All the old diners near me are weirdly shaped. You just have this section tables and booths oddly separated from the rest. Its really weird till you remenber: "Would you like to sit in Smoking or non Smoking?"
aug 29, 2025, 4:44 pm • 5 0 • view
Even in mo-mo assed Utah restaurants had smoking sections
aug 30, 2025, 12:29 am • 1 0 • view
I miss it
aug 29, 2025, 2:57 pm • 0 0 • view
I remember when smoking was finally banned in bars. I was going to bars at the time. It made the bars much more pleasant.
aug 29, 2025, 4:05 pm • 5 0 • view
At that time, I smoked, and I was slightly annoyed at the change. I am so fucking glad they banned indoor public smoking. It's one of the best public policy changes in my lifetime
aug 29, 2025, 5:21 pm • 7 0 • view
Every surface was covered with this nasty translucent layer of brownish-orange tobacco smoke deposits. In retrospect, it was so, so gross.
aug 29, 2025, 7:33 am • 54 1 • view
Both Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2 came out in the 80s (1984 and 1989), and it's weird once you notice it that everyone is basically chain smoking throughout the first one and then not at all in the second.
aug 29, 2025, 8:08 am • 60 0 • view
Also, if you’re of a certain age, you can smell both Die Hard and Midnight Run during modern-day rewatches. 🤣
aug 30, 2025, 4:11 pm • 2 0 • view
I worked electronics repair in the 80s, I was chatting with a tech at his bench He was working on a stereo with an aluminum face. We both commented on it having an anodized champagne finish Later that day he gave the face a wipe, cleaning off the color There was even more smoke residue inside
aug 29, 2025, 2:25 pm • 7 0 • view
What I most clearly remember in this vein were the electronics cooling fans of the time. Held fast by the sticky brown dust clumps.
aug 29, 2025, 4:03 pm • 3 0 • view
I didn't work on anything with a fan until I started my current job. Smoking indoors had just been banned, I saw sooooo much of that in literally everything I worked on. I asked where this came from, co worker replied "ask Dupes" our resident chain smoker. Gross
aug 29, 2025, 4:28 pm • 3 0 • view