Florida Hot Spots for Hookahs

Check out these South Florida locations to smoke from water pipes filled with fruit-flavored tobacco

Walk into a Middle Eastern-themed coffee shop or nightclub, and you may spot a small crowd lounging comfortably, smoking what appears to be an enormous lamp with water inside.

When you get closer, the scent of apple tickles your nose. Or maybe it's rose. Perhaps coconut? The possibilities are endless with hookahs, a type of water pipe generally associated with the Middle East and rising in popularity both nationwide and in South Florida.

Often brightly decorated, hookahs consist of a glass base that holds water, connected to a pipe topped by a small bowl. The bowl holds the charcoal and tobacco, which is soaked in aromatic fruit pulp or plants and tastes of apples, berries, mint or any number of flavors, which can be mixed. The smoke then exits through a long hand-held hose. Even more appealing about hookahs, the smoke cools by flowing through the water, making it smoother than any cigar or cigarette.

HOT SPOTS
SouthFlorida.com finds the prime hookah-smoking spots:

Kan Zaman Cafe
1814 North University Drive
Plantation
954-916-5646

Funky Buddha Lounge
2621 N. Federal Highway
Boca Raton
561-368-4643

Leila
West Palm Beach
561-659-7373

Angel Ultra Lounge
247 23rd St.
Miami Beach
305-695-1713

D'Vine Lounge
910 Washington Ave
Miami Beach
305-534-1414

Tantra
1445 Pennsylvania Ave.
Miami Beach
305-672-4765

Some speculate the hookah went high profile in the United States thanks to the intense focus on the Middle East. Others point to endless nostalgia for the '60s, when hookahs, hash and Hendrix were an intoxicating trinity. These days, hookahs can be found everywhere from coffee shops to upscale nightclubs.

Depending on who's talking, the water pipe is known as a hookah, a shisha or nargile, spelled a variety of ways. But they're essentially the same.

Maybe not surprisingly, Americans are more captivated with the hookah than Middle Easterners, who've enjoyed the pipe for centuries.

"In the West, people find it exotic, whereas we [people of Middle East ancestry] associate it with something our grandfathers or great uncles used to do," says Walid Phares, a Florida Atlantic University professor of Middle East studies. "We come to this country and don't necessarily want to do this. We want to do typically American things. You're more likely to hear, `Let's go to the mall.'"

When hot embers from the charcoal heat the tobacco, the smoke descends the pipe and is filtered through the water. Then the smoke ascends through a parallel pipe, which travels through a hose into the smoker's mouth.

As the hookah passes from one smoker to another, each gets a new plastic mouthpiece so this social experience is also a sanitary one.

Enthusiasts say the water filters out most of the harmful substances, but health experts don't agree. Tar and nicotine are reduced, but only by about 20 percent.

"Instead of hitting a brick wall at 100 miles an hour, you're hitting a brick wall at 80 miles an hour," says Thomas Glynn, director of cancer science and trends for the American Cancer Society. "It's wrong to say this way of smoking doesn't have any bad affects. It's not doing anyone any good."

Catch hookahs in the film classic Casablanca in a memorable scene featuring Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet. Decades later, another generation caught Jabba the Hutt toking on a hookah in Return of the Jedi. And of course, it's hard to forget the famous hookah-smoking caterpillar in "Alice in Wonderland."