Ferdia Carr gets the vapours in Shoreditch.
It’s been seven years since smoking in a pub was banned in England. Pro-fag publicans complained that pubs would smell like piss and stale beer if smokers had to take their nicotine sticks outside. And they were right (but better than smelling of piss, stale beer and fags, obviously).
This was a long time ago, though; and I am not old enough, so I’m told, to be looking backward instead of forward. So off I go to the Vape Lab on Shoreditch High Street, to see what the future holds for the nico-teens of tomorrow.
The Vape Lab presents itself as a café and E-Cigarette shop. Thankfully it delivers on both fronts. Too often a novelty café will fall short on the actual café side in the hope that the novelty will make up for it (ever been to a cat emporium?). Happily, the coffee is decent and the décor is Shoreditch orthodox, i.e. wood and bulbs. The main attraction, the vape, a word they use far too frequently, comes in about 20 different flavours.
If, like me, nicotine gives you a terrible case of the fear and nausea, there’s a plethora of fruity fluids for you to inhale in a sad corner while all the cool kids ‘vape’ nicotine at the counter.
I opted for custard cream vapour, which was delicious. I’m grateful I never started smoking in my teens (at the time it had no appeal to me whatsoever), but if I could have smoked custard, things certainly would have been different. The experience of sort of smoking (I hate saying ‘vaping’, it sounds like Count Dracula is flying in) flavoured, nicotine-free vapour is much the same as using a hookah pipe – without feeling like an Ottoman prince, admittedly; but there’s more mobility and it’s not without novelty.
Also, for those of a laid-back, peace-loving disposition, the potential of E-Cigarettes doesn’t stop at nicotine or raspberry cheesecake flavour. THC fluid, in other words cannabis, exists for the very purpose of vaporising, although it isn’t currently legal in this country.
Curiously, the hookah was swept away in the smoking ban along with the traditional cigarette, despite entailing the inhalation of vapour in the same way that an e-fag does. For the time being, the Vape Lab is a way for smokers to enjoy nicotine indoors without having to battle the bitter cold outside or lung cancer within. But who knows where John Law may take E-Cigarettes in the future? The Royal Society for Public Health thinks their name should be changed to ‘nicotine sticks,’ to alert consumers to the potential danger therein. Which I’m all for, so long as we rename alcohol ‘liver deterioration fluid’ and Sunday walks in the park ‘potential homicide excursions,’ to make sure everyone knows the dangers thereof.
It’s too soon for me to say I’m a fully convicted ‘vapist,’ but if you want a novelty experience or a healthier and cheaper way to be addicted to nicotine, the Vape Lab is a nice corner of Shoreditch to have a coffee and learn how to inhale.
(If he’s in, give my regards to Bill Clinton.)
