Cool Things
| HOOKAH JAVA Newsletter March,2011 from Merchantcircle.com |
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March 14, 2011
Hookah Java at the 101
Now at our new and improved location at 101 W. Walnut in Historic Downtown Rogers
Please
take a stroll through Historic Downtown Rogers, shop the new trendy
stores, dine in the most delicious 'unchained' restaurants and come down
to the new Hookah Java for a great, I mean - THE BEST cup of gourmet
coffee and the best hookah around.
-
Let's start with a little lesson in Hookah.
Here we are 2 months into our new home here in Historic Downtown Rogers. We are so excited to be here! We have so many new things to offer! We have gourmet coffee, tea, and over 75 flavors of the highest quality hookah tobacco as well as many non-tobacco shisha as well. We have something for everyone.
Wi-Fi is FREE to Hookah Java customers.
We have been asked lately if it gets smokey in here like a bar, the answer is no.
Even when we have a full house it smells like a bakery because of all of the different flavors of simmering shisha. We do not allow cigarette or cigar smoking in the building. Just delicious hookah.
As a matter of fact, smoking hookah is not really 'smoking' at all. The shisha (tobacco) is placed in a ceramic bowl and placed atop the shaft of a hookah. a piece of foil is placed over the bowl and holes are poked through it. A glowing coal (special for hookah) is placed on top of the foil. As you inhale through the hose the ceramic bowl is heated and heats the tobacco in the process. The heated tobacco begins to simmer and creates a flavored steam/vapor that is further filtered through the water, then inhaled. The result is a tasty white cloud of vapor that can be used to create rings or can be blown into bubbles. It's all part of the fun!
Click on or copy and paste the link below to see a video of hookah bubbles!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_EkKLtFg10&feature;=player_detailpage
Real non-hookah 'Smoked' tobacco, pipe or cigarette is burned with a flame until it is reduced to ash. When a hookah is done, the result is a dried and semi hardened puck of shredded tobacco leaf.
Most hookah tobacco contains less than .05% Nicotine. A Cigarette can contain over 9% and contains nearly 70 other harmful chemicals and addictive additives.
Hookah tobacco has 4 ingredients: Tobacco, Color, Flavoring and Either Glycerin or Molasses to moisten and sweeten the hookah tobacco (or non-tobacco).
So know that you know the real truth about hookah, what are you waiting for?
Pictured: Blueberry blast: Non tobacco Blueberry, Lemon Pucker and Wildberry... yum!!
So it seems that our new lounge is all the rage with our authentic and unique decor, one of a kind fun and relaxing atmosphere, our full service, friendly staff, excellent hours and the best coffee. Soon we will be selling pastries and baked goods prepared by local bakers and pastry chefs!
A perfect compliment to the best coffee.
Hookah Java is a wonderful place to go on a date, hang out with friends or even host a business meeting (we have several business meetings here a week for many professionals). It is public but private enough for a great conversation.
We are open from 10:00 AM - 11:00PM Sun-Thurs. and 10:00 AM - 2:00 AM Friday and Saturday. Come in before 7PM any day and try a small hookah for as little as $7.00!
Our V.I.P lounge is now open and seating on Friday and Saturday Night. There is an upcharge for V.I.P seating and general V.I.P. seating may not be available if the V.I.P. lounge is rented out for another private party or event. Yes, I said rented out. That's right, you can now rent our V.I.P. Room for your
gathering, meeting or private party.
I hope this was as fun and informative to read as it was fun to put together for you. Please also stop by our gift shop "The Backroom" at Hookah Java located around the corner on 1st St. at the back of the Hookah Java building.
Please come down to Historic Downtown Rogers Soon, if you haven't been here in a while, let me tell you, this place has soul and business is booming. Nearly no open real estate down here anymore.
Until next time, wishing you the best clouds....
Melanie
Owner, Hookah Java
www.hookahjava.com
Youtube Channel: Hookah Java
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HAPPY SPRING!!!!
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THE GYPSY AND THE WIZARD: EAST MEETS WEST AT THE PSYCHEDELIC WIZARD
November 24, 2005
A Tower mainstay remakes itself as a whole new breed of smoke shop. Take a lesson in shisha from the Wizard.
The first things you notice about the psychedelic wizard are the names of the people there. The owner is always referred to as "The Wizard", and his right hand man is known simply as Gypsy. Normally, I wouldn't tolerate calling someone "The Wizard", but when you've been running a head shop called the Psychedelic Wizard for seventeen years, I guess it just makes sense. And Gypsy?
"I'm a gypsy, so they call me the gypsy. Pretty creative, huh?" he says with a half shrug and a smile.
The next thing you notice is probably the decor. One side of the shop looks like a straight-up head shop, complete with pyrex pipes in display cases, bongs (er... "water pipes") lined up on shelves, vaporizers, and a giant Pink Floyd "The Wall" poster. The other side looks like somebody ripped out the main room of a Middle Eastern lounge and dropped it right in the heart of Tower. Overstuffed couches, ornately carved chessboards, elephant themed wall hangings and a six-foot tall brass hookah in the window complete the look.
The Wizard explained the curious dichotomy to me.
"I started out with the Grateful Dead. Biggest Grateful Dead store in all of California. This whole shop was filled with grateful dead stuff." He says, looking less like a deadhead and more like a grizzled cowboy, complete with handlebar mustache and cowboy hat.
But when Grateful dead merchandise started to slow down in 1995, he made the shift towards glass pipes and other memorabilia. But now he's trying to get away from the 'head shop' image.
"All that stuff over there is marked down to cost," he says, motioning towards a display case full of pipes. "We want to get all that stuff out of here and focus on hookah."
He won't say much about the hookah, though. "You want to know about hookah? That's the man that will tell you everything you want to know."
Gypsy appears from the back of the shop, stepping through a beaded curtain. He looks ripped from the pages of a Lewis Carroll book, complete with top hat, and long curved wooden pipe that he puffs on throughout the night. He starts preparing a hookah for photographer Rachael Olmstead and I while giving us a crash course in what hookah is all about.
"Hookah is this device," he says, pointing to the ornately crafted device on the table in front of us. "Hookah is also the smoking of this device. So when you are smoking a hookah, you are 'doing' hookah. The tobacco flora is called shisha. Shisha is not tobacco though... It means the stuff that you use for a hookah... So that's what shisha means, a lot of people just think it means tobacco."
He prepares a bowl of the "Gypsy's Blend" for us: a mixture of hazelnut, vanilla, and cherry flavor, with a dash of menthol, mint and peppermint. He then sanitizes the ends of a couple of hoses and hands them to us before continuing.
"On a hookah you have a bowl at the top to put your shisha in. So you put your shisha in there and then cover it with aluminum foil, shiny side up. Then we poke holes in it with a toothpick. Then you put your hot coal on there, it has to be red hot. It does not burn the shisha, it heats up the flavors. The flavors go down through a stem that runs the entire length of a hookah and then it ends up in the water in the bowl. The vapors hit the water which creates steam. And all that flavor and steam comes through the hookah hose, and all that steam and vapor is what you are inhaling."
I take my first nervous drags from the hose and get what tastes suspiciously like... air. Rachael does the same. I figure out pretty quickly that we must be doing something wrong, so I ask Gypsy if I'm committing some kind of hookah faux pas.
"If you're into hookah you generally know that you should cover the tip when other people are smoking. It is a better smoke when other people cover it with their thumb or fingers. It creates better suction. When you get into a three or four hose (hookah), it's really polite because there's so many places where air can leak in and then you can't get the suction," he says with a slight smile.
We take a few more drags and the bowl begins to fill with smoke that looks like cotton candy. After a while, the flavor develops. It feels strangely like I am eating watermelons, and the sensation is entirely pleasant. I ask Gypsy some to tell me more about hookah, and he is happy to oblige.
"It's a social device. These were used in harems, concubines... What they would do is sit around and smoke hookahs and converse. It was etiquette, it was high esteem, it was classy... Just like owning a limo versus owning a bug. When you smoke hookah, you are partaking in a very high class social event. And because the smoke is so flavorful, you're just enjoying it... pretty soon you start talking, you start socializing and meeting other people. And it's small enough in here that it's like a living room. It's very much like a living room party every night where we've had lots of people who don't know each other, and by the end of the evening they know each other by name. We get people in from all walks of life. We've had a Canadian band that sat here for three hours smoking hookah and listening to Rush, and they played at Club Fred that night. We've had a preacher come in all dressed in white, and he smoked out of the clear white hooka. Lawyers, Indian chiefs, everything in between."
Wait a second... Rush?
Here The Wizard chimes in, "You can bring in whatever music you want, and we'll play it for you."
It's nice to know that if you get tired of the Floyd you can get your hookah on to some Portishead.
I manage to get enough information for this article in less than an hour, but I stick around for another two, taking in the atmosphere, enjoying the hookah and the conversation. There's two other customers here, playing chess and drinking coffee. Gypsy tells me about his days as a boy in Brazil, and The Wizard tells me all about surfing in Hawaii.
Prices start at around five bucks a head for an hour and a half of hookah, and you can choose from 30 different flavors. Special blends are an extra dollar, and ice in the hookah is an extra dollar. But if you get tired of one flavor, Gypsy will change your bowl for no extra charge. In addition to selling hookahs and shisha, they also serve a full menu of coffee beverages, and have plans to start offering milkshakes and flavored sodas.
The Psychedelic Wizard Smoke Shop is located at 1472 N Van Ness Ave, Fresno, CA. They can be reached at (559) 268-8203.
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