One Little Paper Cut

It was just a little note in the excellent local Burlingame Voice blog, a symbol of changing times and attitudes. The world isn’t what it used to be. The Burlingame Smoke Shop was well past its prime, a relic from an era when smoking was a glamorous habit, not a death sentence. When it closed, there was no public outcry. A few locals – the ones with teenage children, maybe -- probably breathed a sigh of relief.

Two doors down, the smoke shop’s upscale doppelganger, Burlingame Tobacconists, flourishes. The new store (spun off from the original shop in 1994) serves an audience that appreciates the good life. It offers cedar cigar lockers and a smoking lounge fit for a latter-day cigar-smoking Vanderbilt, with high-backed club chairs and a pair of 46-inch plasma TVs.

It mirrors the present-day Burlingame demographic -- and a paradigm shift that has made cigarette smokers outlaws while branding casual cigar and pipe smokers as cultural sophisticates.

The old smoke shop was something different. It was messy and thoughtlessly lowbrow, with children’s play cars strewn about the sidewalk and a neon sign in the front window reading “Psychic.” It had colorful characters in its past like Peter Umland, owner during the 1980s, when the business was called the “Towne Smoke Shop.”

It sold cigars and pipes – and cigarettes – but it also sold magazines and newspapers and handbags, hardware and those toy cars. It was as much a newsstand/variety store as it was smoke shop. The message boards of the Burlingame Historical Society teem with the memories of wistful middle-aged locals who spent youthful afternoons browsing the smoke shop comic book racks, spending their allowances on candy bars and Coke.

It’s difficult to argue with what Burlingame has become. Without really trying, it’s carved itself out a niche as San Mateo County’s most livable city, with two downtowns, pristine residential neighborhoods and a charming housing inventory that fits neatly into the upper-middle class slot. It’s the preferred city for upscale families, as it boasts excellent public schools and a low crime rate, and, with its tree-lined streets and quaint downtown architecture, it’s physically attractive, as well.

Burlingame’s marriage of residential and commercial is a prime draw for its residents. They don’t want to be isolated (Hillsborough, Atherton, Woodside), suburbanized (Belmont, Foster City, Millbrae) or overwhelmed (Redwood City, San Mateo). They buy into this vision assuming that their children will be populating future Burlingame Historical Society message boards with their own warm memories of growing up in Burlingame.

The question is this: how much of Burlingame’s charm comes from established, hyper-local businesses like Preston’s, Broadway Hardware and yes, the Burlingame Smoke Shop? Did the smoke shop become something – a classic, chaotic corner variety store -- modern Burlingame no longer needed?

Some say that ruin comes not from one massive blow but from a million little paper cuts. When you consider the things that make a community as cohesive as Burlingame has been for several decades, you have to assume that the loss of a neighborhood fixture counts as at least one little paper cut. It’s Burlingame’s responsibility to turn its present-day businesses into irreplaceable community amenities. How do you do that? Simple: you slow down, stroll up Broadway and Burlingame Avenue, eat in local restaurants and spend ten fewer minutes at the Apple Store so you’ll have time to browse the new releases at Books, Inc.