Local residents voiced complaints about a Broadway smoke shop with a window display of four shiny hookahs that resemble machine guns: metallic black, silver, pink, and gold. Originating in the Middle East and South Asia, Hookahs are large tobacco pipes with long flexible tubes that draw in smoke through a water basin.
The complaints
One resident, who wishes to remain anonymous, is concerned with violent imagery and a bad message. “With what’s happening with guns in the school systems and the country, bad messages are being sent out. I think it’s a poor way of going to a kid and representing our city and our store. For kids to be seeing things like this, it’s terrible.”
He says that these kinds of products exploit violence. “Wars are going on, and they’re putting guns on the hookah to sell these things.” Like any concerned citizen, he fears the slippery slope. “Once you let this go, something else will take its place and it will escalate. I think it’s something that should be addressed.” He said he had not confronted the shop about it.
One woman passing by the store, who also wished to remain anonymous, said, “I don’t like those guns. They show them to children, and they love it.” She says the guns are “ridiculous” and the store “should make different kinds [of hookahs], not guns.”
“With what’s happening with guns in the school systems and the country, bad messages are being sent out.” – Bayonne resident
____________
The other side
John McNamara, a Vietnam War veteran, was not concerned. Standing in front of the Prime Hookah window, he said “It looks like a toy AK-47. Anyone with two eyes can see that’s not a real gun.” He chalked up concerns to “gun-ban fanatics in this country” who are “insane about it.” To a Vietnam War veteran, a pink plastic AK-47 seems laughably benign. “I can’t perceive them to be anything more than a novelty.” He admits to disliking hookahs for the sweet smoke flavor and for the health risks they pose.
McNamara said the hookah may be seen as un-American. “They probably don’t like it because it’s Middle Eastern. Generally speaking, people from this culture think that culture is messed up. And that culture thinks we’re messed up.”
Taking it to the owner
The owner of Prime Hookah, Danny Jay, said that this is the first time that he’s heard the complaint. He assured the Bayonne Community News that the hookahs are not real guns and that the shop has a strict age policy; only customers 19 years or older are allowed to enter.
Jay was a bit surprised that some people took offense. “I never imagined people would interpret them that way,” he said. The shop is only a showroom. Using its website, it ships products all over the country, which makes Jay less concerned with what’s in the window. In response to hearing some of the concerns of people in the community, he said that he’d take the gun hookahs out of the display window. “If they came in and told me that, I would have taken them down immediately,” he said.
Rory Pasquariello may be reached at roryp@hudsonreporter.com.