![]() I still have my Edwardian Canadian, one of the sweetest smoking pipes I have ever owned. And of course walls of pipes, including Edward’s specially cured Algerian briar. Free coffee, and a few tobaccos to try out. The Edward’s shop in the Big A was a delight. I began smoking Edward’s while in college and later worked as a journalist in Atlanta. And just a bit on Edward’s Pipes and Tobaccos. “We have a Rolodex full of customers around the country,” he says. ![]() And, Doc says, the shop does a comparatively good business with mail orders for Tom’s tobacco blends. One of the shop’s fav Young blends, Doc says, is his Raspberry Creek blend, half-and-half raspberry, and peaches. But there are Tom’s formula blends for Bishop’s Burley, Black Watch, the store’s top seller, Scottish Moor, a non-aromatic version, Buccaneer Black, English Supreme, Ed’s Oriental Supreme, and Good Companion. The walls are brick and overhead high wooden wall shelves brim with some long-ago tins no longer available. “It will almost explode.” Voila! Thus the aging and climatizing process are necessary. “If you get a cigar from Florida shipped here and open it,” says Doc. That’s not only to mature the cigars but also to acclimate the stogies to the mile-high altitude of the area. Another huge humidor in the basement stores boxes of cigars to age for about one year. There is a large walk-in humidor in the main portion of the shop with shelves stuffed full of cigar boxes. He says the shops old oak floors are “nice and creaky.” He says the shop probably has one of the largest selections of pipes and tobacco products in the state. No ‘weed.” “We send them down the road where there is no shortage of head shops.” Doc Thomas, 38, is the shop’s manager, master blender, and pipe repairman. “You would not believe that people come in here and think we are a ‘head’ shop,” Perry says. Of course, one of the curious things about tobacco shops today in the state is the so-called “head” shops in which cannabis is sold legally. It’s always good to get them converted to the pipe,” Perry says. And we are seeing the younger guys coming to it as new pipe smokers. “We do a very good pipe and tobacco business. Perry says his shop is not connected to the old Edwards franchise, but the name was retained because it was so well known in the Denver metro area. When asked his age, Tom says, “I’m old enough to know better, but don’t!” And this note about Tom’s self-described shop title: “I’m the Colonel of the Urinal.” Enough on ages and titles. However, pipes and veteran blender Tom Young’s mixtures, some of which date to his beginnings with the shop in 1969, where he has been since its opening. Cigars, by the way, account for about 70 percent of the shop’s business, Perry says. ![]() Today, the store sports two smoking parlors and a large outdoor patio where patrons can enjoy pipes and cigars. In 1969 the shop became an Edward’s Pipe Shop, switching from horses and hooves, perhaps, to pipes and tobacco. Big logging.” The Edwards shop has gone through many iterations in its 100-year-old history: from grocery, and appliance stores, to at one point a farrier shop. He was an Edward’s customer for many years before he left “big oil to go to big tobacco.” His next entrepreneurial adventure, Perry says, will be his “trifecta. “Born and raised in Lakewood, the first city west of Denver,” he said. Perry, a mechanical engineer who said he worked in New Orleans, La., on the “drilling, exploration, and sales side of things.” He graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in 2009. Perry, 37, purchased the store about three years ago from its previous owner, Bryan Reid, and the last owner, Reid’s son, Bryn (cq) Reid. The building, says shop owner Nick Perry, was constructed sometime in the 1920s. This sort of square box store, roughly 3,000 square feet in size with a back door that reminds you of an old farm home, is quite possibly one of the oldest tobacco shops in the entire state. On a recent visit to the mountains and plains of Colorado, the Pundit wandered over to Englewood and found this delightful and colorful pipe shop. There you will encounter the Edward’s Pipe & Tobacco Shop sitting squarely at 3441 S. It’s like one continuous sprawl from Denver. If you ever venture out to the mile-high city of Denver, Colo., and you are seeking a unique smoking experience (not in the sense of the word that rhymes with seed), travel five miles south to Englewood.
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