Hookah Lounge

It’s a bar where the activity is centered around smoking from communal hookahs.

My problem was that I didn’t really know what a hookah was. Turns out, it’s a lot like a bong or a waterpipe, but uses hoses to smoke from, rather than smoking directly from the device. This means that you can connect more than one hose to it, which can turn it into a group activity.

Hookahs traditionally use a specific type of flavored wet tobacco called “shisha.” It’s not uncommon to mix that with other substances, like marijuana. Some resources indicated that it was possible to smoke opium from a hookah, but this doesn’t seem to be common usage. Thus, an “opium den” might be a very different phenomenon.

A hookah lounge is a nightclub or bar with communal hookahs. Patrons sit on coaches around a hookah and communally smoke from it

I watched several videos on YouTube, and most of the establishments seemed very much like nightclubs. They mostly appeared to serve alcohol, had club music, and other things like bottle service. The biggest difference with a traditional nightclub was the couches arranged in groups, all centered around hookahs. It appeared that patrons ordered shisha like someone would order a pitcher of beer or round of drinks.

Hookahs got their start in Asia. Many bars have an Indian or Arabic theme.

Why I Looked It Up

I was on a tour of Nashville, and we passed a hookah lounge. I realized that I had a very shallow understanding of how that worked.