I’m not gonna go through the full HookahJohn history, because if by now you don’t know who HJ is, my blog won’t be much help anyways. Let’s just say that aside from Alpaca it’s the only producer in U.S. of reasonably priced bowls with great performance. Most are around the 20-25$ range, and while I prefer grabbing my Goodfella/Rook over the Harmony, my mini rook only gets used if my 80ft80 is dirty/wet, and I couldn’t find anything that smokes modern blondes for one round of coals better than an 80ft+provost combo. But that’s me. He also has coals, hoses and other stuff in that same performance/price ratio that’s just so, so sweet.
Well, he used to. In what looks like a reverse move from the ones from Shishabucks, it seems that HookahJohn just looked at the market and saw this:
First up, came the Knurl hose. This beast has a whooping 1.75lbs (793 grams!!!) weight and a not-so sleek look, making it probably useful for household protection or disciplining the neighbor’s dog.
Along with the heft of the handle, also comes a hefty, hefty $80 price tag. It comes in 4 models, each more baton-like than the other.
Afterwards, the SAOCCA finally landed. The name comes from “Santa Ana, Orange County, CAlifornia” which is allegedly where these were made. It’s also just a great marketing move since it sounds foreign, I guess. Let’s have a look, shall we? In the words of the man himself:
The SAOCCA is an anodized aluminum threaded hookah, CNC-ed, with a unique purge. All in all, a solid 2019 hookah. It has a bunch of colour variants, which is to say each piece has 3 colours (black, gold and silver) and then they were mix-and-matched.
The looks aren’t necessarily amazing to me and while the bowl port looks a bit… uncircumcised, it’s actually a very nice touch. It’s raised so you have a bit of space between the tray and the bottom of the bowl so if you want to go bowl-chained-with-bowl you can grab the current one from the least hot section easily. I very much dig it. The stem is pretty solid, it has a knurl-ish look that actually makes sense, the hose port is matched with the knurl to the point where you don’t need a grommet anymore. That sounds cool until you realize that this means there’s a chance your old-school leather hose with a wooden connector that you have specifically for double apple/pan raas might not fit.
The tray has little bumps so your coals won’t go black which is a pretty nifty touch and avoids needing to have it made from two parts or with any cuts. However, the overall design feels… unfinished.
I’m also bummed about the lack of versatility in the looks. You can’t really match it with much. Unless you grab it in full-black, you’re not gonna be able to fit a gorgeous purple Egermann and maybe a resin hose in a visually pleasing manner. Not even a revolutionary artisanal base that would fit both moderns and tradis. These feel primed to be the reason for you to also get a Czech Mate base.
And then there’s the price. OH THE PRICE. $290 for stem+tray. That’s some B2-level pricing and I never expected something like this from HookahJohn, but then again it kinda makes sense in the current market to price your product along the competition. But that’s a bit too steep for my taste. I don’t see it as completely implausible to see this video sometime in September though:
“Hey everyone, it’s John here from HookahJohn.com. I have some exciting news. You asked, we listened. I have people coming in the store every day go like <<John, this is amazing, but I wish I could afford one>>, people online are trying to find used ones for cheaper. Well, today, I’m revealing to you the Hookahjohn SAOCCA Sensation ‘Stravaganza, for a whole month, they’ll be 150. shows his SAOCCA he’s smoking out of. For just a hundred and fifty dollars you get the stem, the tray and you can match it with a czech mate base for another 90$. 100% American-made, aerograde anodized aluminum, for $150. That’s crazy, I know. Will I make money out of it? I probably won’t make much money out of it. shot of John going to a warehouse area with about 30 or 40 SAOCCAs in view. These are all that are left. Where are you? Where are you? points to guy working in warehouse Do you have a SAOCCA yet? looks at camera He doesn’t have a SAOCCA yet. I’ll give you one and keep it from your salary. Laughs exactly twice, while moving back to his office and sitting at his desk So yeah, guys, SAOCCAs, 150 dollars. Only at HookahJohn.com”
In other news on the other side of the “yeah, 250 for stem + tray seems kinda _low_, you get me?”, the F-22 is still in the pre-sale phase, but no worries! They just released the B2 Precious Cut Collection Pokers ! These have been teased over social media for the past few weeks.
Well, they arrived, and the shocking news is the picture above wasn’t a blank, it’s what actually is a $40 poker. Let that sink in. A fourty. Dollar. Poker. That’s shaped like this. What.the.fuck.
It’s not the price. It’s an artisan one-of-a-kind precious cut collection piece. So if it costs 40 bucks… well, it costs 40 bucks. Though there’s a case that a werkbund poker is 15 euros, even though you’ll need to sharpen it if you want really really tiny holes. The B2 pokers have that covered, to their defense.
The problem with this one is that it doesn’t give you much control. Here’s a thought experiment. Which foil pattern looks more like what you’d expect from someone that cares so much about his bowl packing experience that he’s getting a 40 dollar poker?
And this was done with some regular cooking foil, but we use hookah-grade foil. Here’s the same two techniques, but with that son-of-a-bitch foil:
In both cases, the patterns were poked with the same Fumari poker i’ve had since the end of 2011. The diference between the left ones and the right ones is that the left patterns were made with resting the side of my palm on the bowl, while the right were made with no support.
The good results on the right ones are just a testament to my awesome skills, but the thing is that people that want those sexy sexy patterns need to steady their hands by resting it on the edge of the bowl. This isn’t comfortable if possible at all with this toothpick-stuck-in-a-bar-of-soap kinda design. And it’s those sexy sexy patterns that you’d expect someone that spends 40 dollars on a poker to want on their bowl. If you’re at the point where you want to elevate your process to the point where you want an artisanal foil poker, you probably won’t be want your hole punching pattern to look like it’s a 4-week-kept-in cumshot from a masturbator with shaky hands. If you are, though, you can do it really fast with this little treat that circulated over social media, as well:
To a lesser (yet still way beyond what would be in any way acceptable) ridiculousness, there’s this little baby that’s actually for sale on the website:
What the fuck even is this?! Does any actual hookah enthusiast ever want to poke more than one hole at a time? Especially in a time when average foil users are switching to HMDs that remove the need for foil altogether, while the foil enthusiasts are never going to actually go for this kind of mosntrosity? Are we trying to make the ebay poker shit artisanal now?
The question now is if we haven’t reached the point in the hookah scene where we don’t even think about our purchases and just throw our money at whatever “artisanal” manufacturers put out. This release of basically unprocessed blanks with a needle (or fucking more, while we’re at it, they’re literally a few cents a pop) in them is to me a slap in the face, a “should we throw these out, boss? nah, bro, stick a needle in them and sell them for like… 30? 40 for the bigger one”. To be honest, I’m done with getting stuff from B2 now. I really like my v2 and really wanted to buy more stuff for it, or get a full PCC at one point, but now… I’m gonna go Russian.
Hookah Rants 