‘This is where the best social contact happens’: the joy of the smoking room
TFor some, the smoking area in a nightclub offers a moment of relief from the deafening speakers and clouds of dry ice inside. For others, it’s a chance to sit down and chat with a friend, or connect with a new one. Rarely is it just about smoking a cigarette. Whatever its function, a visit to the smoking area has become a ritual part of the night for many clubbers, whether or not they smoke. It’s an experience that could be lost altogether if the government pursues a ban on smoking outside clubs, bars and pubs.
On Friday night in a small DIY club in Sheffield, the smoking area is full despite the cold temperature. People swap names as they share Rizlas and filters, accidentally pocketing each other’s lighters. In a corner, a group of friends are catching up on the latest from each other’s lives. Nearby, a newly-met couple are making out. It’s a familiar scene to anyone who’s been to a club since 2007, when indoor smoking bans moved nicotine-fueled socializing from the dance floor to these now-beloved outdoor zones.
“For me, the smoking area is the most intimate part of the club,” says Dani, 27. “It’s hard to have really good conversations inside because you can’t always hear what someone is saying. The conversations outside can be more profound.” Even as a non-smoker, she spends a significant portion of her evenings out on the terrace here, and she carries a lighter on a chain around her belt because she recognizes it’s common in social situations: a guaranteed icebreaker. She’s met most of her friends here. “You’re all at the same club night, you probably like the same kind of music, so in a lot of ways there’s already a connection, at least on some level. On a Friday night, you might let go of the week and feel a bit more open; there’s a cheekiness to it. It’s a great environment to bond with people.”
Take Joseph and Sophie, both 29. When I meet them two days later in the smoking room of Corsica Studios, a club in Elephant and Castle, they list all the friendships they owe to this serendipitous hustle. “We met the best man at our wedding in a smoking room,” Joseph enthuses. “We went outside and I rolled a cigarette. He said, ‘Can I have half?’ I said yes and we’ve been best friends ever since!”
Other interactions are more fleeting but no less memorable: a deep, meaningful conversation with someone you’ve just met, only to lose them as soon as you step back into the club; passionate gossip with someone whose name you’ve never heard. Alex, 25, tells me about a friend they made one night outside the now-closed Antwerp Mansion in Manchester, when they were 16. The pair struck up a conversation but never kept in touch. Over the next few years, though, they would continue to bump into each other outside nightclubs across the country.
“She just became a person I saw sporadically in smoking areas!” Alex laughs. Despite not knowing each other’s names anymore, these interactions started to feel special, marking milestones in their lives: their first attempts at hedonism, orientation week, the post-pandemic opening of clubs. “I think the best socializing happens in smoking areas. My story is proof of how these spaces work in a covert way to unite people randomly by providing a quiet place for a shared activity.”
It’s these fleeting moments that Gaby, 28, cherishes the most. “It’s not just about falling in love or finding someone who’s still your best friend 20 years later; smoking areas are just a great place for those moments when you[meet someone and]both know that after those 10 minutes you might never talk to each other again. This is a place where it’s totally okay to just talk to someone new and there’s no pressure: we’re not doing this because we’re on a Hinge date, we’re not doing this because we’re on a job interview, I’m only meeting you because you had a lighter and I didn’t. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that and it might never mean anything, but it’s a little snapshot of someone’s life.”
After living in Japan for two years, where smoking is still often done on the dance floor, Gaby returned to the UK in June. “When I first got back, I went to a club night with the sole intention of just sitting on a bench in the smoking area and meeting people,” she says. “And that was literally all I did for four hours, because that’s what you do: you talk to strangers in a way that you don’t in other public settings, and that’s really special.” In what she describes as an “increasingly isolationist society”, she worries about the impact the loss of smoking areas could have on human interactions: “I think we would lose a really valuable, non-digitally mediated space to meet strangers and they’re actually very, very rare.”
Of course, smoking areas in clubs are also good places to build romantic relationships. Sometimes all it takes is a bit of Dutch courage and a friendly environment to approach someone attractively for a lighter, knowing you have one in your pocket. As a friend half-jokingly told me last week – over a cigarette in a pub garden – Keir Starmer’s proposed ban could “single-handedly kill hook-up culture”.
An informal space to chat freely is invaluable in dating, says Tom, 26, “especially in our culture of boundaries and emotional restraint.” When he quit smoking nearly two years ago, he vowed to never stop going to the smoking room: That’s where he finds the most interesting people. It’s also where he can connect with people he’s exchanged a meaningful look with earlier in the evening. “On an app or in a bar, you have to put in more effort, which people find difficult or artificial. I know so many people who have nurtured a fling within the confines of the smoking room.”
Sometimes these encounters can lead to long-term relationships. In 2017, Jay, 31, met his friend Jonny outside a queer party in Manchester. They’d briefly chatted on the apps, but hadn’t gotten around to arranging a date. “Me and a few mates were just catching their breath and I ended up seeing Jonny,” he tells me on the way to a day party in Peckham. “I went over and we just started chatting for hours, missing a lot of the music inside.” After spending the rest of the night together, they agreed to meet up the next day. “We’re still together, seven and a half years later. We even bought a house recently.”
Luke, 41, recalls the change brought about by the 2007 smoking ban in British nightclubs and how he lamented the introduction of a separate outdoor area. “Before smoking areas, you were in a room full of people. People rarely went out for a cigarette alone or in splinter groups; conversations were shouty, but with movement and self-expression. You might retreat to the bar or go with a newfound party buddy to see if the chatter matched the mood, but otherwise the room was closed off. It allowed for longer periods of group dancing experience.”
But now, nearly two decades later, he’s moved on to smoking rooms and would be sad to see them go. “Punctuation is important, even if it’s in the form of a bunch of excited people craving cigarettes,” he says. “You end up meeting a wider group of people because you can smoke and chat without fucking each other inside.” He believes the atmosphere in the club has improved, too. “More defined intervals to chill can ultimately lead to people dancing harder than if they stayed all night,” he continues. “Overall, it’s much better now.”
It’s a sentiment Jay agrees with. “There’s all this rhetoric about communities being created on a dance floor,” he says. “But it’s actually happening in the smoking area.”