Category: Pipes & Tobacco

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Savinelli Bing’s Favorite Limited Edition Arlecchino

There is probably only one thing that the late Bing Crosby and I have in common. I’ve got none of his talent and I don’t golf, but I love this pipe.

Savinelli makes a line of “Bing’s Favorite” pipes in various finishes. I was visiting my local shop, Ted’s Tobacco, partly to look at some of the Savinelli pipes I knew he carried. I was mostly interested in the 320KS shape, a chubby “author” bowl design. What caught my eye was this polar opposite. The Bing’s Favorite is a billiard with slim, elegant lines and a long shank. There were several in the case with various colored stems, but this one is the very unique “Arlecchino” stem that I love. When I saw pictures of the Bing’s Favorite on line I thought the stem would be a little longer than I would like; I was wrong.

I’ve smoked this pipe a number of times and it’s been wonderful. It accommodates a 6mm filter, either the standard Savinelli balsa or a cut-down Medico or Dr. Grabow paper filter. I get no gurgling or tongue bite at all. I love the size, the balance, the feel of it. I’m fond enough of it that I’m seriously considering buying a regular Bing’s Favorite in a smooth finish with the regular stem.

Savinelli Bing’s Favorite Arlecchino
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Pipe smoking

I’ve smoked a pipe before at various times. The first was back in the very early 1980s for a while. I started up again back around 2016-2017, and in fact picked up some absolutely wonderful tobacco at the Danish Pipe Shop in Copenhagen. I hadn’t smoked one in probably a year or so until earlier this year, when I stopped by Ted’s Tobacco again.

Once upon a time, we had some pipe shops in Omaha that also carried a few cigars. I’m reaching back to the 1970s and 1980 here… the days of David’s Briar Shop at Westroads. You could also likely find pretty fresh pipe tobacco at your local grocery or drug store. You could even buy pipes, albeit cheap ones, at one or two of the local drug store chains.

Those days are, of course, long gone. I don’t recall the last time I encountered another pipe smoker, either around here or while traveling (not counting the pipe shop staff in Copenhagen). I can find four shops in Omaha that sell pipe tobacco now — and all of them clearly sell cigars as their overwhelmingly major primary business. Of those four, two are way too far away to be practical — one is in the Old Market, the other on the northern edge of town. One, Ted’s Tobacco, is only a few minutes’ drive from my house. that’s where I’ve done most of my shopping for tobacco and pipes. Of the five pipes I currently own, two came from Ted’s, two from Missouri Meerschaum, and one I bought at Selfridge’s in London.

I’ll be posting more about the pipes and the tobacco I have tried and like, or dislike, or simply can’t smoke, as time goes on.