Having been in business for 46 years, Smoking Pleasure By Work is definitely the oldest tobacco shop in Peoria, if not one of the oldest locally-owned small businesses in this city.
Let’s hop on over there and take a look at this unique shop in downtown Peoria!
Smoking Pleasure is located in the Twin Towers Mall on Fulton Street. There’s the storefront window, let’s go inside and check it out.
The store is the first one you run into when you walk into the mall, that’s handy!
This store really has a nostalgic feel to it that hits you as soon as you walk into it. I think I see the owner down at the end of the counter.
That’s the owner, Mary Ann Work on the right with her friend, Felicia, who works nearby in the Peoria Courthouse.
Mary Ann told me that she and her husband, Bob, opened up the first Smoking Pleasure By Work in the same building that housed the Rialto Movie Theater back in 1973.
When that got torn down to make way for the Civic Center, they moved the operation to the Jefferson Bank Building and they’ve been in this location in the Twin Towers Mall since 1997.
She told me to feel free to roam around and take some photos with the MBIP Camera, so let’s make like the B-52’s and roam!
There’s a lot to look at in here and we’ll start off with some of the pictures on the walls.
There’s the original home of Smoking Pleasure By Work, next to the Rialto Theater and below that is a painting of downtown Peoria from back in the ’60’s.
There’s a vintage Peoria Pipe sign and I love the Marlboro Man vintage clock on the wall!
Check out the Ronald Reagan classic Chesterfield cigarette Christmas poster! Butts from Dutch!
The wooden and glass antique cabinets are full of smoking treasures such as boy and girl birth cigars, pipes and antique lighters, cigarettes and matches.
The shelving units in the middle of the store house fancy ash trays and high-class wooden cigar boxes.
This two string Java cigar guitar on the wall is very cool!
They sell cigarettes here, but Mary Ann said the majority of the business comes from cigar purchases.
And this cigar humidor room is proof of this point. It’s the only temperature-controlled humidor room in Peoria and it has the largest inventory of stogies in the city. The cedar wood and cigar aroma smells delightful in here!
Mary Ann has a great rapport with her customers and I witnessed her engaging them in thoughtful and fun conversation while I was there. You don’t get that when you shop at Amazon!
Thanks to Mary Ann for a fun afternoon at Smoking Pleasure By Work! If your father is a cigar smoker, this place has all the Father’s Day gifts you need!
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456 Fulton Street
Suite 128
Peoria
309-673-2229
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