Hookah Bar Becomes the ‘Anti-Loudoun’

At the Shisha Café and Lounge, like cafés throughout the Middle East, customers smoke flavored tobacco from brass hookahs and water pipes. Yet Sisha is in Virginia, not Baghdad or Beirut. Originally intended to serve the Middle Eastern communities in Loudoun and Fairfax counties, the hookah bar instead became a hit with the college crowd - most of whom are not of Middle Eastern origin. With the food, electronic rock music, sake, waiters sporting Mohawks, and belly dancers, and youthful customers in a conservative US state, Shisha is a complex cross-cultural phenomenon. For patrons, the café is “anti-Loudoun,” something exotic they can call their own. - YaleGlobal