Smoking Cigarettes at NAMM

No, I don't smoke. However, I could not escape the smoke yesterday outside the Anaheim Convention Center. As it turns out, NAMM is a convention that welcomes musicians, instrument dealers, instrument distributors, and other people in the music industry. And wouldn't you know it? Many of these people smoke. Because I am such a math nerd, I got to thinking about the amount of cigarettes that are smoked on a daily basis at NAMM. Let's take a look at some imaginary numbers. Keep in mind I'm just making this up:

125,000 people attending NAMM
Let's say that 20% of them smoke
25,000 smokers
Convention Hours: 10am-6pm
Each smoker has at least 3 cigarettes during those hours
25,000 smokers x 3 cigarettes each day=

75,000 cigarettes each day at NAMM!

That's a lot of smoke breaks, a lot of smoke, and a lot of cigarettes! And really it's a lot of people standing outside the convention hall doors telling stories of lore about musicians and their gear. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for some of those conversations. Although the fly would probably have some smoke allergies or something. But I'm sure the stories are good ones.

I guess I could also look at the number of beers sold at NAMM. That number would also be astonishing. Or cell phone calls made during NAMM. Last night I could not make a call until I was 4 blocks away from the convention center. My only guess is that the cell phone towers were jammed up with thousands of calls every second of the day.

Well, I'm off to the show!