Hookah has plenty of fans in Fullerton

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         Fullerton has two hookah lounges that offer the Middle Eastern practice.

FULLERTON – Hookah aficionados have plenty of choices on where they partake of water-cooled bowls of flavored tobacco – called shisha – with names such as tiger's blood, Arabian nights and sex panther.

Practiced in the Middle East for centuries, hookah smoking has become popular in the U.S. in recent years.

One online database lists 35 establishments in Orange County that offer hookah, including two in Fullerton. Anaheim tops the list with 10.

A few are Middle Eastern restaurants offering hookah as an added amenity, but most are hookah lounges. Common touches: big-screen televisions, recorded music wafting about and Internet access.

Shawn Abdalla, who owns the Twilight Loungeon Chapman Avenue in Fullerton, said a hookah lounge is like a "big living room."

Typically, a hookah pipe is shared between two customers who order two separate flavors of shisha, said Nadia Abdalla, Shawn's wife.

In the Twilight, a usual hookah session for a pair lasts 1½ hours and costs about $20, soft drinks included.

Abraham Appel, 34, of Fullerton, has found a home at the Twilight Lounge.

He said the hookah lounge is a "sober bar."

"When you go to a bar that serves liquor, you see the worst side of people," Appel said. "When you come here, you see the real side and the good side of people."

Hookah bars are a staple of Middle Eastern life, as well as in American cities with large Arab populations, according to a December article in The New York Times.

The article also cited a 2008 study of nearly 3,800 students at eight universities in North Carolina that revealed more than 40 percent had smoked a hookah at least once.

The American Lung Association, in a 2007 report, called hookah use a "dangerous trend" and said water-pipe smoking "carries many of the same health risks and has been linked to many of the same diseases caused by cigarette smoking."

Shisha, which is simply tobacco combined with molasses and flavoring, and smoked in a hookah, comes in a variety of flavors. Many are standards, such as cherry, pineapple, grape, raspberry and blueberry. Then there are the more exotic offerings with monikers to match. Here are a few of the more exotic flavors we found, sold by Social Smoke, a Texas-based purveyor of all things hookah.