The list of sublimely romantic songs that involve smoking is bigger than you might guess, and for my money Otis Redding's "Cigarettes and Coffee" is holding down the #1 position. A man and woman, newly in love, sit at a kitchen table and talk late into the night, alone and content and happy to let this perfect moment roll on just a bit longer. "I would love to have another drink of coffee," Redding sings. "And please, darling, help me smoke this one more cigarette." If God exists and has a soft spot for old surf writers, 50 years from now it will be Otis' voice and Steve Cropper's tremolo-filtered guitar calling me forth to Heaven.

Here's my question. Are songs like that more romantic because of the smoking? Or is smoking more romantic because of songs like that? The latter, I think, but who knows. Chicken or egg.

Anyway, last week I posted a short clip of John Peck hitting on a Pall Mall while finessing the bowl section at Honolua Bay, which reminded me of all the little bits and pieces from old surf movies where guys (all guys, no girls) are lighting up, inhaling, gesturing, exhaling, and otherwise getting on with their surfing lives while smoking up a storm. That led me to Sam Cooke's "Smoke Rings" (runner-up Most Romantic Smoking Song), followed by a mad rush through the video archive, and next thing you know I've pieced together the lovely, shameful little clip you see before you.

Two quick points. Surfers, obviously, like everybody else, pretty much ignored all the ever-more-dire Surgeon General's warnings about cigarettes throughout the 1960s. And surfers, like rock and rollers and Hollywood A-listers, can look amazingly cool while doing something amazingly stupid.

UNFILTERED: SURFING AND SMOKING IN THE SIXTIES

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