In college, American Spirits became shorthand for a certain kind of young person they all wanted to be. Stylishly unkempt in the way of the 1960s Greenwich Village crowd, but in far-flung college towns where all they had was affectation. But that kind of putting-on had gone out with stomp-clap-yeah in the mid-2000s, and marooned them all in a sea of cold, sterile irony. It was now outré to smoke American Spirits, but Seamus couldn’t break the habit. His parents smoked Menthol 100s.
