Both of the B&Ms I've been to around here are pretty decent places; one is just a small store-front, but the guy is a vaper, and carries several lines of e-juice, and different sorts of PVs and topper, from the budget to the kind you save up for. I got my T3S there. The other is a big place with a lounge and couches and easy chairs and a thurs night workshop on vaping minutiae -- I'm planning to attend one or more of those myself, to learn about this stuff about cleaning and dry-burning coils, and at some point even rebuilding them.
My only problem with B&Ms is that everything they sell is overpriced; of course I understand why, they have overhead in having a physical storefront that an online shop doesn't have, but it's still *always* an issue for me, do I order something sight-unseen, taste-untasted, online and save money, or do I spend twice as much for something I can point to, hold in my hand, taste, etc.
I also have a serious issue with the nearly constant recommendations I hear about nic level -- "start high, you can always reduce." It's very difficult to reduce the nic of a juice, you have to add LOTS! or zero of low-nic juice to do it -- or you have to buy more, which is not always possible for some of us. This happened to me at the bigger place in town, they recommended I start at 18mg because I had smoked between a half and a full pack a day -- they didn't take into consideration that a) I smoked ultra-lights (6mg) for 20 yrs, or b) that to me, nausea is a "fate worse than death." I think it's much wiser to start low, and if it doesn't curb your cravings, go a little higher, in small increments. That way you can avoid the nic-sick, and keep a positive attitude to continuing. I still have 95% of that $16 bottle of 18mg, because it takes so little of it to raise a nic level; I may still be adding it to my 6mg for the next year.
This isn't at all like AA, where if you're quitting the drink, you have to do it all at once, and if you "slip" and have one, you have to start all over again with a white chip. Although I've heard many stories at this point about folks who started vaping and IMMEDIATELY laid down the smokes, I don't think that's true at all for most of us; most of us kept smoking less and less until they just tasted so bad compared to the vapes, what was the point of continuing something so expensive, fatal, and nasty-tasting? So why make yourself ill with a nic level that's too high? You don't really know what's too high until you have it, and THAT is the most awful feeling; FAR better to start low, see how it affects you, and maybe increase it if it seems advisable.
Just my
...
Andria
