It's a bit of a drive, admittedly, and traffic wasn't the best, today; but, that's fine...we took the kids with us and made it into a wander of sorts--something that we do from time to time--out and about with no real purpose in mind other than to go wherever and do whatever strikes out fancy. Very unstructured of us, but more enjoyable than having a schedule to keep or drop-dead goal to accomplish.
Anyway, we got there, and the following are my first, and probably very superficial impressions of the establishment.
The eCig City shop is immaculate and well-lit, with adequate space for customers to mingle, sit and try juices, or just "be there". Jason's daughter is friendly and quite helpful. At the end of my visit, a gentleman came in, greeted me in a friendly fashion, shook my hand, and headed into the office space. I presumed him to be Jason, but didn't trouble to ask. All in all, I felt like a valued customer.
Their selection of kits is very good, and they seem to have a decent assortment of adapters and drip tips (anodized aluminium, various plastic and stainless varieties, along with mings), as well as cartos, CE2s and other tanks. I didn't see as many different heavy-hitting box or tube mods there as I had hoped (his top-shelf emphasis appears to be on the 1000mAh and under products at this time), but there *were* some notables on his lower shelves.
Most of the atties and cartos that I saw are 510 threaded--I was hoping to pick-up a couple more HR BE112s for my 6 V Prodigy, but settled for a couple of HR 510s ($5.00 ea), and 5 CE2s ($2.88 ea), instead. They have a reasonable selection of batteries and chargers, but I don't recall that they had anything that I'd use in my mod. Their CE2's tested out at 3.0 Ohms across the board (I just noticed that one of the CE2s has an axial crack in the polystyrene tube, radiating about a half-inch up from the battery connector, but it looks like a bit of lexan or silicone adhesive will keep it from leaking.), and the two HR 510 atties tested out at 4.6 and 4.5 Ohms, whereas my Joye HR 510 atties all top-out at 3.3 Ohms. I'm usually vaping at 6 V pretty sweet with a 3.9 Ohm BE112 atty; so, these may wind-up being decent atties for my fresh off the charger CRC123As, or if I decide to finish up a VV passthrough project that I have in the works. (Warning! Soak those suckers in your favorite oil solvent, and give them a thorough hot water rinse, before putting them into service. They are very heavily coated with a clear liquid which has the feel and aroma of light machining oil.)
They have a very wide selection of single-flavored, or simple blend, juices from 2 or 3 vendors, in 1.8% and 2.4% nic strength. Everything is 30/70 PG/VG, which I really don't care for. They do allow you to try out nic juice flavors, and are very accommodating in that respect. I *did* pick up a couple of bottles of 2.4% juice at the 30/70 ratio; but, after getting back home and trying them out on fresh batteries, they strike me as being a little light on TH and flavor for me. I only just realized that his try-it batteries are 3.7 V, while I vape at 6 V. I'll probably mix them with some 90/10, later on, or use them for folks to try in my little vaping advocacy performances.
Their pricing is probably in line with what you'd expect to find in a beach city. He's on the low-end of atty and carto retail pricing, but is a bit more on kits than you'll find online. If I'm in the area, I'll definitely drop-in on them again, since I'd love the chance to buttonhole Jason for a bit of a chat sometime...maybe ask him to stock some BE112 atties and 70/30 juice at higher than 3%.
Overall, my impressions are very good about the shop. It doesn't have the smoke shop or head shop feel to it in the least--quite the opposite, in fact. His clientele appears to be in-line with the "Orange County corporate and beach set". Frankly, I enjoyed being in the shop.
eCig City is a shop that I'll keep an eye on.
What was I thinking???!?!?
