One for Lileks: The WSJ looks at one little noticed effect of smoking bans across the country. Headline: Printed Matchbooks at Bars, Restaurants Are Flaming Out.

Demand for restaurant matches isn't what it used to be as more localities ban smoking in dining establishments and bars. Mr. Stuart and many other owners say they plan to use up their supplies and then let the once-ubiquitous restaurant matchbook fade into history.

Even at famed Boston tourist trap Cheers:

Matches still play a big role at Cheers, the Boston bar that inspired the long-lived TV show. Most tourists want to leave with a keepsake. Still, when the bar finishes off the matches it has on hand, it is considering a shift to souvenir buttons.

This is a shame because, as Likeks's galleries testify, the restaurant matchbook was a rich vein of commercial art.

There's a tendency to see this stuff today with a heavy dose of irony, and Lileks is not immune. (If I have one complaint about his his stuff, it's that he sometimes sounds like he's getting a charge from pointing at the rubes and giggling. I could be wrong.)

I used to be an avid match collector. (Yas, it was a glamourous life . . .) I tried to pick a pack from every restaurant I visited, and the more outrageous or odd, the better. The ones from New York in the 80s were a gold mine of forgotten names: names, in Miami Vice pastels, of places that opened and closed the same week; the latest post-Mama Leone nouveau-spaghetterias where small portions under bright lights were the rule, the name on the matchbook always a stylized neon cursive; the tsunami of fusion, which meant a typically moribund ethnic cuisine (French, usually, since they frogged around Southeast Asia the longest) cooked in a wok, the kitchen item usually featured on the matchbook.

One day when I was in college, desperate for a light (you guess why), I pulled out a book of matches from my pile (I don't remember which book, not that it matters; for the sake of romance, let's say it was from Vespa, on the upper east side, with the cute little Vespa scooter on the matchbook) and lit up. That was the end.