Sheikh Hookah Lounge

Don’t let old reviews fool you, this is still the best laid back spot to hangout in Norman. The selection of flavours fills the entire wall behind the front counter, and the staff are great at mixing multiple flavours together to get exactly what you want. The hookahs themselves are excellent, no cheap crap to be found here, and always super clean. The service is excellent as well, my coals always seem to be replaced with fresh ones before I notice they’re getting small and if your hookah starts smoking harsh, don’t hesitate to tell them, they’ll fix it right up.
As for the lounge itself, it is the only hookah bar I’ve been to that has a club-​worthy lighting and sound system. The music is operated like a jukebox (with 80,000+ songs) and everybody gets a chance to play their favourites. There’s low couches to spread out on or normal tables and chairs. A selection of board games are usually spread out on the tables that make for a surprisingly good time.
If you’re looking for a place to hangout and have a tasty smoke, definitely give this place a try. Everybody I bring here loves it, and among all my friends it’s still our favourite hookah bar.

Sheikh, formerly known as Moe’s, used to be the hottest hookah spot in town. That was because it was the only hookah spot in town. Now that there is some healthy competition and Sheikh is not the sole place for public hookah smoking, my views have changed. I have seen the light at the new place on campus corner. Quite literally. Sheikh is usually so dark that I cannot see any faces. I was a regular and had a hard time finding my friends when meeting there. This might be for the best though. If the lights were on any more, it might reveal the fact that Sheikh’s main clientele are high schoolers. There is little diversity and I don’t feel like that is an accident. In an interview with the Oklahoma Daily, OU’s student body paper, the owner is directly quoted as saying,
«You can come in one night and there’s a group of Middle Easterners in a corner, there’ll be a group of rich white kids in another corner and then some thug black kids over in another corner, and they’ll all talk and all communicate and it’s just, they’re all on equal ground here.»
Not only is the owner using racial slurs and generalizations, but is even admitting that the social smoking area itself is segregated. This is not something I found at the competitor’s hookah lounge. To find the article in which that quote is written, search for hookah on the Daily’s website. It was pretty easy to find.
The hookahs themselves aren’t all bad. They have a few nicer social smokes, but the rest are cheap off brand hookahs. These usually weren’t as smooth as I would have hoped and smoked about as well as they looked (terrible). The cheap hoses have been worn out and obviously glued and taped back together. The one good thing about smoking at sheikh, is that they offer Social Smoke tobacco. There are a lot of cool flavors you can only find with Social Smoke. It doesn’t smoke well, but has decent flavor for the first round of coals.
My least favorite thing about Sheikh is the music. There is a desktop computer with a huge number of songs where anyone and everyone is able to go up and select something. Normally I’m not opposed to this, but when I’m tryina get lit on a Friday night, I don’t want to hear some sad country song or some old hair metal love ballad. Though the sound system is impressive it is usually wasted on something that would be better off played on a late 80’s boombox. Lights and sound don’t make a venue feel like a club, if the energy and music don’t match.
As you can tell, this place has so much potential to be the best around, but it is lacking in vision and in so many other areas. I only give it one star because it is pretty reasonably priced. The prices are listed at 15 dollars per hookah and only 2 people per hookah, but the manager rarely holds to that rule and let’s many people on one hookah for $ 15. I have no clue how he makes money. This and the belly dancers on Friday nights are the only redeeming qualities. Unfortunately the belly dancers aren’t always there. Or good.
If you are in a bind, this is the place to go. If you want a better experience, I’d say you should head closer to campus.