Downtown Astoria, without a vaping lounge at the beginning of 2015, now has two.

Yosef “Joe” Alburati, who owns the Texaco station in Astoria, expanded his business ventures downtown into Smoke ’N Vape Bloc, which he opened March 14 in the former Tienda La Costenita Hispanic grocery store next to Malternative, at 1159 Marin Drive. The shop joins Columbia Vapes on Commercial Street as the second downtown vaping lounge.

“It’s the new thing to the new generation,” said Joe Alburati, unapologetic about tapping into the growing trend of vaping, the inhalation of vaporized nicotine. “Across the West Coast, it’s ridiculously popular.”

Joe Alburati owns two stores, a smoke shop with a vape shop next door, with business partner Sadek “David” Alammari in Madera, Calif. Helping him run the store in Astoria is brother Muhamed “Mo” Alburati.

Beyond a social trend, vaping aficionados have hailed the practice as a way for people to cease smoking. But health officials have sounded alarm bells, saying the vaping liquids contain their own harmful mix of chemicals, while educators have been reporting increased use of vaporizing devices in school.

The Alburatis said the store would have a sign telling minors to not go beyond the front lobby of the store, which sells clothing, candy and other merchandise.

Beyond that, they said, customers will be ID’d before entering the store’s main corridor, all black slat walls, shelves and backlit glass display cases packed with every manner of smoking and vaping supplies, along with detoxing drinks, a wide selection of lighters, knives and other merchandise. A back room is filled with water pipes.

Mo Alburati said that before, people had to travel to Under the Bridge Cigarette Shop in Uniontown to get the same stuff. The partners, he added, didn’t think downtown was alive enough at night and wanted to do something locally, instead of opening a shop in Portland.

The original idea, he said, was to start a vaping display at the Texaco, which Joe Alburati came to Astoria from California’s Central Valley in 2008 to manage, before he bought it from his uncle last summer.

The Alburatis come from a long line of entrepreneurs and said they hope to make Smoke ’N Vape Bloc a chain, starting with Madera and Astoria.