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Home > What's New > A Cigar Bar Grows in Brooklyn
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A Cigar Bar Grows in Brooklyn
Posted: Wednesday, May 17, 2006
By Michael Moretti
You wouldn't think it could happen, what with overlapping city and state smoking bans in New York, but an establishment in which you can smoke cigars indoors has not only set up shop in the Big Apple, but it's expanding.
About a year and a half ago, the Velvet Cigar Lounge opened on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, despite a 2003 city ban outlawing the start-up of any new cigar lounges not in business before December 2001. In addition to that feat, Velvet is planning to open a second location in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, next to the famed Peter Luger Steak House, on May 21.
Velvet, technically, is not a cigar lounge, says founder and owner Jason Alvator. It looks and acts like a cigar bar, offering wine and beer (no whiskey yet) for a price, a fireplace, humidors and places to sit and enjoy it all. However, in accordance with smoking ban regulations, the place qualifies as a retail tobacconist, says Alvator, by counting 50 percent of its revenue from the sale of cigars. This is accomplished, in part, through the on- and off-premises sale of an in-house brand of cigars, called Reserva Dominicana, which are rolled in the same room where cigar bar clientele smoke.
"I used to work in the Supreme Court during the summer when I was in college," said Alvator where he spent much of his time reading legal documents. Upon reading the smoking ban legislation, he noticed the loophole. "[Fifty percent of revenue from cigars] is defined as a retail tobacconist. There is nothing [in the regulations] that says you can't serve booze and charge for it, too."
For more on this story, see the upcoming May 23 issue of Cigar Insider.
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