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A Smoker's Last Refuge
A second Corona location in Orlando has an Avo cigar lounge, opened in partnership with Avo
brand owner Davidoff of Geneva. "It's Avo themed and Avo branded," says Avo brand manager Matthew
Kern of the lounge. "In addition to your typical cigar lounge, it has an element of music. We're
trying to combine Avo's passion of music and cigars." Avo Uvezian, creator of Avo cigars, recently
moved from Puerto Rico to Orlando. His home is just two minutes from the shop, meaning he is a
frequent visitor.
A new Avo Lounge opened this summer at the Burns Tobacconist located in downtown Chattanooga,
Tennessee. Burns is the brainchild of Philip Windham, a mustachioed, cigar-chomping pool lover who
runs the gorgeous and spacious Chattanooga Billiard Clubs, where one can smoke virtually
everywhere. Windham calls his two clubs "dream rooms," 20,000-square-foot entertainment centers
with pool and billiard tables, dart boards, bar service and banquet rooms—virtually everything for
the cigar smoker.
The Burns Tobacconist shops—a second one is located in the eastern suburb of Brainerd—cater to
those who wish to linger and set fire to a purchase. "We have barber's chairs right in the shop
where people can smoke, we have a beer garden outside, and you can smoke anywhere in the billiard
parlor," Windham says about the East location. The Avo Lounge is a separate room from the cigar
shop in his downtown shop, which is part of a three-story building. The top floor will be a cigar
club mirroring the one in his East location.
In California, a pioneer of smoking bans, cigar shops are among the only places in which to
smoke. "This is a little oasis," says Brian Telford, who co-owns Telford's Pipe and Cigar Inc. in
Mill Valley, with his wife, Susan. "Where can you go indoors in California that isn't your home or
your car and enjoy tobacco?"
Telford's has 176 humidified lockers. The Telfords first added a lounge in 1996 when the store
was at a different location. This is the ninth move for the store. "And my last," says
Telford.
Smoking bans might be old hat for California, but they are new in neighboring Arizona, passed
in the November 2006 elections. "I opened my lounge three years ago," says Vartan Seferian, owner
of Ambassador Fine Cigars in Scottsdale. "I was watching California. I said, 'This is bound to
come here eventually.' I'm glad I did it. I was ready."
Seferian's high-end store has a gorgeous, well-appointed walk-in humidor stocked with all types
of premium cigars. While a small sitting area up front is available to any customer, a huge room
that Seferian created in the rear serves as his members smoking club. It has several tables (some
of which are employed for that most popular of cigar lounge pursuits: poker and other card games),
a plasma television, a small kitchen, and coffee and soda.
"It's in the back of the store, which keeps them away from the public eye," says Seferian,
speaking like an old-time concierge with an innate ability to know what his customers require in
terms of service. "We have all types of people, from the blue-collar to the millionaire. It's an
area where they can come anytime and hang out. It's a boys' club. There's a lot of
networking."
Jay Fox, who owns six Up In Smoke shops in and around Dallas, Texas, has lounges in most of his
stores. "Eventually they're all going to be that way," he says.
As in many cigar lounge situations, the people who gather in Fox's stores have become closely
knit. "It's like a club. They'll get together and cook. The networking that goes on is amazing.
They have each other's cell phone numbers and they call each other," he says with a chuckle.
"People need a place to smoke."
The appeal of the smoking lounge is greatest in areas where smoking is banned, but even in
cigar-friendly Charlotte, North Carolina, the lounges are busy. "[Our flagship store is] full
every day. Sometimes there's so many people smoking it looks like a Cheech and Chong movie," says
Craig Cass, owner of four Tinderbox stores in the Charlotte area, two of which have smoking
lounges. If a smoking ban should pass, says Cass, traffic in the lounge "will explode."
In Cass's flagship store, in South Park, the lounge takes up approximately 500 feet of the
2,200-square-foot store, and he believes lounges are the way of the future. "I think in the next
generation of cigar stores, the lounge will be even bigger," he says. "It's the camaraderie: we're
the modern version of the country day store. People smoke cigars socially."
Virtually every cigar shop owner with a lounge speaks of the loyalty of his lounge customers
and the bond he forges with them from their having spent so much time in the store. "They become
my best salesmen," says David Garafolo, owner of Two Guys Smoke Shop in Salem, New Hampshire, near
the border of Massachusetts. Garafolo has an 8,500-square-foot store with two smoking areas, one
with about a dozen seats and a plasma television, plus a members-lounge upstairs complete with
domino tables, a chessboard, video games, vending machines, three big-screen televisions, two pool
tables and a pair of large oval poker tables of the type you might see on a cable television show.
Such an indoor smoking haven is a large draw during certain months in New England. "The winter is
crazy up here," says Garafolo.
Smoking lounges of this size are more easily outfitted in the suburbs. Aside from the grand
smoking space at Nat Sherman and the spacious smoke lounge at De La Concha, most of Manhattan's
cigar lounges are tiny. Most cigar shops on the Vegas Strip and in casinos are also too small for
smoking areas. (Casa Fuente is a huge exception—see the sidebar at left.)
Richard Galdieri, owner of Las Vegas Cigar Co., has a tiny shop on the Strip that has "no room
for anything," but his bigger shop, five miles from the Strip, has plenty of space for
smokers.
"I have a 60-inch big-screen TV, a pool table, shuffleboard," says Galdieri. On fight nights he
draws a crowd. In addition to big-name brands such as Fuente and Ashton, Galdieri sells his own
house brand, which he has made at his factory in the Dominican Republic.
Cigar shops in the city center of Chicago also tend towards the miniscule: Jack Schwartz
Importer has a few chairs in the store and Up Down Tobacco has no lounge at all. Probably the
largest smoking lounge in Chicago is the smallish one inside massive Iwan Reis & Co.
About 35 miles north of the Chicago loop in Libertyville is Cigars & More, which Julie and Ken
P. Neumann opened in 1998. The shop has two smoking lounges, one of which is designed to look like
a living room, with easy chairs, barber's chairs, free coffee and sodas for half a dollar.
"If it wasn't for the lounge, we would not be here today," says Ken. "It's done so much for our
business and made our customers loyal to the store. Roughly half our store is a smoking
lounge."
Some cigar lounges are nothing but a few chairs. Others have some amenities, and most have a
television set or two. Some charge membership fees, which could be as little as $2 monthly or as
high as $500 a year, depending on demand and the level of service provided by the lounge. Common
etiquette suggests that smokers visiting any lounge should consider fees when sitting down: if
you're a member and have paid for the privilege of being there, feel free to bring your own cigar,
but if the lounge is simply a couple of chairs provided to paying customers, be sure to buy
something, or you might not be given the warmest welcome.
Few lounges sell food, but many shops provide it free of charge, or someone sitting in the
lounge may bring in something to eat. At Club Perfecto, the Connecticut lounge, two of the
regulars are owners of A&S Fine Foods, a nearby Italian deli, and they rarely come by without a
plate heaped with fresh mozzarella, Genoa salami, sorpresatta and roasted peppers. Arlington Cigar
in Arlington, Texas, has a grill behind the store and a refrigerator where customers store meat.
"They can come here and cook lunch or cook their dinner," says co-owner Mark Bartlett. The cigar
lounge in the store is about 1,500 square feet.
Local regulations prohibit many shops from selling alcohol and food, but one glorious exception
is Hudson Valley Cigars, in New Windsor, New York.
Pull up to Hudson Valley Cigars and you'll see three buildings, two of them landmarks. The
cigar shop is on the far left, Schlesinger's Steak House is on the far right, and the unnamed
cigar bar is in the middle. New York State law prohibits smoking in the restaurant, but you can
smoke in the cigar shop (which has a few seats) and you can smoke throughout the bar, even while
dining on the restaurant's excellent steak.
The shop is run by Glynna Schlesinger, and her husband, Neil, runs the steak house. They rented
out the building that is now the cigar store until a friend suggested they start selling
cigars.
"I'm a health nut," says Glynna, who sports the toned, tanned and muscular arms of someone who
rarely misses a day in the gym. Statues from her bodybuilding victories sit across from the cash
register at Hudson Valley Cigars. "I can't stand to be around cigarettes for two minutes—I said,
'How can I take cigars?'"
Her misgivings were put to rest after a trip to a trade show and some pointers on cigar smoking
she received from a few manufacturers. The Schlesingers opened Hudson Valley Cigars in 1996, at
which time no cigar bar stood between it and the steak house—not even a building. "In the winter,
people would have dinner, run to the cigar store, and Neil and I said, 'Let's marry the two with a
cigar bar.'"
The couple decided to build a cigar bar connecting the two landmark buildings. The one that's
home to the steak house was built in 1762. It has a huge stone hearth from the original
construction with a small opening for baking bread, and exposed beams show the rough marks of an
axe or adze, signs of Revolutionary-era construction techniques. The building housing the cigar
store was erected in 1862. The Schlesingers had to take care so the construction didn't damage the
old buildings. The stone walls of each are visible from inside the cigar bar.
The cigar bar proper is a combination of red meat, booze and cigars: a cigar lover's paradise.
There's a large bar, which has removable wooden trays that fit on the rail to make it easier on
diners, plus several tables, sofas and chairs and a pair of flat-screen televisions. The place
draws quite the crowd, and it has made the shop hard to compete against.
"There were three cigar stores in the area when I started out," says Glynna. She says hers is
the only survivor. "On Thursday nights, you can't move in here."
For the American cigar smoker, the cigar-shop lounge appears to be the future of indoor cigar
smoking. As work spaces, restaurants, bars and in some extreme cases even city parks, beaches and
sidewalks become off-limits to the cigar smoker, the local cigar shop is becoming more and more
like the age-old smoking club.
"In the older days, they would have gone to restaurants or bars and had their cigars," says
Seferian of Ambassador Fine Cigars. "Now that they can't have that, they're going to come
here."
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