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Members Only: Cigar Clubs
The Privileges of Membership
Michael Frank
From the Print Edition:
Fidel Castro, Summer 94
(continued from page 5)
To avoid the scornful eye of pipe smokers, cigar divans were invented. (British soldiers somehow combined Turkish coffee and smoke houses with Chinese opium dens to create both the smoking jacket and the Asian motif of the rooms.) Soon, private cigar clubs were the favorite preoccupation of British gentry.
Ironically, it was not the unpopularity of cigars that caused the eventual demise of cigar divans, but the social acceptance of the stogie. According to Julio Finn, an amateur cigar buff and author of Poet of the Cigar (Sancho Panza Press, London, 1982) cigar smoking became ubiquitous by the late 1880s, and by the turn of the century there was little need to seek refuge while smoking. The last cigar divans withered and died by the early 1910s.
--M.F.
Independent Cigar Clubs
Washington, D.C.
Baccarat Club
Phone: (301) 464-7255
Cigar Club Room: pending
Smokers, weekly meetings, tastings, community involvement
Chicago, Ill.
Cigar Connoisseurs of Chicago
Phone: (312) 337-8025
Smokers, meetings, tours, dinners
Tallahassee, Fla.
Cigar Society at Florida State University
Phone: (904) 224-2324
Smokers, meetings, tours, cigar education
Omaha, Nebr.
Great Plains Cigar Club
Phone: (402) 333-6022
Smokers, meetings
Cincinnatti, Ohio
Private Smoking Club
Phone: (513) 827-3792/321-5070
Humidor, Member Storage and Cigar Club Room
Meetings, tastings, private parties, dinners
Colma, Calif.
Volunteer Fire Dept. of Colma Cigar Club
Phone: (415) 755-4510
Cigar dinners, poker, firefighting
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