From Matthew Temple, Financial Times:

A mansion on Sands Point, Long Island, is an unlikely setting for social rebellion. But while the rest of New York State was stubbed out with smoking bans, that was where interior designer Jamie Gibbs created his first smoking room.

With dark English walnut wall panels, oriental rugs and bookcases fronted with brass grilles, it was commissioned by a Wall Street cigar aficionado who wanted “an image of old fashioned machismo” and was successful enough to render the opinion of others irrelevant. “When every newspaper and every doctor is telling you not to smoke there’s a certain decadence when you not only smoke, you create a space to do it in,” Gibbs says.

After Sands Point came smoking dens in Manhattan and Montclair, New Jersey, and a few spots in between, many prompted by bans, (perhaps inspired by the smoking tent Arnold Schwarzenegger erected on the lawn of the California governor’s mansion) and all capturing a feel Gibbs calls “private speakeasy”, a mix of the forbidden and the historic.

(more…)

From Richard Mullins, The Tampa Tribune:

TAMPA - — Lisa Figueredo always wondered why Tampa — with so much history in cigar making — didn’t have its own cigar magazine.

So many Tampa families have parents and grandparents who rolled cigars in huge factories and small shops in the city. Some of the most respected cigar brands in the world trace their histories through Ybor City and West Tampa.

At 2 one morning in July, the idea came to her: Why not start her own magazine?

That’s when Cigar City Magazine was born.

(more…)

There’s an interesting article up at the Cigar Aficionado website on one of the seminars at the Big Smoke Las Vegas event the weekend before last. I makes me wish I’d re-arranged my schedule and gone to this one.

Cigar Aficionado’s European editor, James Suckling, gave a seminar on Saturday morning entitled “Collecting Cuban Cigars.” James was joined by Thomas Bohrer, of Habanos Wine and Cigars in Hong Kong, and Frank Nisenboim, a cigar collector from Chicago, in a panel presentation.

The article has some highlights from things discussed, included guidelines for storing and properly aging classic cigars, background on cigar auctions at Christie’s, and — most important of all — how to know whether or not a cigar will benefit from aging. They also gave guidelines on which cigars are good investments for budding collectors, as well as talking about current prices. Prices of good investments, by the way, range from a low of around U.S. $100.00 per stick up to thousands of dollars for some of the most sought after brands.

Even if you don’t operate in the rarified financial atmosphere of these collectors, there are tips in the article that will benefit your regular cigar collection. I recommend it as a good read as well as a good source of information.

From European Cigar Cult Magazine comes a handy guide to anti-smoking laws around the world. If your holiday plans include a visit to any of these places, your cigar lighter will get very little use:

EUROPE

European Union Plans

Brussels is considering an EU-wide smoking ban in restaurants and other enclosed spaces. The Health Committee of the EU Parliament has called upon the EU Commission to classify tobacco smoke a first-category carcinogenic substance (equivalent to asbestos and benzene) as soon as possible.

EU Public Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou told the EU policy portal EurActiv that it was his ambition to have smoking bans introduced in all EU member states by the end of his term in 2009.

(more…)

If you like the Cusano 18 or the Cusano Corojo cigars as I do, then you have two guys to thank.

Two Guys Smoke Shop in New Hampshire.

The Fall issue of Smoke Magazine has a condensed version of the story. Michael Chiusano, the man who developed the Cusano line and branded it with an easier-to-spell-and-pronounce phonetic version of his family name explains, “I thought I was just going to make 50 boxes and send them to my customers in the investment business as sort of a thank you.” That’s not how it turned out, fortunately.

Michael, prior to creating one of the hottest cigar companies around, worked as a money manager for Shearson Lehman and later started his own investment firm. Cigars were a hobby and diversion for him, not a business. Then, on a trip to the Dominican Republic in 1995 to help set up financing for a sugar cane maufacturer, Chiusano was given a locally made cigar as a gift by a family member of the plantation owner. The tobacco for the cigar had been grown on spent sugar cane land, and processed in their own factory. Michael smoked the cigar a few days later and was amazed at how good the flavor and draw was.

(more…)

Via Paul Harris at the Guardian Unlimited:

It’s good news for traditional American men. The metrosexual is dead: long live the übersexual.

After dominating US style and fashion for several years, the ideal of the modern male as someone who cared about fashion and skin care as much as a woman did is about to be swept aside by a return to old-fashioned, masculine values: fine wines, cigars and red-blooded heterosexuality.

(more…)