COMMUNITY & CIGARS

BY TIM SWANSON

Old & Out of Touch

Gerry slowly sat down in his usual tattered leather chair at his neighborhood cigar lounge. Firmly gripping the armrests on both sides of the chair, he lowered himself into the seat. His 76-year-old hips just weren’t cooperating like they used to. From across the room, Mike, another lounge regular, spoke up, “Careful Turbo. You don’t want to set that chair on fire by sittin’ in it too fast.” 

when you’re sitting in a lounge smoking a cigar, you have gained something integral in common with everyone else in the room.

Finally bringing himself to rest in the seat, Gerry fired back, “You know, even with these old knees and hips, I could still whoop your ass. Wouldn’t be hard you old bastard.” Then he proceeded to light up the same Oliva Serie O that he smoked every day. 

As Gerry toasted the foot of his cigar, a much younger 69-year-old Mike took a puff from his My Father Flor De Las Antillas and responded, “Yeah, well maybe if you hadn’t spent so much time on your knees in college you wouldn’t have so much trouble with that chair today.” 

For the rest of the afternoon, the two old men continued to dig in on the frailties and inadequacies of each other's old age as they discussed the troubles of the world and griped about how nothing makes any sense anymore. 

The Great Equalizer

Cigar lounges are one of the last bastions of genuine self-propagating community that still exist in our world. They’re one of the few places where people of limitless different walks of life can get together, drop the pretenses, and connect with other human beings. This happens because, when you’re sitting in a lounge smoking a cigar, you have gained something integral in common with everyone else in the room. The love of the leaf that people share removes boundaries that our culture normally does not cross. It doesn’t matter if you’re a barber, carpenter, lawyer, stockbroker, realtor, college student, or computer programmer. You can sit down in a lounge, light up a hand-crafted premium cigar, and talk about the world with another person who is, as corny as it sounds, a brother/sister of the leaf. 

Cigar lounges all over the world are filled with people like Gerry and Mike. It’s not uncommon for lounge lizards like them to greet each other with a little tearing of the flesh. There’s a comfort they get from the mutually assured destruction of untethered sarcasm. But the community that’s created between cigar smokers contains a lot that has been lost to much of the rest of the world. 

For a lot of our regulars, the lounge is like a church - they never miss a day.

If I can use Gerry and Mike as the archetypal cigar lounge regulars, they talk about everything. While avidly disagreeing with one another on more topics than they care to admit, they both find themselves in the cigar lounge together. Gerry is a Christian and a conservative who worked for 40 years as an engineer for Honeywell. And Mike, who doesn’t do religion, is a liberal who used to drive for Swift before his stroke forced him into early retirement. On paper, these two have almost nothing in common, except for the fact that they love a good cigar and a great conversation. But it’s not just cigars that open the doors to the community for guys like these. In truth, cigars are just the gateway to the building of real friendships. 

Cigar lounge regulars have a rare and dying ability to agree to disagree when the conversation hits a fork in the road. While too many people meltdown over political differences, the men and women who hang out at cigar shops know that ultimately it doesn’t matter whether you lean to the left or the right. For these people, the ability to treat each other with respect (often padded with a healthy dose of sarcasm) gives their friendship a rare substance. They’re often people who would have no earthly business being good friends outside of the fact that they both love the tattered leather chairs, mediocre service, amazing cigars, and great comradery of their local lounge. 

Everywhere you want to be

At my shop, Cigars Daily, the lounge is always filled with the regular suspects. Our crowd is a kaleidoscope of professions, socioeconomic classes, and worldviews. And somehow this immensely diverse group of people have become very close. For a lot of our regulars, the lounge is like a church - they never miss a day. In fact, if they don’t show up for a couple of days, we start making phone calls to check on them. This crew has been one of the great and unexpected privileges of owning a cigar shop. 

So many people have come to call the lounge a second home, and those people have become this oddball family who look out for each other and for the shop. They’ve been there for each other through divorce, cancer, the closing of a big deal, and the birth of new grandkids. We don’t worry about theft when they’re there together. I have seen some of the most unlikely people become closer than family through life’s most unexpected challenges. And all because they visited their local cigar lounge for a quality premium cigar and everything that comes along with the culture and family therein.