A different kind of cigar bar article

[Ginseng]

I just read this new article at the online magazine Aeon.

This hasn't been my experience, but perhaps it is for some of you. Reactions?

Wilkey

[sactochris]

There's some truth too it.

[WhiteMamba]

That's interesting. I think there is probably a lot of truth about that face to face vs. side to side thing.

[Dimmers]

great article, thanks for sharing.

[IPORTER]

Great read, thanks for sharing!

[westg]

Thanks Wilkey

[alloy]

Nice article Wilkey. Sounds like QuarterMasters or the Relocation Room.

[Blazer]

I just read this new article at the online magazine Aeon.

This hasn't been my experience, but perhaps it is for some of you. Reactions?

Wilkey

What hasn't been your experience? Is it that people with extremely diverse backgrounds, views, sexual preferences can be united over a common passion? Is it that a card carrying introvert can become an extrovert under the right circumstances? Or is it that men need something to ignite (no pun intended) and sustain conversation when they get together? Sorry, just trying to clarify what you meant by "my experience"?

[wabashcr]

Excellent read. Not necessarily my experience at cigar lounges, either, where the focus tends to be a little more on the actual cigars. Seems like the cigars in this case are an afterthought, merely an excuse to get together. The lounges and shops I frequent haven't been around as long, and don't have longstanding circles of regulars the way these guys do.

[irratebass]

That was a good read, thanks for sharing. There are a few of these guys in my shop, I see them day to day, they all have different lives....one is a cable company guy, one works for the post office, one is a retired pharmacist, who now reviews golf courses around the world & writes for a Golf magazine, and a couple work together as eye glass salesmen.....this is just a few off the top of my head.

These guys all degrade one another with nothing but love, and I wouldn't be surprised if these guys wouldn't take a bullet for each other.

They all have 1 thing in common......the love of cigars, and that's what makes us all brothers.

[Ginseng]

What hasn't been your experience? Is it that people with extremely diverse backgrounds, views, sexual preferences can be united over a common passion? Is it that a card carrying introvert can become an extrovert under the right circumstances? Or is it that men need something to ignite (no pun intended) and sustain conversation when they get together? Sorry, just trying to clarify what you meant by "my experience"?

Good point of clarification. The overriding emphasis on machismo in a frat-man dynamic. And this coming from a fraternity man.

Wilkey

[LGC]

I'm personally not a big fan of "cigar bars" or "cigar lounges." I think the major issue is that I don't care to smoke NCs. A lot of ones I've been to have become ****** hangouts, or hangouts for guys and their hoochee mamas... due to being BYOB. I'm not a fan of smelling hookahs, cigarettes, or hanging out with a bunch of people not there to smoke cigars. Some shops are ok, but I can't say that ALL shops are warm and inviting. The worst shops are those filled with metro guys smoking fat cigars with their high maintenance girlfriends in tow. The better shops are not fancy "lounges" and don't cater to those outside of cigar smokers.

[HarveyBoulevard]

I have been trying to explain this to my wife for 16 years.

"The common cause, in this case puffing Dominicans or Cubans, seems to be what distinguishes male from female friendships. Women don’t need an excuse to get together; getting together is the point. For men, typically, there’s an activity at the centre – it could be tennis or golf (Or smoking cigars . Irene Levine, a clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University and author of Best Friends Forever, a book on female friendship, calls this difference ‘face to face’ vs. ‘side to side’. Women exchange intimacies while men share activities."

This is my personal feeling and don't expect others to feel the same necessarily.

Not sure about the whole masculinity angle of the article but it was written from someone's real life experience with this particular cigar bar.

[Colt45]

I guess when a group of people familiar with each other get together on a regular basis, it could make for more of a club type dynamic, versus occasional encounters with unfamiliar participants.

[PigFish]

That was a great read Wilkey... Thanks for sharing.

I am not a brick and mortar aficionado. BUT, I do understand the clique that is the cigar fraternity. Some of it is crass and crude, macho and ruthless, kind, thoughtful and loving...

I see this "read" as a description of one, not only possible, but certainly existent facet of the cigar fraternity. In part, it has certainly been a very real part of my own life and love of cigars. There were times where my little coterie of friends, most non-active members here, could spend 48 hours at a strip club in Vegas, where I might just smoke 16 or 17 cigars in a row...

Our clique was dubbed C4 by yours truly. I would commonly be refereed to as Piggy, my name used only to register for a room.

Much of the same irreverence also existed. We got to the point where we would go to the Big Smoke just to rip the NC smokers! I finally made an oath to never pay again and started the 'practice' of sneaking in!!! I could care less about going at all, but sneaking in was an exclusive club that was laud-worthy to my peers, eliciting deep bows and cheers from my group!!! There was no point in it other than proving I could do it... I did it largely to impress my friends...

I have experienced this type of 'smokers fraternaty' firsthand and understand it completely... I can attest to most of it, except the Freudian references and the 'PC' spin on the unhealthful nature of smoking. My typical health related smoking response, "Eat healthy, die anyway!" Or, "Everyone dies of something."

-Piggy

[PigFish]

... I was recently looking up some artwork for our ranch logo and came across one of our old "media passes." I used to make up this kind of stuff up for our events...

Cigar smoking can be silly as well as cerebral, and I am happy to have taken part in both aspects!

-Piggy

[perkinke]

Great article, I miss having a place like that. I love my girlfriend and my family but I miss having a place where I can just be a dumbass guy and not have to worry about being a good example to my son or whether i say something that will upset my girlfriend. I used to have a crew like this at the sports park I played soccer at, it had a decent bar where the staff knew us and when the inevitable complaint came up that we were loud and insulting the bartenders just said "well, if you don't like that don't go back there." But then life just happened like it does and we all got married or had kids and the park went "family friendly" and even late at night they got on us about our language or conversation topics. I still miss having a place I can just be a guy.

[jwr0201]

Good read! Very true that It's nice to have a 'guy place' to hang out without a lot of estrogen fueled she-bears hovering about. I'd love to find a nice type of 'gentlemen's den' cigar place.

[leftimatic]

Good read. It brought back memories of my days in construction nearly 30 yrs of some real brotherhood. Last company I worked for, I did so for a decade or so. We built shopping malls and renovated grocery stores all over western Canada. There's something to be said when you are given 35 to 56 days to revamp a grocery store while keeping it up and running the whole time. We would work 9pm to 9am or longer if needed for 35 to 56 days straight. No days missed and no days late no f@#$king excuses. Sometimes 8 or 9 stores in a row back to back with maybe a long weekend in between. The reno crews wore every job like a badge of honor. Jack hammering and hauling concrete night in night out having it cleaned up and trenches plated before the doors open at 8am. The respect and love we had for each other was unbreakable. I was first aid /safety for a lot of those years. And I'll tell yah, nothing makes your heart sink faster then three loud horn blasts and someone shouting man down. Or brings it back up when 10 guys pull together to save another's ass and then sit around a restaurant table eating breakfast for dinner laughing about the night before.

[El Presidente]

Great read and many thanks

The "deck" here is a place for local mates, captains of industry (not mutually exclusive), newcomers drifting through, average joes such as myself....and we still get blown away by the lives of new members and old alike.

No one judges. You will be cruelled mercilessly (in good fun), for a few hours you can forget your troubles, family, responsibility. If you have an issue, you can raise it and jokes are put aside. Your wellbeing (mental/health/relationship/some or all) becomes the only focus. Need a specialist in health, we provide it. need Accountancy/legal advice, we provide it and make the call.

It is a fellowship. Predominantly a brotherhood but when Di finishes work she wanders in and is given due respect and her input has often been invaluable.

There is a lot of love in the room. Respect, intollerance to mysogyny, a guild where we put each other first. Hard to describe but lives are changed.

That is a cigar room that I am proud of.

[Fuzz]

Guess I'm the crude and lewd one of the Sydney FoH boys!

[billh1]

Well written and insightful. Thank you for sharing.

[irratebass]

This just popped up in my email, and I thought I would share....not trying to hijack the thread Ginseng:

http://love-of-the-leaf.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-successful-cigar-lounge-employee.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ForLoveOfTheLeafandTheLeafLovers+%28For+Love+of+the+Leaf+%28and+the+Leaf+Lovers%29%29