You don’t want to blast it with the torch. You’ll just burn it that way and get tar. You want to keep it just near enough to roast it, slowly…like so…
The Americans smoked them first, you know.
The real Americans. The first ones. Why do you think Chief Hatuey’s head is the Cohiba logo?
Kind of fucked up when you think about it. They tied his ass to a stake and burned him alive, the Spaniards did. Asked him to repent to go to heaven. He asked if they’d be in heaven, the Spaniards. They said yeah. He told them he’d rather go to hell.
But so they burned him at the stake, and now they’ve wrapped his mug around millions of little mini stakes that people light the fuck up.
I mean, sure, you don’t smoke the wrapper, but poor Hatuey has to live the coming of the flames over and over again. You’d think he pissed off Zeus–not Jesus!
God I love how sweet these are. This shit would go perfect with some coladita…or rum. The sweetness stays on your lips…
But what was I talking about again? Damn…
That’s the thing about cigars…they seem straightforward, but before you know it, you’re looking down at the ash and it’s curving out this way or that.
Just like the conversation. And it can get pretty long like that, when all of a sudden, it just…drops…on your pants if you’re not paying attention.
What’s the phrase? Sera, sera? Asi es la vida?
Cigar talk–call it the much better part of an hour–is saved by stories, not facts. Facts have a way of getting between friends where the smoke is. You know. The real stuff…like how the tobacco plants grow so potent in Cuba ‘cause the soil’s soaked with lithium.
Ain’t just our tobacco that’s potent…HA!
Knew a guy on lithium back when I was a freshman on the high school bowling team. Freaked me out back. Dude was kind of emo–dark curtains of hair, black fingernails…had a look on his face like he was about to stick his head into the ball return and take a 16 pounder to the dome.
Poor kid…so it must be serious stuff, that lithium! It’s why our cigars are serious, too…and because I’m Cuban, it must be true.
You feel me?
Yeah. The bowling team.
Or how the big cigar manufacturers got their names: Monte Cristo, Romeo y Julieta. They say that in the factories, where the masters would roll the sun-dried tobacco leaves the whole day long, one man would read aloud to them from the classics: from Shakespeare and Dumas. Some of these cigar brands were named after their favorite stories. They’ve also said that at some point, the practice was prohibited.
Maybe the managers were worried the workers would become too worldly, that they might get ideas of whirlwind romance or exacting revenge…or worse…of quitting to become writers…or start their own acting troupes.
Management didn’t like all this imagination on the premises (they never do). The bastards needed those fingers to keep rolling. Did they ever consider that, maybe, some of us would prefer our cigars be rolled to Shakespeare?
You think I can’t taste the difference?
But what do I know? I was born here on this dirt…which isn’t even dirt–just ground up limestone. Coquina shells and Tequesta bones…
Memories and remains.
It’s all they’ve got left of the island, these Miami Cubans. That and a bunch of trauma…but that’s another story.
These days, the market for cigar makers kind of looks like a Monopoly board. Big conglomerate brands. You think you’ve found some boutique stick, but it’s just an offshoot of Oliva or some shit.
You’ve got a lot of collaborations with, like, these celebrity rollers like AJ Fernandez and EP Carillo. I mean, obviously they don’t roll the actual cigars. Design them maybe.
I don’t know.
Maybe it’s like with Tom Clancy novels. How he’s been dead for years now, but they’ve got a sweatshop of ghostwriters imitating his style, still putting his name on the books…that’s the power of a brand.
I don’t know man. I like the little guy, whoever he is. My family picked tobacco in Cuba. I really doubt they smoked cigars with labels on them.
But yeah…
I will say: living in Miami’s got its perks…we have hella access for the cheap. Plus, you can go down to a bunch of shops where they’re rolling ‘em right there on the spot.
No, I don’t mean the ones in Little Havana…I mean, some of their spots are alright, but that’s like the disnified vision of the island. Paradise lost and turned into a product. The nostalgia industry. If you want Cuban culture, go to Hialeah–maybe Westchester.
Cubans here drive big trucks and white benz’s. Not Bel Air’s.
But low key, I think my favorite cigar buying experience was at this little hole-in-the-wall spot on Calle Ocho, but not in the tourist trap. Out West, past 57th.
Some no-name place, but you walk in and you just know. Just two rows of viejas at their rolling desks. No lounge or nothing. I walk in, and my Spanish is broken, but viejo just brings me over to this BIG-ass black chest in the back.
Like, I had to reach down in this shit. Felt like in Carlito’s Way…have you seen it? Al Pacino’s out of jail, and his little cousin brings him along for a drug deal, and they tell him to reach down into the ice box for a beer and slit his throat…
“There ain’t no friends in this shit business.”
But yeah, just bundles and bundles of big ass cigars. I love the way the maduros look–like wet tree branches. Black. I usually grab a medium body, but yeah–probably like 7 bucks a pop.
Good shit.
Then not too far off, you’ve got “Cuban Crafters.” They have a fucking barbershop in that place. Classic.
Bro, their house smokes are only 5 dollars, and their guy’s a fucking artist. They’ve got all these intricate barber poles with fucking polka dots on them, tri-colored shits with green wrapping.
Fucking sick. The Willy Wonka’s of cigar spots, for real.
But, if you want a really good deal…you know where the Flannigan’s in Hialeah is? Yeah, you do. In that shopping center. “Tobacco King.” $6 San Lotanos and Olivas.
My boy Muhammed’s a real one for that.
Here’s a better one: a couple of years ago, I decided to read some Hemingway–The Sun Also Rises. I highly recommend it, by the way. But so, I decided I couldn’t read Hemingway without a little something-something, so I walk over to the liquor store down the road to grab myself a little whiskey, a cigar.
Nothing fancy.
And this white haired viejo’s ringing me up some fat house cigars without wrappers, and, for whatever reason, I get chatty.
Let him in on the occasion. And he says, “Hemingway? We lived near his house back in Cuba. Yeah, yeah…me and the other kids used to steal mangos from his yard. One time he chased us with his German Shepherds!”
Can you believe that shit?
Look, no offense, but Hialeah Gardens isn’t exactly the most literary town, to put it nicely. Lived there all my life, and the night I decide to read old Papa Hemingway, I discover his former thief is my neighborhood’s booze man! I’ve heard Ernest could really put ‘em back…I wonder if the rest of the thieves in the mango gang took on similarly spirited vocations…
If just reading his book was enough to get me off my ass to buy a fifth, and if he drank like his characters…
I bet the man himself had a hell of an effect! He must have written those kids’ futures as boozers and brewers by his mere presence!
Old Man and the Sea is good, too…
Have you heard about how doctors used to smoke cigars all day? Oh yeah, they did it to mask the pungence of cadavers and rotting patients.
Probably the healthy ones, too. People here must have smelled like ASS before A.C.
One of the first doctors in Miami…Jackson. They named Jackson after him. Yeah, the hospital. He would leave his cigar on the porch railings or above the doors to patients’ homes when he was making house visits.
He smoked some cheap shits called, uh, Cincos. Called ‘em Stinkos ‘cause they stunk. Hilarious. And yeah, they say he’d forget to take his cigars on the way out, and that was how you could find him. Just follow the Stinkos.
Ha…yeah…the good old days: back when doctors smoked.
I heard he moved his house and office with barges or some shit. It’s still there, in Brickell. Well, his office is.
His house was replaced with a fucking high rise.
I heard that Carollo guy wanted to make it into a dog park. Fucking retard.
But I’m sure they’ll do it. Or make it a condo. Whatever. Can’t have any history here. Nah.
Fucking assholes, bro.
