Cigar's Size Tells A Great Deal About The Puffer

There are very few more stupid sights to witness than a Yup who's discovered cigars. Like the lawyer-type - nice suit, expensive tie, the requisite suspenders - I saw the other day in downtown Seattle.

It was after work, and maybe he had just gotten through billing a client for a few thousand, or maybe just had a drink at the nearby cocktail lounge and was feeling flush. He proudly stood out on the sidewalk, an eight-incher jutting out from his lips.

I watched as he made his way through the crowds. He walked right through the middle, his head craned forward, forcing people to part for him to avoid the smoldering stogie. Sometimes he'd take the cigar and smugly twirl it around his lips. You've seen that little ritual in movies and TV shows, when the star is smoking an expensive cigar. Apparently you can't savor a cigar unless you twirl it.

Amateur, I thought, an amateur of the worst kind, the kind who wants to force his new-found diversion on others.

Off and on, these days mostly off, I've smoked cigars. Cheap cigars, expensive cigars, miniature cigars, big cigars that lasted for days.

You don't force cigars on those disgusted by them, which, despite the trend stories about the resurgence of cigars, still is much of the population.

It is true that last year, cigar sales rose seven percent, with Americans buying 3.7 billion cigars. But it's also true that cigar sales are less than a third of what they were 25 years ago, when sales began plummeting.

That would have been back in the 1970s, the days of Vietnam war protests and rock festivals. Then, Jerry Garcia was smoking something, but it wasn't tobacco.

"Cigars weren't really socially acceptable. There were a lot of negative connotations with gangsters and fat cat businessmen, there was the fitness movement, we were a society of the young and beautiful," Norman Sharp, president of the Cigar Association of America, tells me.

What's new?

We're a country continually looking for the next craze. Eventually, yesterday's unhipness becomes today's coolness. These days, fat cat businessmen who buy up entire corporations are very cool; as for gangsters, there is a whole musical genre of rap music named after them.

"And I guess the last thing is that it's a little bit of political uncorrectness," Sharp explains about cigars in the '90s.

These days, the stories about cigars always include the mention of restaurants staging $125-a-plate cigar dinners, in which along with fine wine and steak (might as well go with all the forbiddens), you get a sampling of Dominican or Honduran handmade cigars.

I suppose that's one way of reaching back to yesteryear, when you could indulge without guilt. If newcomers to the cigar world want to really partake in this grand old tradition, however, then they should go all the way.

The fact is that those premium imported cigars, the ones that get vividly described in Cigar Aficianado magazine as "backed up by smooth woody and leathery notes," account for a fraction of sales. Of the 3.7 billion cigars sold last year, only 125 million were the premium kind.

From the machine

It is cigars such as King Edward, Havatampa and Dutch Masters that account for most sales of "large" cigars, and it is Swisher Sweets that are the best-sellers in the "little" cigars category. All these cigars also have a long history. They're all machine manufactured, with portions ground into pulp, adhesive added to the slurry (that's the "non-tobacco ingredients" you see printed on the packages), and then rolled out like sheets of paper.

Sure, it's a picture not as romantic as a cigar that's rolled by hand, but a Havatampa costs 30 cents or 40 cents a piece, instead of up to $20.

You smoke these cigars the old-fashioned way. Out on the porch; by yourself in the car; watching TV with your dog who can't verbalize how much you stink.

That's why the next time you see a Yup twirling that premium handmade Honduran that's supposed to emit those smooth leathery notes, give him the disdain reserved for an amateur.

When you've smoked a pack of Swisher Sweets at an all-night poker party, and then spent the entire next day in the bathroom, then come talk to me about cigars.

Erik Lacitis' column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. His phone number is 464-2237. His e-mail address is: elac-new@seatimes.com