John Kelly was trying very hard to be polite, but his exasperation kept asserting itself as he explained why women aren’t invited to his smokers. “Really, this is not some sort of Three Stooges Women-Haters Club of America,” he said. “It’s just that the perspective is different.”
Kelly, of Calumet City, isn’t just blowing smoke when he talks about the sanctity of his men-only Cigar Night parties.
He sees the evenings as an opportunity for men to relax their societal inhibitions, to break the chains of female-inspired taboos. Wrapped in the comforting aroma of a $7 cigar, they are free to talk about politics, religion and women.
“Where does a guy go anymore to get his problems addressed? To talk about the fight he had with his wife, about his kids?” Kelly asked. “Too much of men’s talk is business-related.”
Kelly’s compassion may be based on marketing strategy, yet shrewdness has not overwhelmed a sincere effort on his part to bring out men’s more sensitive sides-in other words, prompting him to sponsor an upscale ’90s version of a boys’ night out. “At the risk of sounding like a chauvinist, women upset the balance,” he said. “It’s not P.C., but it is the reality of the situation.”
Kelly, 38, owner of Strictly Men Cigars, a cigar store at 13 River Oaks Dr., Calumet City, recently hosted his fifth smoker, an orgy of red meat, fine liquor and expensive cigars. About 65 men, mostly white, middle-class and aspiring, paid $60 each to indulge in a bacchanal celebration of their collective maleness.
“It was outrageous,” said Tom Foertsch, co-owner of Fresh Starts Restaurant, 1040 Sterling Dr., Flossmoor, where the smoker was held in mid-November.
Foertsch didn’t object to the men-only clientele. “So few women smoke cigars,” he said, stating the odorous fact. The restaurant is, however, considering a women-only champagne tasting.
Foertsch, who is an occasional cigar smoker, said the restaurant normally doesn’t allow cigar smoking in its dining room. “But that night, the smoke was thick enough to cut with a knife,” he said of Kelly’s private party.
The only carving done, however, was to Chef Paul Dancu’s 12-ounce filet mignons topped with wild mushrooms and Jack Daniels peppercorn sauce. “It was such a success we’d like to hold another one,” Foertsch said.
More than 1,000 such smokers will be held across the U.S. this year, according to Norman Sharp, a spokesman for the Cigar Association of America in Washington, D.C. And the parties translate into increased sales of cigars and fine liquors.
“People are drinking less, but they are drinking better,” said Eron Shosteck, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Distilled Spirits Council, who added that ultra-premium spirits, such as cognacs and single-malt scotches, are the only part of the fine liquor market that has seen an increase in sales in the past 10 years.
While liquor sales are barely keeping up, cigar sales are lighting up. “Sales were up 5 percent (in 1994), the first increase in unit sales since 1970,” Sharp said. “But the segment with the most growth is premium cigars.” From 1989 to 1993, sales of premium, imported cigars have risen nearly 25 percent, and ’94 sales were up 15 percent over 1993, Sharp said.
But could all this really be a smokescreen? The growing popularity of smokers may be less an attempt to indulge in the niceties of life than to shore up males’ eroding economic power base.
“It could be a reaction to their lowered status in society,” said J. Talmadge Wright, an assistant professor of sociology at Loyola University in Chicago.
White males find themselves under attack from all quarters, Wright said. They must compete for jobs with more minorities and women in a chaotic world of downsizing and career changes. But cigars belong to a different era. Think of drawing rooms and back rooms, corporate headquarters and city halls, a procession of smokestacks signaling the rigidity of the old boys’ network.
By excluding others, especially women, from the smokers, the participants solidify their position of power, Wright said. “It’s not right or wrong. It’s just what people do.”
Kelly, however, takes issue with characterizing the party-goers as a collection of smoldering insecurities. “We’d got a big school bus and herded all the guys on it,” he said of the smoker at Fresh Starts. “They were like a bunch of overgrown kids who got to experience a lot of different things, a variety of foods, liquors and cigars.”
Kelly’s smokers have featured venison and buffalo, fine cognacs and aged scotches, punctuated by the nip of a cigar tip and the rasp of wooden matches. A look of satisfaction settles on their faces as streams of strongly aromatic smoke gently curl above the men’s heads.
“It seems strange in this day and age of health-consciousness,” said waiter Sam Leong, who has risked his health at several of the monthly smokers at Buckingham’s Single Malt Scotch Club at the Chicago Hilton and Towers on South Michigan Avenue.
“These people were smoking their heads off.”
It’s all so symbolic. A hustler’s stogie, a gentleman’s cigar. We’re talking privilege and power, gentility and brutality, all tightly wrapped up in tobacco leaves.
“Excuse me, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” said Mike Rollins, quoting Sigmund Freud. Rollins, 32, of Tinley Park likened the evenings to a wine or beer tasting. “I’m not trying to avoid women-my wife wouldn’t even want to be there-or climb up the corporate ladder. It’s a night out smoking cigars I could never afford to buy.”
Rollins’ wife, Sheila, 29, has tried a few puffs from her husband’s cigars but claimed they’re not her cup of tea. “The smell is just too much for me. It permeates your clothes,” she said. “He has this suede jacket he used to wear (to smokers). It cost nearly $40 to clean and it still stinks.”
At Strictly Men, the emphasis is on expensive hand-rolled cigars from exotic locales. These cigars come with pedigrees, stories that detail the escape from Castro’s Cuba and the establishment of small family-owned factories in the hills of Nicaragua.
The cigars are imported from Panama and the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and the Canary Islands. The most popular is the “Padron,” a $7 cigar handcrafted by a Cuban exile whose skill is legendary among cigar connoisseurs, Kelly said.
The most expensive cigar in the shop costs $9. “It’s a 9-inch bazooka, and it’s very tasty,” Kelly said. “With cigars, you really get what you pay for.”
Kelly and his wife, Michelle, purchased the shop 11 years ago. Strictly Men was the name of a hair salon that formerly occupied the tobacco shop’s space-the previous owner sold cigars on the side-and the couple decided to keep the male-oriented moniker.
The tobacco shop cultivates a general-store atmosphere. Regulars ring up their own purchases while maintaining their place in the ongoing conversations. “There is a lot of camaraderie,” Kelly said. “We’ll get 8, 10, 12 guys in here smoking and talking.”
A certain snobbery mingles with the aroma of cigars. Not just any smoke will do, and cigarette smokers have discovered that lighting up in the shop will spark talk of lynch mobs.
“Floor sweepings,” sniffed Kelly, who has been hooked on cigars since he first lit up at age 12. Mass-produced cigarettes can’t hold a match to a hand-rolled cigar, he said. “Cigars are like wine. They have good and bad years. You don’t chain smoke cigars. You savor them.”
Reflection, rather than microscopic analysis, is the motive of most cigar smokers. “We don’t concern ourselves with how much money we make or what kind of cars we drive,” Kelly said. “There’s no pecking order. Just a good smoke.”
