Smoking On The Sly
I was sitting in a restaurant in New York, and the meal was nearly over. A waiter poured a bit more wine into my glass, and my host looked at me in a nonchalant way. “Do you have those cigars?” he asked. I pulled a box of Cubans from my satchel, bringing them up to the table where he could see them. “We can smoke them now.”
I looked around the room, which wasn’t as full as when we entered but still had plenty of people dining. “Now?” I asked. “Sure,” he said. I passed the box around, everyone at the table took one, and soon we were puffing away happily and quite illegally, enjoying cigars at the conclusion of a wonderful meal. A waiter quickly came up to the table—and put down two ashtrays. All was right with the world.
No guide to cigar smoking in New York City would be complete without tales of off-the-record smoking. The Smoke-Free Air Act went into effect on March 30, 2003, which meant an end to puffing at your table at your favorite restaurant or at the rail of your neighborhood bar—well, at least an end to legal puffing. As anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in New York City knows, this is a city where rules are made to be bent, and sometimes broken. Yes, cigars are still enjoyed here and there on the sly, puffed in a restaurant after closing or smoked in a bar when the hour is getting late and the crowds are growing slim. There are cigar lounges in private clubs that operate outside the law, hotels with posh smoking rooms that are there, even though they shouldn’t be and plenty of other examples. No, we won’t name them (it would ruin it for everyone). But we love the fact that they exist. How do you find them? That takes a bit of work and more than your share of patience. But when you do find yourself in a place where cigars are welcomed even where they shouldn’t be, a curious thing happens—they taste even better.
