How a Gentleman Goes Up in Smoke

Cigars have been a sign of sophisticated manhood ever since Christopher Columbus discovered American Indians smoking these tobacco-inside-tobacco relaxation aids. Before that, they were simply seen as signs of manhood, sophistication being a worthless ideal to the nobles who lived off the land free from the need to keep up with any sort of Joneses or retire to the study after dinner.

By the 1800's cigars were as integral a part of high society as brandy and powdered wigs. After dinner the women would retire to the room where women play cards and gossip and the men would retire to the study, the den, or some similarly mahogany-appointed room, ideally possessing of a globe, a full bar and massive desk, a sizable book collection, and Winchesters hanging on the wall, and smoke cigars and discuss business or business gossip or women.

In the early days of the American Dream a man attacked the child-birthing process by smoking cigars with other harrowed men in the waiting room while their wives toughed it out their own damn selves. Winston Churchill has a fucking shape of cigar named after him. Hemingway has a brand. Arnold Schwarzenegger was destroying and saving the world while marrying a Kennedy and banging a nanny with a cigar in his mouth. And Bill Clinton - well we all know what happened there. From Tolstoy to Che Guevara, the cigar makes the man. Unlike cigarettes, which are and will always be more like little nerve-tamers, the female version of a cigar (thus the suffix "-ette") a cigar can be smoked every day all day or can be the crowning achievement of some monumental achievement. Who ever heard of a victory cigarette?

As such, a man needs to make sure at all times he has a few cigars in his possession; ideally a box, though less is acceptable depending on frequency and money. And for the most part, I go to local shops, talk to similarly-interested heads and smell to see what I like (The Edge, Gurkha, and Fuentes are my favorites at this moment, though Drew Estate's coffee-infused Tabak cigars are fun for an extra kick). But more and more, as I find myself short on time and money and as I find, especially in Hollywood, my cigar shops increasingly specializing in Phillie blunts and low-end tobacco I need an online source. Enter StogieBoys.

I found 30-dollar cigars for 20 bucks each. Sign up for their deal-of-the-day the Daily Nooner (with requisite hot slim), usually a fatty sampler pak or a discounted box or a humidor combo, and spend hours just pouring through their selection. And they have military discounts, true Americans they are, as well as special deals to follow your football, baseball, and other themes. But all that quality aside, just look at the damn site. When you look at other online cigar shops they look like something thrown together by a couple 10th graders just learning to use Dreamweaver. White backgrounds, bare bones catalogs, bright colors, smiley faces and other sophomoric shit. StogieBoys makes you FEEL like you're at a cigar shoppe, at least as much as you can shopping online. So check it out, buy some cigars, and this weekend, after a good meal, climb up to the rooftop of whatever building you're in, glass of scotch in hand, survey all that surrounds you and with hearty puffs of quality tobacco embrace your inner gentleman. When you take over the world, you're gonna need to celebrate. And if Christopher Columbus is to teach us anything, conquest goes best with a fine cigar.

And if the Native Americans are to teach us anything, so too does manhood.

- Ryan