---

Cigar Smokers:
Coming Out of the Humidor

by Karen Tina Harrison
(Page 2)

The tables have clearly turned for cigar smokers. Those tables are no longer next to the exit fan, and they're filling up. Cigar smokers, no longer pariahs, have plenty of good company in those cigar-friendly restaurants, bars, and clubs. And not all of those cigar-puffers want to sit around and talk fly-fishing and swimsuit issue. A good percentage of the new generation of cigar smokers are women. Actresses like Whoopi Goldberg, Demi Moore, and Tia Carrere tote cigar props for photo ops. Model-ish Cheryl Robinson, director of Le Cigar at Tatou, herself a daily Davidoff devotee, estimates that 20% of her guests are women.

There are almost as many explanations of the smoking trend as there are Havana-cravers themselves. Among the prevailing theories:

• Cigars are a healthier alternative to cigarette smoking, which anyone with any brains views as thoroughly uncool
• A tsunami of baby boomers, now 35 to 50, are entering their cigar-smoking years
• Those ever-adventurous younger guys, experimenting with adult luxury, have tried it and like it
• Cigar-smoking is a manifestation of the nation's neo-conservative, libertarian, anti-p.c. mood; it's a flagrant, fashionable way to say MYOB
• Similarly, it's a fantasy-filled, nostalgic return to simpler times, when a man was a man and a cigar was just a cigar
• Rich and masculine cigars make you look rich and masculine
  and...
• Premium cigars are popular, duh, because guys are discovering they are simply fun to smoke, and a relatively low-risk vice.