Our Story
Founding Story
Two years of eighty-to-hundred-hour weeks in investment banking will make anyone want to disappear for a while. So I did — six months, twenty-eight countries, a cigar in nearly every one.
That part was easy. The hard part was finding somewhere worth smoking in: a real lounge, the right crowd, the right hum of conversation — not a shack behind a gas station that Google Maps swore was “highly rated.” I lost more nights than I’d like to admit chasing five-star reviews down unfamiliar streets, only to find nothing waiting at the end of them.
By the time I got home, I had a notebook full of the places that actually delivered — worth the detour, worth telling a fellow smoker about. So I built a home for that list: a map and directory for anyone in the Brotherhood of the Leaf who’d rather spend the evening smoking a Montecristo than researching.
This is my contribution to the fraternity. Now I’m asking for yours: the lounges you’d send a friend to, wherever in the world they happen to be lighting up.
How It Started
I developed my love of cigars when I was 18. As newly minted high school graduates, my friends and I went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for the tradition of "Beach Week." We bought some cheap sticks to celebrate the end of our high school years, and then lit fireworks using the heat from our cigars. As a novice smoker, I didn't yet have the wisdom to know that using my cigar to light fireworks would compromise the tobacco. But that experience kicked off a lifelong cigar journey. I've been a loyal smoker ever since, seeking out cigar lounges and bars across the country and around the world.
Every cigar smoker should also have a loyal cigar companion. Mine is Leonard Robinson, who you'll see in the photos below. We actually couldn't stand each other when we first met. A year later, in a chance encounter, we realized we both smoked cigars, and the rarity of finding another teenager who appreciated a good Padrón forged a fast friendship. We spent our early years as smoking companions meeting up at Old Virginia Tobacco in Seven Corners, Virginia. Since then, we've smoked countless cigars, donned smoking jackets, and bought Rabbit filters to smoke at home.
