Smoking in the boys room or Cutters Cigar Bar
Big bosses, mobsters, older white men. Those are the stereotypical cigar smokers. But walking into Cutters, one of the two cigar bars in the city of Charlotte, at the Marriott Hotel in Uptown, smokers are more likely to be sports fans, a bit over 30 and so not mob affiliated. Take Keith Cradle for instance. Cradle, 36, has a cigar at least once a week with a group of friends. They’ve been doing it for 10 years, not because it was trendy, but to relax and chew the fat. Why with cigars, though? “Cigarettes are more like a loner type of thing,” he said. “You go outside and take quick puffs and go back inside.” But with cigars, which burn slower and have a different taste, there’s time to sit down, relax and talk about everything – ranging from politics, sports and of course women. “In that time, you’re having conversations and you’re in this atmosphere. It just breeds fellowship. That’s what we got out of it a long time ago, the conversations we could have and it just became a part o...