Puff ‘n’ Stuff : New Cigar Parlors Are Full of Homey Touches, Wide Choice of Stogies

Right there at the front door, the tone is set by a great big wooden Indian. Clearly, this is no place for the politically correct.

Any lingering doubts should be dispelled by those soft gray halos of cigar smoke encircling your head. Neo-Puritans need not apply here, and the faint-hearted ain’t welcome either.

It’s Hugo’s Cigar Shoppe in Huntington Beach, one of three new cigar lounges recently opened in Orange County, and one of countless parlors opening nationwide.

With America’s cigar-smoking trend getting hotter than a 50-cent stogie, cigar parlors have quickly followed, providing places where smokers can indulge their pungent habit in peace. Of course, besides offering sanctuary, the parlors also sell wide varieties of premium cigars (ranging in price from $1 to around $20), and each parlor prides itself on its unique selection as much as its homey feel.

Doctors can say all they want about the well-documented dangers of tobacco. Cigar smokers (who generally don’t inhale) pooh-pooh dire warnings about their ancient pleasure, and cigar sales have begun to show their Schwarzeneggerian confidence.

After nearly 25 years of steady decline, sales of premium cigars have wafted upward since 1994, thanks partly to celebrity smokers, glossy cigar magazines and a mild backlash against rampant killjoy-ism. According to the Washington-based Cigar Assn. of America, 2.6 billion cigars were sold in the United States last year, 10% more than 1994, and some retailers fear they might not be able to meet the voracious demand this Christmas.

“It’s, like, new businesses are supposed to fail, but we’ve done $13,000 so far!” says Hugo’s owner Steve Cybulski.

“This place is cool,” says Mark Dorning, a Hugo’s regular who freely admits that the shop has become something of a second home for him. “Sometimes, I spend more time here than I ought to. But it’s a place to escape, get away from the realities of life, without getting loaded.”

As far as decor goes, Hugo’s is done in Modern American Guy. Picture a cross between your granddad’s den and Homer Simpson’s dream pad. From the player piano in the corner to the oil paintings of Harleys and boxers on the walls, from the antique humidor to the backgammon and chess sets, it’s your basic testosterone-filled, toy-strewn rumpus room.

But some women light up when talking about the place too.

“We were dying for this place to open,” says Carol Berger, a Huntington Beach resident who hits Hugo’s for her favorite $2 coronas.

In fact, nearly 300 people were dying for Hugo’s to open, judging from the turnout at last month’s ribbon-cutting. A similar throng attended June’s grand opening of the Royal Cigar Society of Costa Mesa, at which a cigar-roller from Cuba entertained the crowd.

Unlike Hugo’s--where customers pay nothing for the privilege of doing nothing--members of the Royal Cigar Society cough up $400 a year for access to a private lounge where they can ease back in overstuffed chairs, stare at the saltwater aquarium, or watch the big-screen TV.

Naturally, non-members are more than welcome to buy their cigars from the Royal Cigar Society’s amply stocked humidor, and many non-members mill around the open-to-the-public part of the shop, smoking and comparing different brands.

“It’s a bar without liquor,” explains Bob Vitamante, co-owner of the Royal Cigar Society.

“It’s a hobby shop,” says his wife and co-owner, Chris.

It’s an upholstered treehouse is what it is, a fact as plain as the Little Rascal-ish looks on the male customers’ faces.

“I do a lot of counseling,” says Peter Saindon, a psychologist from Huntington Beach who frequents Portofino Cigars in Newport Beach, where loitering costs nothing but a private cigar locker fetches $350 per year. “After a busy day of counseling, I need to center myself.”

*

At the center of this centering ceremony is a Churchill as long as Saindon’s right arm, which he puffs with the contented expression of Monopoly’s Rich Uncle Pennybags.

“Often,” he says, “men use symbols to rally around. It might be cards. It might be football. Or . . . cigars.”

Smoke swirls around his head as he talks, an aura of total calm enveloping him.

“It’s therapy, I don’t know how else to describe it,” says Jeff Littell, of Santa Ana Heights, another Portofino regular, who smokes about five cigars a week. (The average cigar smoker, according to the Cigar Assn., smokes six to eight.)

Littell favors the second biggest leather chair at Portofino. When feeling particularly tense, however, he’ll sink into the biggest--a squishy cordovan seat that customers call the “Oh, God Chair.”

“Because when you sit in it,” Littell says, “you say, ‘Oooooh, God!’ ”

Indeed, the chair looks like a large tub of warm pudding, and it’s quickly becoming the parlor’s most popular spot. Scott Gayner, co-owner of Portofino, says the chair was donated by a customer whose new wife didn’t want it--or his cigars--in her house.

“Women have created these places,” says Portofino customer Craig McClelland. “Because they won’t let us smoke at home.”

Actually, society helped create cigar parlors, Gayner says. It seems like every day another cigarette smoker walks into Portofino, seeking a more socially acceptable way of enjoying nicotine.

In the ‘90s, Gayner says, cigarettes are close, but no. . . .

“I smoked cigarettes for years and years,” says Berger, the female customer at Hugo’s. “Then I stopped. Then I started smoking cigars six months ago. It’s a fashion thing. It’s accepted.”

During a recent dinner party at Berger’s house, she estimates, nearly half the guests stood outside, smoking cigars.

“A cigar seems less sinful,” says Saindon. “For some people, it’s a sacrament, a symbol. If we can smoke together, it means something.”