Cigars have an amazing ability to pull people together.

In my last post I talked about sending cigars to one of the guys over in Afghanistan that stopped by the lounge on leave. Well, one of the customers heard about this and wanted to contribute as well.  So, we set a box on the counter with a little sign.  All I can say is WOW!!!  In about 2 weeks we collected 221 cigars. And this wasn't dog turds people had hanging around their humidor. We had great cigars including Fuente Anejo, Liga Privada, Padron Anniversary, etc.  It was such a success we are going to this again in a couple of months.  Probably Veterans day November 11th.
I want to extend a special thanks to Colonel Garrett Yee.  He is the guy that came in on leave.  I asked him now to get these cigars in the hands of the fighters in the front line and he said "send them to me and don't worry about it". He has a bunch of friends that are commanders in line units that will make sure the front line guys get these sticks!

The most amazing thing about this is how much people wanted help.  Think about it, in 2 weeks we had greater than $1500.00 worth of cigars donated for guys on the other side of the world they will never get to see.  Just saying thanks for doing a hard job in a shitty place.

One thing I didn't expect was the diversity of our customers.  Smoking cigars is a social event.  Last night I paused and looked around a completely full lounge.  Also, it was also a very diverse crowd.  There were men and women, old and young and people from all over the world.  It was standing room only last night.  We have 19 seats in the lounge and all of them were taken and dudes were standing in the back of the lounge.  Front of the store was full as well and they pulled the chairs from outside in.

This is exactly what we envisioned. A great place to hang out and enjoy a great cigar with friends.