![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.smokeinn.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/HRC-1030x687.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Today was a really interesting day out here on the porch with our geriatric cigar group. In fact it got kinda testy when we got on the subject of interesting people we had met during our careers. You gotta understand that besides me, someone who just grew up behind the counter of my parent\u2019s candy and cigar stores, all the rest of these people out here have totally bogus, imaginary backgrounds that they just f#*king made up on the fly to pretend that they actually knew something about making a cigar. Frankly, they\u2019re all just plain full of shit, but, to their credit, they do invent some really great stories that make wonderful reading about how their fathers spent a lifetime making cigars in Cuba and have miraculously passed on all that expertise to their offspring.<\/p>\n
The truth of the matter is that most of them couldn\u2019t make a decent cigar if their life depended on it. Hey\u2026 I was the largest seller of cigars in the world, and I couldn\u2019t make a smokeable cigar or even knew the first thing about how to begin to make one. These guys that you\u2019re hearing about (okay, not all of them, but almost all of them) just go to a factory and make arrangements to import something that\u2019s already being made for someone else (granted with a different name) and then spend all their time designing the boxes and bands their \u201cgreat new\u201d brand will come in \u2014\u00a0and as I have said many times before, they give the new brand some weird name that people cannot remember much less pronounce.<\/p>\n
I was close friends with the Olivas, the Llanezas, the Plasencias, Ramon Cifuentes, etc., etc. These were all guys whose families were heavily involved in Pre-Castro Cuba, and pioneers in recreating the industry in The Canary Islands, Nicaragua, Honduras, The Dominican Republic, and such. Every time one of these new \u201csons of guys who made cigars in Cuba forever<\/i>\u201d would pop up, I would ask Frank, or John, or Nestor: \u201cyou ever hear of this guy????\u201d and they would all laugh and go back to doing whatever they were doing before.<\/p>\n
Well, I got off the topic of interesting people we had met during our career in the business, but I gotta tell you that being the only Retail Cigar Czar out there on the porch, I was basically the only one with tales to tell. I hafta admit that I met so many unbelievable people in my lifetime in the cigar business that it would a book to tell you about them all. So, I thought I\u2019d just tell the guys on the porch about the singularly strangest person that my wife LaVonda and I ever met in all our years in the business.<\/p>\n
I guess we first met him in the late summer of 1970 (holy shit\u2026 am I really that old?) We had just moved back to New York from Kansas and we would open our little cigar store that was 15 feet wide and 31 or 32 feet long (it\u2019s the one where I had made a sign that covered the entire window from top to bottom and left to right that said \u201cWORLD\u2019S LARGEST CIGAR STORE\u201d). Okay\u2026 so maybe the other guys on the porch are not the only bullshit artists in the business!!!!\u00a0 <\/span>But, hey, it was prophetic because it really did become the World\u2019s Largest Cigar Store!<\/p>\n So, it\u2019s a little before 8 in the morning and me and LaVonda open our store and in walks this gigantic, weird dude all dressed like a\u00a0 <\/span>freakin\u2019 Viking. I was ready to grab a baseball bat to defend ourselves, but LaVonda knew exactly who this strange being was because she has always read the New York Times from cover to cover, and this guy was famous! His name was Moondog, and for a while, I think that spring and summer, he would come into our shop maybe once a week and buy a Don Diego Corona and light it with the cellophane still on it<\/i>!!! \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n How he didn\u2019t set his face on fire remains one of the worlds\u2019 great mysteries.\u00a0 <\/span>I mean, just look at him (I\u2019ll attach a picture of this guy at the bottom).<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a quote about him from Wikipedia:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Louis Thomas Hardin (May 26, 1916 \u2013 September 8, 1999), better known as Moondog, was an American composer, musician, poet and inventor of several musical instruments. He was blind from the age of 16. In New York from the late 1940s until he left in 1972, he could often be found on 6th Avenue wearing a cloak and Viking-style helmet, sometimes busking or selling music, but often just standing silent and still.<\/i><\/p>\n Moondog lighting the cigar with the cellophane still on it wasn\u2019t an accident because he did it every time\u2026 same cigar, same bon fire.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As promised, here\u2019s the picture of this guy!<\/p>\n Disclaimer:<\/i><\/b> The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Smoke Inn, its employees, or its affiliates.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today was a really interesting day out here on the porch with our geriatric cigar group. In fact it got kinda testy when we got on the subject of interesting people we had met during our careers. You gotta understand that besides me, someone who just grew up behind the counter of my parent\u2019s candy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,160],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.smokeinn.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-05-at-10.18.59\u202fAM.png\")
<\/p>\n