Unaware of the name, but simply having spotted an elegant shop in which I thought to have found a place in New York City to buy pipe tobacco, I entered this establishment many months ago. At that time I was not smoking anything on a regular basis. I had returned to my city of birth and had many reasons to discover it anew. Although I have been smoking cigars and pipes for over 25 years, I found myself in a phase in which I seldom smoked. This was in the process of changing. Today I enjoy an after work smoke on a daily basis and on a weekend-day it ranges between 2 and 3 smokes.
Fresh in New York, my aim was to discover the coffee world of the city, compare it to the European traditions and documenting as much as possible through the lens of a smart phone. For many years I have been connecting anything possible with this magnificent seed. Whatever is designed around coffee drinking, whatever is connected to its culture, its history, its effect on humans, its quality, as well as the politics controlling and pushing its use.
Beyond the traditional notion that coffee is a drink, I have been using it in non-drinkable ways, as a spice, as a link to intellectual activities, and simultaneously looking for the ways in which others have been combining it with anything, but water. This is how my regular smoking restarted, and soon I saw myself looking for any cigar treated with coffee. After enjoying a couple of creations from cigar companies – like Drew Estate – it was unavoidable to move onto smoking cigars for the sake of smoking tobacco leaves that taste like tobacco leaves. My time visiting coffee shops became one occupation, while discovering places to smoke cigars in and understanding the vast world of rolled tobacco became an additional one. And after about visiting some ten smoke lounges in the Metropolitan area, I went to smoke a cigar at Nat Shermans.
Nat Shermans, Fifth Avenue, New York, NY / Leica D-Lux 4
Filed under: Cigar Lounge, Cigars, Nat Sherman, New York, NY, Pipes, Tobacco Tagged: Cigar, Fifth Avenue, Lounge, Nat Sherman, New York City, Pipes, Smoke, Tobacco
