Stinky, Holiday, Omaha and Snickers by Frank Seltzer
Stinky cigar station
Betcha never expected to see those words together huh?
From the guy who came up with the Stinky ashtray, (you do not have one yet?) yeah the bowl that holds a bunch of cigars and when using it outside the ashes don’t blow out, comes the next thing. The Stinky Cigar Station.
By trade, Stinky is an engineer and is always thinking about stuff. He noticed at a lot of cigar stores, and even in man caves people were always looking for their cutters or lighters. You pick them up and set them down and then forget where. To solve this problem he has come up with a way to keep everything in one organized (I said he is an engineer) place.
Every item is attached to a retractable cable so once you are done, you don’t have to hunt for where you put it. It goes back into place. The cutting station also has a drawer for things like butane, cedar strips, matches…in short all your cigar needs. The top of the drawer will hold a regular stinky up to the huge Herf edition.
So far there is only his prototype but he is working on finishing the design and hopes to go into production soon. No word on the price or when it will be available.
Holiday Shipping
Davidoff Holiday Gifts
OK so we aren’t even at Halloween and stores are already putting out Christmas stuff. It happens. In the cigar biz, well if you want to sell holiday packages, ya gotta get them to the stores early. That’s why this week, Davidoff announced for the first time it will have holiday gifts. The festive packaging will be for a Robusto Collection, Tubo Assortment a 9 cigar assortment and a 10 count Puro d’Oro. No more details on what the assortments are, nor the price, but they will be shipping to stores in the next couple of weeks. The packaging certainly is wintery.
Omaha Defiance
Big John’s Billiards is a pool hall on the southwest side of Omaha. It allows smoking. Trouble is the Nebraska is a smoke free state. No matter, Bill Prout is fighting back by putting signs up saying smoking is allowed and putting ashtrays around his establishment.
Prout’s father Will was the one who opened Big John’s in 1981 and although he is not a smoker, Bill continues to fight the ban. Why? Cause the ban is costing the family a lot of money. Bill says he and his father were forced to close a Big John’s in Lincoln because of the ban. Listen to some common sense…
“Nobody wants to leave in the middle of a game of pool to go outside and smoke a cigarette,” he said of Big John’s.
The business serves food and liquor. It has 30 pool tables, a dozen pinball machines and at least eight smoke-eating filtering machines.
“It’s the ultimate place where people go to smoke,” Prout said of a pool hall.
Big John’s has gone to court to fight the smoking ban and says he is making a stand. Good on him.
New York Just Say NO Snickers?
Say you are in a hospital waiting room waiting for your wife, or mother to come out of surgery. You already know you can’t smoke…so you head to the cafeteria for some comfort food…Guess what? Hope you like broccoli. In his latest effort, Bloomberg is going to ban sugary and fatty foods from the city’s public and PRIVATE hospitals (including vending machines). Bye Bye Snickers.
If there’s any place that should not allow smoking or try to make you eat healthy, you would think it’d be the hospitals,” Bloomberg said Monday. “We’re doing what we should do and you’ll see, I think, most of the private hospitals go along with it.”
The cafeteria crackdown will ban deep fryers, make leafy green salads a mandatory option and allow only healthy snacks to be stocked near the cafeteria entrance and at cash registers. At least half of all sandwiches and salads must be made or served with whole grains. Half-size sandwich portions must be available for sale.
Just how much is done…for your own good? And at what price?
