1997 La Finca Pyramides

[ElkTwin]

It's a gorgeous day. The sky is blue. I'm in north central North Carolina. I'm surrounded by a rowdy bunch of cigar smoking hooligans who are all blazing various amazing collectible sticks, telling jokes, talking smack and who, amazingly, have mostly never actually met in person before. And, with apologies to Lonely Planet and T-Pain, I'm on a m@+#*rF^<&ing bus!

Warning - explicit lyrics:


I've flown to North Carolina to be part of the first of what would be more than 20 annual North Carolina Cigar Crawl events. The bus ferried us between stops. We ruined that bus. 50 guys smoking cigars, no matter how fine, nonstop for 8 hours is traumatic to velour seats and vinyl paneling. I'm pretty sure they had to pressure wash every square inch of the interior, put a 10kw ozone generator in it for a week, and then use a backpack sprayer to douse it with the entire Ozium inventory of the East Coat head shop supply warehouse. And it still probably smelled like King Edward's powdered wig.

We hit a shop downtown, then the Pipe and Pint, and then, with the boys transfixed by a videotape entitled Mr. Smoke - an animated cartoon so campy and bad I bet you can't even find it in that vast wasteland of cultural effluent YouTube - we rolled into Burlington to see the world's largest humidor, the JR Cigars warehouse.

We had an hour in the store pawing through the aisles of interesting merch, spending time in the cigar store/lounge, and generally being pests. And then, be still my heart, we were summoned to the double swinging doors, ushered inside, and entrusted to <GASP!> Lew Rothman himself for a tour of the warehouse humidor.

Guys, this warehouse was amazing. Breathtaking. Orgasmic in its splendor. A hundred thousand *edit, 280,000* square feet of industrial shelving piled floor to ceiling with pallets of the most sought after cigars in the universe. And all of it kept at a perfect 70-70 by Gulliver sized AC units and ceiling misters. It was like heaven.

We wandered for what seemed like days while arguably the most important man in the cigar business personally regaled us with his encyclopedic knowledge, incredible exploits, and New York charm. And then, too soon, we were back at the doors and in front of the bus that was to take us to our next stop.

But Lew wasn't done. The staff wheeled a cart to the parking lot and with a smile and a handshake Lew presented each of us with a box of his house brand, La Finca cigars. Say what you will about La Finca, and many do, Lew sold millions of those cigars. Many of them in army surplus, cedar-lined ammo cans - Ammo dors, they called them.

I smoked one on the bus and it didn't suck, you know, per se. Had another a few years later and it sucked less. Now, almost 20 years later, they've apparently grown into their nickname, "La Stinka" and that's a shame. Because I'm pretty sure that box in my humidor has trace DNA from Lew freakin' Rothman himself!

Thans, Sean. Sorry about the aftertaste. Maybe swish with Aqua Velva and brush your tongue real good...