 
Cigar smokers may be singing the blues in other large cities, but Detroit, cradle of American automaking and Motown music, is still largely smoke-friendly.
The members-only Tiger Club inside Detroit’s Comerica Park - where I applaud the home team’s performance with the locals, sipping a Manhattan and puffing on a Griffin’s robusto - is one of only two cigar bars in Major League Baseball parks across the U.S. (the other is in Tampa), and the locals’ pride in it is evident.
Living in smoke-unfriendly New York, I’d nearly forgotten what it was like to watch a baseball game while smoking a cigar amongst other like-minded individuals. I arrived this weekend to attend one of the city’s most popular events - the Woodward Dream Cruise, where over a million people watch over 40,000 classic cars parade down the legendary 16-mile strip of Woodward Avenue through suburban Detroit in a civic celebration of the Motor City’s automaking history. I am also here to check out Motown’s cigar culture, and would find interesting results: in short, I discover a very smoker-friendly metropolis with an incongruous shortage of major tobacconists. In other words, there are plenty of bars and restaurants in Detroit that will welcome your cigars - but you’ll probably have to go to the suburbs to stock up. You may also find many prejudices you have about Detroit slowly but decisively changing for the better.
If there were an American city more anxious for an image makeover than Detroit, it does not readily come to mind. Forged in the blood, sweat, and metal of the auto industry, and defined in the modern era as America’s incubator of blues and R&B, Detroit has always taken pride in its status as a monument to ingenuity, enterprise, and fortitude. However, labor strife in the 1930s, race riots in the 1960s, and economically driven urban decay in the 1970s and ‘80s took their toll on this proud metropolis, reducing it to a punchline about crime, poverty, and faded glory. Automobiles rebounded in the ‘90s, and the city began rising from the ashes. Comerica Park itself is a symbol of the revival, along with its neighbor, the NFL Lions’ Ford Field (which plays host to the Super Bowl in 2006); the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s $60 million renovation; the new Hard Rock Café; the reopening of the Ford Rouge Factory Tour at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn; and a host of ongoing municipal projects.
There’s also a little tobacco shop that’s been in the building even longer than the automotive giant: Calumet Market and Spirits, which has occupied space in the building for 30 years (GM bought it five years ago). A true sundries shop in the classic tradition, cigars share space here with candy, juices, wines, beers, and liquors - anything a hotel guest could want. Henry Isaac has been at Calumet for 18 years, and remembers the earlier days when the shop sold mostly pipes (“A lot of people smoked pipes back then,” he reminisces). As Isaac takes me on a tour of both store and hotel, he enlightens me on the Motor City’s relationship with tobacco and Calumet’s special role in it. Shortly before I arrive, a proposed statewide smoking ban has gone down to defeat in Michigan, meaning many bars and even some restaurants are still friendly to cigars (and cigarettes, which seem quite common around here).
“I don’t think you could have one here,” Isaac states, perhaps a tad overconfidently, about a smoking ban. “Too many people are against it.” And while the Marriott itself is smoke-free, the Calumet does good business supplying smokes mostly to visiting hotel guests and cigar-loving General Motors execs. (A smaller store in the Center, Renaissance 500, caters more to the cigarette crowd). The store sells lots of Fuente products; Calumet has the largest selection of Fuente Hemingways in the metro area. Partagas, Romeo y Julieta, Cuesta-Rey, Punch, and Macanudo are favorites, along with selections from CAO and Ashton. “Sometimes the hotel will buy a box for a special guest, and if there’s something a regular customer wants to buy on a regular basis, I’ll get it for them. I stocked these Partagas Black Labels for a client who specially requested them.” Bottom line: if you’re visiting Detroit, and you’re not leaving the city limits, this place will take care of you.
Calumet Market and Spirits, 200 Renaissance Center #262, Detroit, MI 48243, Tel: (313) 259-1122.
“Not many ballparks have a cigar bar,” confirms Frank Music, a veteran of the hospitality business who was brought in by Tigers owner Mike Ilitch three years ago to help set up the restaurant, and ended up sticking around to manage it. “[The owner] wanted someplace where the members could have a cigar, because this is a non-smoking facility with only about four designated smoking areas. The restaurant does most of its business at the beginning of the game. This is more of a late-inning destination, as people filter in here for their after-dinner cigar. It’s a real plus for the members.”
As he leads me through the elegant lounge, Music shows me the wall of about 100 humidified cigar lockers, rented by VIP ticket-holders and a few old-time Detroit sports icons, like pitcher Milt Wilcox of the Tigers’ 1984 World Series Championship team. A well-stocked bar, comfortable leather chairs and couches, piano, and view of the playing field make the Tiger Club a baseball fan’s smoky paradise, but the year-round venue has hosted much more than ball games. Weddings, corporate parties, and even cigar company-sponsored radio broadcast events, like the Cigar Dave Show, have graced the elegant room. Music is also enthusiastic about an upcoming remodel for the 2005 MLB All-Star Game, hosted at Comerica Park.
Tiger Club, Comerica Park, Detroit, MI.
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Nowhere is the dedication to revival more evident than at the sprawling Detroit Renaissance Center, the corporate headquarters of General Motors, who along with their chief competitor, Ford, are the twin pillars of the city’s automotive-driven economy. My hotel, the Detroit Marriott in the heart of the “RenCen,” overlooks the Detroit River; through my window I can see across to Detroit’s Canadian sister city, Windsor, Ontario. As you’d expect, cars and automotive paraphernalia are woven into the fabric of society here. Visitors to the complex are greeted by a display of classic cars in the sun-drenched GM Wintergarden in the lobby.
After picking up some sticks at Calumet, it was time to take in the ballgame. Comerica Park opened in 2000, replacing venerable Tiger Stadium. In keeping with today’s urban-village-style ballparks, it features shops, restaurants, and a 50-foot Ferris wheel, but it also offers a complete baseball experience, with a pedestrian baseball history museum, a stellar view of the city skyline over the outfield, and steel sculptures of Tiger greats like Al Kaline, Hank Greenberg, and Ty Cobb. And for season-ticket holders and other VIPs who enjoy cigars, membership in the Tiger Club could prove a vital investment.