 
On the Streets of Philadelphia...Shopping for Cigars in the City of Brotherly Love By Mark Bernardo
Philadelphia is a city of contrast. On one hand, there’s the overwhelming sense of history that pervades this town, home to such historical heayweights as Independence Hall, Brandywine Battlefield Park, and the Liberty Bell. On the other hand, Philadelphia is also focused very much on the here and now, with the funky, eclectic nightlife of South Street, the burgeoning cultural growth in downtown’s Avenue of the Arts, and the fashionable shops at Liberty Place and Rittenhouse Row all helping to define this city’s ever-evolving character. The Convention Center recently hosted the Republican National Convention, and institutions like Bryn Mawr, Temple, and Villanova continue to produce the scholars and leaders of tomorrow. Even the hometown sports teams have been resurgent: in just the last year, the Eagles went to the NFC East playoffs, the 76ers battled all the way to the NBA Finals, and the perennially hapless Phillies challenged for the National League East championship. Two brand-new sports arenas are even being planned to replace well-worn and much-maligned Veterans’ Stadium.
How, after all, can one easily describe a city where both William Penn and Rocky Balboa are immortalized in bronze; a city which birthed both Betsy Ross and John Coltrane; a city whose spirit is personified by both Benjamin Franklin and Allen Iverson? Yes, the City of Brotherly Love is many things; I was here to find out if it’s also a cigar town.
What better place to start, I reasoned, than a visit to Holt’s Cigar Company, on Walnut Street in bustling Center City, in the shadow of Philly’s majestic City Hall - surely the most impressive-looking building in town. The best-known cigar destination in Philadelphia, Holt’s has a history dating back 100 years. In 1957, Albert and Jean Levin bought the original Holt’s tobacco shop, founded in 1911. In 1980, the family bought venerable H.A. Tint and Son, another shop that had been in existence since the late 1890s, and added it to their growing business. Son Robert joined the company and helped his father take it to new heights, growing one of the country’s first successful mail-order cigar businesses. In 1986, Robert Levin spearheaded the launch of Ashton, a proprietary brand that has since grown to become one of the hottest cigars on the market. Holt’s the company even went public in 1997 - the height of the cigar boom - and is now traded on the NASDAQ. Despite this string of successes, however, Levin, a Philadelphia native, is still committed to maintaining a traditional smokeshop in his hometown.
“I was cheap, forced labor,” Levin joked, recalling the early days, as we sat in Holt’s cozy smoking lounge. Magazines and local papers littered the tables, and framed photos of famous cigar-loving Philadelphians like Bill Cosby adorned the walls. “I would work in the store after school, Saturdays, whenever. It was a very small store, and we always specialized in cigars, never too many pipes or accessories. My father was one of the first retailers to have a walk-in humidor, a store within a store.”
The booming 1990s brought new opportunity for Holt’s: In 1995, the store moved to its current location on one of Philadelphia’s busiest thoroughfares for high-end luxury retailers and top-flight restaurants. Levin also expanded his repertoire of products: Holt’s now boasts an impressive array of pipes and pipe tobacco, humidors, cutters, and lighters, in addition to their plethora of cigars. Levin, however, states that cigars - specifically handmade premiums - are still the core of the business. “As the popularity of cigars increased, our clientele increased,” he said. “We started getting lots of younger people - lawyers, the whole gamut of young professionals. All the premium cigar brands - Fuente, Ashton, Padrón - are still popular. As for [products like] high-end humidors, we still sell them, but not like we did three or four years ago. We used to specialize in selling pens, but now we’re de-emphasizing them and getting back to basics.” The basics seem to be working: cigar retailing represents about 90% of Holt’s sales today, with mail-order sales also remaining strong. The brick-and-mortar end of the business, however, is in no danger of being supplanted: “We’ll always have a showplace,” Levin insisted.
Holt’s roster of regulars does not include the celebrity star power at some of New York’s shops and clubs; still, this being Philly, one never knows who’s going to stop by. The big names of the cigar industry are frequent guests at the shop, where they enjoy the hospitality that’s a hallmark of the family-oriented business... even in sometimes harrowing circumstances. Levin related a recent tale: “I was on my way to pick up the Fuentes at the airport on September 11th, when I heard about the attacks on the radio. They were stuck in Philly for almost a week.”
By this point in my visit, some regulars arrived and were lighting up, having coffee, and discussing important issues of the day... like whether to cheer for the Yankees (little-known fact: first-baseman Tino Martinez once worked for his father at the Villazon cigar factory) or support local Pennsylvania boy Curt Schilling and his Diamondbacks in the World Series. By now, I suppose at least a few of those regulars are happy.
Perhaps to prove his son wrong on this point, Michael Driban still works with him at Black Cat, a store with a distinct, big city feel: the shelves are packed with boxes of premium cigars (including a house brand available in several shapes and blends), many of them bargain-priced. Showcases display a wide array of men’s accessories, including high-end shaving accoutrements by London-based Taylor of Old Bond Street - a product for which Black Cat is one of only two importers in the U.S. Toward the back of the store are what Sam Driban describes as a “museum” of tobacco antiques: shelves full of vintage humidors, match strikers from as far back as the 19th century, and an eclectic and occasionally oddball array of cigar cutters. (My personal favorite: a miniature monkey statue that is used by inserting the cigar into the monkey’s rear-end and pushing the bladed tail down to make the cut.) “We have a national reputation for the antiques,” Driban said with pride. “It was my father’s forte; he loves them. His feelings are that something made 50 years ago is always better than something made today.”
Speaking of antiques, Black Cat has had at least one notable celebrity visitor that Driban recalls fondly: “Milton Berle once came in and did a half-hour routine. People came in and saw this older gentleman hurling insults, and they all had this blank look until they realized it was Uncle Miltie.”
As to Philadelphia’s status as a cigar smoker’s haven, Driban has no doubt. “Everybody smokes cigars in Philadelphia,” he declared. “In our store, you can have an older gentleman who just cashed his Social Security check, and he’s talking cigars with a lawyer making seven figures a year. It’s a big cigar town.”
Perhaps the ubiquity of cigar smoking in town - and the fact that many existing places seem to be fairly smoke-friendly - explains the shortage of actual cigar lounges in Philadelphia. There aren’t as many as one would expect, but possibly the best of them was right in my hotel. The Philadelphia Ritz-Carlton is another breathtaking example of Revolution-era neo-Classical architecture; originally the Girard/Mellon bank building, the hotel’s historic grandeur is evident as soon as one enters the huge, domed lobby area, and continues downstairs in the Vault, the hotel’s opulent smoking lounge.
Knowing I was winding down my first day here, I made sure to consume a meal that would usher in a leisurely late-evening cigar. The wonderful Avenue B restaurant, across from the soon-to-be-opened Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, came highly recommended and didn’t disappoint. With palate primed, I entered through the heavy, 100-year old golden door which originally barricaded the vaults that the lounge is named for. The ambiance is both classy and contemporary: low lighting, soothing Euro-jazz music, leather chairs and black marble tables, and smiling servers in stylized smoking jackets. There is, of course, a humidor full of premium cigars. I opted for an El Rey Del Mundo Robusto Larga, paired up with a glass of Laphroiag, and could have easily lingered there until closing time... if it weren’t for my desire to catch the end of the World Series game back in the room. Lacking a television, the Vault’s sequestered luxury is best enjoyed without the distraction of a major sporting event.
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