Top Hat Tobacco Blog

If you are looking for Designer-Inspired handbags, maybe something for the wife or girlfriend (the holidays are just around the corner), one of our bosses’ wives is now selling them!  Please visit STL Purse Party.  There’s a pretty good selection right now and more being added soon!

If you are in the St. Louis area and are interested in hosting your own STL Purse Party here are the details:

Purse Party Incentives

• 10% commissions on all sales up to $500. Commissions are raised to 15% for sales $501 and up.
• Discount of 20% (max 3 purses).

Hosting a Party

• We can book a party in as little as 1 week (depending on availability).
• We provide the purses and a knowledgeable consultant.
• We provide a check list of “to do’s” so you don’t forget a thing!
• You choose the games, length of the party, and whether or not to serve food/beverages.

If you are interested in hosting a party, send us an email at info@stlpurseparty.com. If you prefer to call and leave us a message please do so at 636-438-1423. We will call you back within 24 hours (Monday through Friday).

Written by Chad Cigar Reviews and Related Topics www.tophatcigar.com

I understand that voters in Oregon defeated a proposed tax increase yesterday, by a wide margin of 60% against the increase, 40% for it. I say GOOD JOB!

There are so many arguments for increasing smoker’s taxes, we’ve all heard them:
- The higher taxes will dramatically reduce youth smoking
- Less smoking will lead to lower tobacco-related health care costs
- The monies collected will be used to pay for kid’s health care programs
- Thousands of lives will be saved
- Etc. Etc. Etc.

This is so much bull it’s hard to know where to start- in my book it all boils down to someone wanting to raise my taxes to fund whatever pet government program they are pushing that week.

Think about it this way- every time you vote “Yes” for a tax increase, YOU will have to pay more taxes somewhere. So if you raise your taxes say, $100 per year, that is $100 you HAVE to give to some governmental agency like the IRS. What happens if you do not pay your taxes? If it’s bad enough, you will go to JAIL. At its core, that’s why we all submit to the government every single April 15 and pay up.

So you have to go to work another day this year and every year after that (assuming you make $100/day) just to pay that tax increase. IF you didn’t have to pay that extra $100, then you could have taken another day off to goof around, or used the money to buy something you want (like a nice box of cigars), which would stimulate the economy and yes, cause more taxes to be paid by the merchant you bought something from, the staff he is paying to work the store, etc. etc. — It’s all a good thing when you have lower taxes!

I probably shouldn’t say it but this belief is the reason I vote against virtually every tax increase I see. Yes, I even voted against the increased property tax to fund our local library yesterday!  (It passed anyway.)

I guess I haven’t even addressed the health issues raised by smoking (a bunch of balony, especially with cigars), but it is already getting hard enough to find somewhere to smoke and the prices have been getting driven up so much through increased taxes, that it seems like the poor persecuted smokers are going to all disappear soon! But we at Top Hat Tobacco are helping combat that problem with our nice smoking lounge which all are invited to use for free! Come on by and enjoy a nice, fat, cigar. While you are here, enjoy the Wi-Fi or the big screen TV. By the way, we have a Cigar Happy Hour every Friday, and a special manufacturer’s party by CAO tomorrow which I’ll write another blog entry about shortly.

Have a great day, and smoke one for me!

Written by Eric Cigar Reviews and Related Topics www.tophatcigar.com

So I checked my humidor a couple weeks ago, and the humidifier inside was fuzzy- it had some mold or something growing on it that was white and fuzzy! This of course was quite concerning, since I didn’t want the cigars, of which I had quite a few nice ones in there, to get messed up.

So being the frugal person I am, I figured I would try to clean up the humidifier and see if I could re-use it. So I took it apart, cleaned the plastic case with bleach, and tried scraping off the fuzzy stuff as best I could from the green block inside. Needless to say, this didn’t actually work. I went out of town a couple weeks, and when I got back, the humidifier was fuzzy again, maybe even worse than the first time. So I pulled the humidifier out of the humidor.

First step- check my local shop for a new humidifier. Even at a store with great prices like Top Hat Tobacco, a replacement was around $30. Ouch. So I think “Why not replace the green stuff inside the humidifier with some new green stuff? It looks just like the stuff you get from a craft store for sticking flowers into.”

So here I am at work, cutting out a new block of green humidor foam. I will let you know how it worked in a week or two. If any of you out there need some, I have plenty to spare- just stop by the shop and cut a piece off for yourself.

Written by Eric Cigar Reviews and Related Topics www.tophatcigar.com

I’ve always liked cigar store indians, so here’s some information I’ve learned about them. The Cigar store Indian or Wooden Indian is an old advertising figure made for cigar shops, much like barber poles advertise barber shops or the pawn shops have 3 gold balls. The indians were often three-dimensional wooden sculptures several feet tall – up to life-sized. They are still occasionally used for their original advertising purpose, like the one pictured above, but are more often seen in decorative uses, or for older ones, as collectibles.

HISTORY
Because of the general illiteracy of the population, early store owners used descriptive emblems or figures to advertise their shops. Indians and tobacco had always been associated because Indians introduced tobacco to Europeans, and it the depiction of native people on smoke-shop signs followed naturally. As early as the seventeenth century, tobacconists from Europe used figures of Indians to advertise their shops. Because European carvers had never seen a Native American, these early cigar-store wooden Indians looked more like black slaves with feathered headdresses and other fanciful features. These carvings were called “Virginians” or “Black Boys” in the trade. Eventually, the European cigar-store figures began to take on a more authentic yet highly stylized native visage, and by the time the smoke-shop figure arrived in America in the early eighteenth century, it had become thoroughly “Indian.”

The early cigar store Indians could be purchased as either male or female and were fashioned both in cast iron and the far more popular wood. In the early years the female figure, with or without papoose, was by far the more popular and outnumbered male figures four to one. Occasionally, the female wooden indian was adorned with a headdress of tobacco leaves in place of the more standard feathers. Male wooden indians were often dressed in the warbonnets of the Plains Indians.

TODAY
The cigar store Indian became less common in the 20th century for a variety of reasons. New sidewalk-obstruction laws, higher manufacturing costs, and increased racial sensitivity relegated the figures to museums and antique shops. To some, the cigar store Indian figure is considered the native equivalent of the black lawn jockey—a stereotypical and thus demeaning portrayal of Native Americans; however, both of these types of figures are still made for sale and cigar store Indians can still be found outside many cigar stores just like ours. The TopHat Indian is kind of short and mean looking, but hey, he was on sale for a good deal when we needed him!

TRIVIA

• There is an episode of Seinfeld known as “The Cigar Store Indian“
• The dog in the picture above is Nikki, short for Nickel. She’s the store mascot. Here’s directions to the TopHat Tobacco Kirkwood Cigar Shop, come and visit!

Written by Eric Cigar Reviews and Related Topics www.tophatcigar.com

Top Hat Tobacco wants everyone to have access to a great cigar store like ours. That’s why we originally opened up our cigar lounge in Kirkwood, Missouri. That’s also why we provide this list: so you can find a great cigar shop near you.

The following Cigar Stores, Smoke Shops and Cigar Shops have been selected for inclusion to our directory because of their quality selection and exceptional customer service. These stores are exclusive authorized dealers that sell a wide variety of cigars and cigar Accessories. Not all cigar products are available at every store. Some may have online cigar sales. Visit any of these outstanding retail locations in your area and buy fine cigars with confidence.

Shop in the US – Select your State:

List Your Cigar Store FREE
(Do this instead of posting a comment if you don’t see your local shop in the list yet)

Or shop here online, we’ll ship it directly to your front door:
Top Hat Tobacco
124 W. Jefferson Ave, Suite 107
Kirkwood, Missouri 63122
314-966-1002

Written by Eric Cigar Reviews and Related Topics www.tophatcigar.com

Cigars need to be kept fresh in a controlled environment. A personal humidor (as opposed to a humidor room) is a box designed to store your cigars at an optimal humidity range of 65-75%, at room temperature. Most personal humidors are made of wood, with the inside usually made of Spanish cedar.

Aside from its protective value, many cigar aficionados treat humidors as a work of art or a fine piece of furniture.

There are various sizes of wood humidors. From the small Otterbox cigar caddy that holds up to 15 cigars, to the great glass-top wood display humidor that can hold up to 150 cigars, there are a lot from which to choose.

Once you’ve purchased your humidor, you will need to prepare, or cure, it before storing your cigars. Please do not skip this step or you will compromise the life of your cigars.

Here are the 8 steps to prepare your humidor:

1. Remove the humidity device and fill it with distilled water. Set it on a paper towel to soak up any extra water before you put it in your humidor, or you might stain the wood.

2. Wipe down the interior of the humidor with a clean, damp sponge. Be sure to get the sides, top, bottom and any dividers. Don’t use a paper towel or anything that might leave bits of itself behind in the wood.

3. Place a plastic bag on the bottom of the humidor interior and place the damp sponge on top of the plastic. Again, this is to avoid staining the wood.

4. Install the humidity element.

5. Close the lid and leave it undisturbed overnight for at least 12 hours. Open the humidor, remove the humidity device and refill it with distilled water.

7. Remove the sponge and the plastic bag from the humidor.

8. Close the lid again for an additional 12 hours, ensuring the interior wood reaches the optimum humidity level of 65-75 percent.

Top Hat Tobacco has a nice online selection of cigar humidors, or just come on into the shop and browse around.

Written by Eric Cigar Reviews and Related Topics www.tophatcigar.com