What is your Favorite way to enjoy a cigar: Discord, Zoom, local shop?
There are several different ways to herf with friends when enjoying your favorite cigar. Virtual Zoom herfs and Discord Chats are the norm in today’s society, largely a result of the global pandemic. Then there is the traditional visit to the local cigar shops, still many smokers’ favorite ways to meet and chat with friends. The benefits and drawbacks of the three differ depending on many factors.
Discord Servers
Let’s begin with the Discord chats. For those who don’t know, Discord is a server where you have different channels of conversion for a particular cigar group. Examples of discord servers are the Ashhole Cigar Club, the Devils Enclave Cigar Club, and the Cigar Clowns. Each group has members that are invited in to share what types of cigars they smoke, deals to get purchase cigars, sub-categories that offer availability to a variety of different cigar groups, and a way to chat live via Discord video channels.
The Discord video chats bring members of that server together to smoke a cigar and talk about anything they’d like. The service is shaky at times, especially with the more people that come on, but you don’t need any login or password codes to join.
It is a simple and quick way to get together with friends on Discord.
Zoom
Prior to 2020, many people only knew of Zoom as a way businesses could hold meetings with different people in different states at the same time. Zoom altered the cigar industry for the better as it brought cigar smokers together from not just different states, but from different countries.
With Zoom calls, one can set up a meeting to have people join and participate in virtual herfs from anywhere in the world. They are a great form of bringing people together to enjoy a cigar in the same way as if you were in a cigar lounge. Zoom calls also have become a way to meet one-of-a-kind people in the cigar industry. They have allowed me the opportunity to meet and talk with cigar leaders such as Brian Desind of Privada Cigar Club, and Matt Booth of Room101 cigars.
These Zoom’s give cigar smokers opportunities to talk with people that otherwise wouldn’t happen due to the different areas everyone lives in across the country.
Local Lounge
The local cigar lounge is the old reliable. You walk into your local shop and enter a humidor filled with the great aroma of a variety of cigars. Then, you get to enjoy the thrilling experience of looking for that cigar you are willing to spend the next hour or hour and half smoking. Nearly every vitola you can conceive of, all right in front of you to choose from. On occasion, If you look hard enough, you might even find a hidden gem or two. The next step is to head off to the sitting area and light up, take in any games that may be on one of the several televisions, and enjoy talking with friends or with people you just met.
The conversations in a lounge are unique, to say the least. It is quite different from that of a virtual herf where too often too many people talk at the same time and conversations are swallowed up, or nobody says anything at all in an effort to avoid confusion. In a lounge, conversations run smooth with topics varying from cigars, to favorite scotches to the score of a baseball or hockey game. It is more of a night out with friends than a virtual session where you grab your tablet or laptop and head outside to join.
Result
There is no correct answer only a personal preference. All three have benefits that will remain a part of the cigar smoking experience for a long while. For this writer, virtual herfs have allowed me to keep in touch with my friends but have also enabled me to make new ones in states from South Carolina, Connecticut, and Florida to name a few.
Yet going into a local lounge to have a cigar is my favorite. The experience is different every time, which is the fun part. All of it, tasting different cigars and liquors along with the enjoyment of sitting down and talking with others who all share the same purpose, to smoke a cigar, is invaluable for me.
What is your favorite way to enjoy a cigar? Comment below. Stay smokey my friends.
Follow Frank Curto on Twitter at @RangerProud and on Instagram at @Frank/RangerProud