CigarFox

The cigar box guitar is an instrument that has fascinated many guitar players, mainly in relation to whether they are real musical instruments. Many people who have learnt how to make a cigar box guitar have done so simply to give their children something to amuse themselves with but the truth is they can make serious music. The origin of the cigar box guitar is in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when there were many people seeking to express themselves through music but could not afford to but real musical instruments. The use of homemade musical instruments like the cigar box guitar had a resurgence in the years of The Great Depression.

The need for improvised musical instruments led to the proliferation of jug bands which gave people the opportunity to play melodies and generate rhythm for dancing using homemade instruments. So musical gatherings featuring washtubs, spoons and kazoos became commonplace in communities all over America. Gourds with guitar necks attached originally provided the basis of homemade guitars but as cigars began to be shipped in small boxes and the boxes were left lying around the house, sooner or later somebody had to try them out as resonators for guitars. The neck for your average cigar box guitar was often a broom handle with one or two strings attached.

If you want to make your own cigar box guitar you will need some basic tools: a box cutter or pocket knife, a hacksaw, a drill, some fine and coarse grade sandpaper. The raw materials for making your guitar are: a cigar box, a one inch by two inch piece of lightweight soft wood (poplar is a good choice), a dozen one inch nails, wood glue, some wood stain and an applicator. To tune your cigar box guitar just buy three tuning pegs from your local musical instruments store. Their are plans available from expert cigar box guitar makers, in fact there is even a Yahoo Group you can join.

Once you have made your three string cigar box guitar you have several options for tuning. These tunings are from bass to treble: A E A, G D G, A E G.

Many guitar legends are supposed to have played cigar box guitars but not many are talking openly about it. Here is an unverified list of reputed cigar box guitar players who have made names for themselves using conventional instruments: Rockabilly legend Carl Perkins, jazz guitarist George Benson, epitome of refinement Ted Nugent plus other noted musicians like BB King and Jimi Hendrix.

There are also guitarists who make and play their cigar box guitars as their sole musical outlet. One cigar box guitar mover and shaker is Shane Speal, the curator of the National Cigar Box Guitar Museum in York, PA. Shane is archiving cigar box guitar history. He has found the earliest known plans for a cigar box banjo (circa 1870), unearthed etchings of Civil War Soldiers playing cigar the box fiddle and owns a genuine dated and signed cigar box violin from 1899.

John Lowe, a musician and bookstore owner from Memphis who makes electric cigar box guitars called Lowebows. They are made from two oak dowel rods, a wooden cigar box, three guitar strings and a bass string. You play Lowebow with a slide. Lowe’s repertoire has everything from Johnny Cash to Iggy Pop. You can find him busking on Beale Street.

About the Author:

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? http://playaguitarforfree.com/ is my blog which shows you that there are many people like you who wish to learn how to play bass, acoustic or electric guitar. You will find guitar lessons, videos, articles and reviews to answer your questions, calm your fears and help you play the guitar.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Cigar Box Guitars – Their History and Players

Shipping Cigars From CigarFox.com With Customer Travel Case

Buying gifts for love ones, friends and colleagues is not always a simple task. Is it very easy to decide on giving gifts to these people but to look for the right gifts is the real challenge. There are some considerations, however, that needs your attention. Try to ask yourself on what do you buy; how much will you willing to spend; what is the occasion, or is more better to purchase a group gift? If you are going to do it though, you might as well do it right. And most importantly, don’t stress out yourself over it. Buying a gift should be a fun experience.

The First thing you should determine is your budget, then you have to set the price that you can afford to spend. By doing this, it will be easy for you to narrow down your search and prevent you from getting out of control as well. If you want to give a present to your boss, don’t settle for something that is too cheap but also not too expensive. Buying extravagant present for your boss may allow your colleagues to think that you are trying to be nice to your to get the next promotion. It should be just right.

The clue is to figure out what to purchase. Refer your choices to your receiver’s personality, likes and dislikes, interest and hobby. However, there are some great gifts that will work no matter what. If your boss travels a lot, give a new leather suit case that can make a practical keepsake for him. If you find it too expensive, you may ask your other colleagues if they are willing to contribute. You can always go in together. After all, it is much better to buy one present to your boss that he will appreciate than buying a couple of gifts that will most likely get stored and soon forgotten.

The occasion itself can help you narrow down your list. Example, buying a present for a wedding is usually pretty easy and straight forward whether it is for your boss or colleagues. They most likely have a registry makes your task very easy because all you need to do is to pick something that is available on the list.

When is the perfect time to buy a group gift? This can be very tricky and most often depends on the situation, and a bit on the gift as well. Group gifts are often given to number of co-workers or colleagues. Group gifts for your colleagues include business items and other office desk accessories. You can present a couple of business card cases, business pens, memo pads, picture frames, paper weights and letter opener. Today, you can find many assortments of gifts that can be made customized, like engraved money clips, cufflinks, jewelry boxes and even cigar humidors. Add your own personal touch by engraving your colleagues’ initials on the items, or perhaps your own special message. Personalized gifts doesn’t only stand for their literal meaning, but you want to make sure that they can be very useful as well while carrying a thoughtful sentiment that your receivers will remember from you.

About the Author:

Jnet is an author for a variety of lifestyle issues and topics. If you’re looking for
business promotional products
, visit the website Mybusinessgifts.com and browse their extensive collection. Get a
men’s pocket watch
for your colleagues online!

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Business Gifts – Job Related Keepsakes You Want to Give

Cigar Gift-Humidor Kit BlowOut !

Enjoying a good cigar can be compared to tasting a good wine; that is why expert smokers actually ‘taste’ the smoke coming out of every cigar. Taste glands are the best mechanism the human body has to determine the quality of a good smoke. One breath that involves the complexity and the flavors combination of a pure cigar can be compared to the pleasure of tasting a great wine or an exquisite meal.
Cigar clubs and bars are growing in the main cities of the world, making London the Mecca due to its trade and consuming capacity. When smoking in public places was prohibited in the United States, a frenzy of cigar bars was unleashed. Cigar Aficionado is the most important publication in the cigar world consisting on a monthly printout of 750,000.00 magazines. Regardless of the place you visit, it will not be long before you can identify a cigar lover; he lives in camaraderie environments. Such environment is much nicer, more cultural and perfumed than the one from cigarette smokers.
Cigars are said to be a unique experience due to the following: Very few tobacco varieties are used to elaborate a good cigar, which is planted and aged with extreme caution

• The fermentation process makes the tobacco leaves lose most of their nicotine
• Cigars designed to burn at very low temperatures, in other words, its tobacco should never be excessively heated so it dies not lose its softness.
• Smoke is not a secondary element, but the key to the pleasure, since the smoke contains the flavor and aroma that only a cigar can provide.

Cigar smoking tips

Once it is lighted, take the cigar to your lips and blow it prior to the first breath; this will dissipate any unwanted flavor consequence of the lighting. Once this is done, fill your mouth with cold smoke and keep it there without inhaling it; take the cigar out of your mouth, and slowly blow it out. Please hold an instant before the next puff. Do not rush, it is recommended that you take intervals of a minute or so, to prevent the cigar from blowing off. Remember, the faster you smoke, the least you will enjoy the experience, as the cigar will heat excessively and produce a bitter flavor. The head of the cigar should be kept as dry as possible, hence avoid keeping the cigar in your mouth for too long. A cigar with moisture starts to lose flavor when nicotine and tar start mixing with saliva, therefore, do not hold your cigar for more than three minutes on every smoke.
The first half of the cigar is different to the second, the smoke increases and the flavor intensifies as you smoke which is not always positive.  This happens after having smoked a third of the cigar (expert cigar smokers can tell when this moment has been reached, and proceed to light off the cigar, as it had already transpired its thru essence; not doing so will end up in an unpleasant sensation as the cigar turns bitterer by the minute).
Hold the cigar gently but firmly, try not to squeeze it, as it may impact the blow. Hold it between your thumb, index and middle fingers.
The ashtray should be the cigar’s rest place; let it burn off, so it will rapidly consume and generate less smell than pushing it against the ashtray.

Hope the paragraphs above had given you an introduction to Smoking Cigars. You can find more information at: http://www.mensmokingcigars.com/

About the Author:

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Men smoking cigars

Smoking Cigars with Howlinblind:Rush Limbaugh agrees with me part 1

Gambling was legalized in Nevada in 1931 but it took until the 1940s that the pointspread came into being. Charles McNeil, a Connecticut bettor and bookmaker, generally is credited with the invention of the pointspread though, like so much in the history of wagering, the facts are murky at best and open to interpretation. At any rate, sports betting still was in its infancy, barely able to take its first baby steps before the federal government applied its heavy handed child rearing tactics.

In 1951, Congress imposed a 10 percent tax on sports wagering, all but stuffing the sports betting baby back in the womb. Then, in 1974, largely through the efforts of Senator Howard Cannon (D-Nev.), the tax was dropped to two percent. Nine years later it was cut again, to .025 percent, effectively launching the now burgeoning era of sports betting.

Indeed, in 1973, the year before the federal tax was dropped from 10 percent to two percent, there were 10 sportsbooks in Nevada and the handle was a paltry $2.8 million.

“There was one black-and-white TV set at the old Churchill Downs book, and if the picture fluttered, a guy would whack it with a broom,” remembered oddsmaker Roxy Roxborough, the seminal figure in the rapid growth of the sports betting industry.

Twenty years later, Nevada boasted over 100 sportsbook outlets with a handle of over $2 billion. The numbers in the Silver State have tailed off a bit since the mid-nineties, Nevada’s loss the result of the proliferation of off-shore and Internet wagering outlets. The overall growth of sports betting remains staggering, with ESPN the Magazine estimating in a 2003 article that $63 billion is wagered annually on sports over the Internet. Other estimates run as high as $200 billion annually.

The explosion of sports betting in the mid-eighties largely was the result of a daily double of good fortune; the lowering of the federal tax and the emergence of Roxborough, who everyone calls “Roxy,” as the face of sports betting.

Roxy got his wagering feet wet betting baseball totals. In fact, he may have been the first player to regularly check local weather reports, chronicling the velocity and direction of the wind, a factor which influenced how many balls left the ballpark and, by extension, game totals.

Lured to the other side of the counter by management at the Club Cal-Neva in Reno, it wasn’t long before Roxy, armed with little more than a few hundred dollars and an idea, founded his then fledgling company, Las Vegas Sports Consultants, on his kitchen table. In time, LVSC’s client list grew to include 90 percent of Nevada’s licensed casino sportsbooks.

With a boost from Vic Salerno, the owner of dozens of wagering outlets under the Leroy’s banner and the man who developed the computer system now de rigueur in the industry, LVSC effectively helped transport sportsbooks from the hand-written betting slip Stone Age into the technologically savvy modern sports betting era.

Roxy’s company not only supplied odds, but information on injuries and weather conditions as well. Later, the service added data that tracked line movements, including unusual wagers, alerting sportsbooks to possible betting anomalies that had the potential to devastate their bottom lines.

Well-dressed and well-spoken, Roxy was equally influential in helping to obliterate the pejorative image of the oddsmaker/bookmaker as some sleazy, poorly educated garish figure in a hound’s tooth jacket with a diamond pinky ring and a cigar. Appearing on television shout-fests such as “Crossfire,” Roxy would vanquish the opposition, which included now NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, with a series of well-argued points.

Roxborough has retired from the business of pluses and minuses and no one knows for sure what the coming years will bring, but if the future of sports betting is only half as imaginative and innovative as its glorious past, neither bet makers nor bet takers have reason for concern.

About the Author:

This article was written by Karol Lucan for http://www.thegreek.com
-The Greek Sportsbook & Casino is host to one of the top online sportsbooks offering sports betting
on NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and all other major sports. The Greek is a must have sports betting and entertainment portal with one of the largest wagering menus available online. Article reproductions must include a link pointing to http://www.thegreek.com

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Sports Betting Has Come a Long Way, Baby, and Roxy Roxborough Gets Much of the Credit

Classic Cigars – Clay Pigeon Shooting – 1990 – UK Advert

Mesothelioma (mez-uh-thee-lee-O-muh) is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by a prolonged exposure to asbestos. Early diagnosis of mesothelioma cancer increases the amount of effective treatments. Unfortunately, due to the way it forms, the cancer may not manifest until anywhere between 20 to 50 years after an asbestos exposure, which often limits the types of treatments available. Asbestos is a kind of fiber present in a lot of the insulating and building substances which are naked to the human eye.

Smoking Cigarettes

Cigarette smoking is an unhealthy habit, which most Americans would like to break, but unfortunately find it hard due to the addicting substances cigarettes are made with. There are various warnings and advertisings encouraging individuals to quit. The nicotine and tar, as well as many other chemicals found in cigarettes, negatively affects the lungs. Cigarette smoking decreases lung function and may even lead to cancer of the lungs, esophagus, tongue, mouth.

Does Smoking Cigarettes Cause Mesothelioma?

Cigarettes do not cause mesothelioma as the cancer is almost always caused by an asbestos exposure. There is a well known-link between asbestos and lung cancer as well as cigarettes and lung cancer. Often if you have develop lung cancer, have smoked, and also had an asbestos exposure, your doctor will probably tell you both were contributing factors. Both smoking cigarettes and mesothelioma decrease the functioning of the lungs. Although smoking cigarettes does not cause mesothelioma it does have a multiplying affect on the risk of getting cancer from asbestos. This effect is similar to the mixing of sleeping pills and alcohol-meaning they are both potentially deadly combinations.

Asbestos in Cigarettes

Mesothelioma is not caused by directly smoking cigarettes unless asbestos was used in the manufacturing of the cigarette. This was reportedly the case with Kent cigarettes. Many people who developed mesothelioma were current smokers or had smoked. This lead researchers to question the correlation. What they found was that in the 1950s the P. Lorillard Company was using deadly crocidolite fibers in its Kent brand of cigarettes. Crocidolite fiber is known to cause cancer more effectively than any other asbestos type. The United States Government declared that if a pack of Kent brand cigarettes were smoked a day between 1952 and 1966 then that individual may be exposed to as much as 131 million crocidolite structures in a single year. The Kent cigarettes used asbestos in the cigarette filters because of its strong resistance to heat. The paper would burn slower making the cigarette last longer, often used in their advertising. Asbestos were also used in loose leaf tobacco in pipe smoking for the same reason.

Why Smoking Cigarettes and Mesothelioma Do Not Mix

Individuals who smoke cigarettes may have a decrease in their lung function. If that individual also has an asbestos-related disease—such as mesothelioma—their lung function is further decreased. Simply put, smoking further complicates and often accelerates the devastating effect of mesothelioma. Smoking cigarettes also may increase the risk of getting mesothelioma from an asbestos exposure.

If you have had an asbestos exposure or have already been diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease such as mesothelioma, this may just be the excuse you’ve been looking for. You’ve known for a while that is was time to quit, this could be that proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

About the Author:

Asbestos.Net is focused on bringing an easy to use and extremely informative website to those searching for information on asbestos and the associated diseases this deadly fiber causes, including lung cancer and mesothelioma. With our informative videos and accurate, oncologist reviewed articles, we trust you will find this to be a true resource.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Asbestos Exposure and Smoking Cigarettes—A Double-Dip

1955 American Tobacco Company commercial

There’s only one way to know if your advertising copy is any good. It’s the same way that your customer knows it-it sells!

We are not all born copywriters, but we are all born customers. As a natural born customer, you can recognize good copy…

Step outside yourself and read the copy fresh: does it reach out and connect with you, does it hold your interest, does it promise something real that you really want, does it convince you?

“It has been said that advertising space without good copy is like the wooden Indian in
front of a cigar store:  It locates the store but it doesn’t say anything.” Thus began an article about advertising copy written in the year the Titanic went down. What else did this sage of sales have to say in 1912?

“Good advertising copy does three things: 
         First:    Attracts attention. 
         Second:  Interests the reader. 
         Third:   Convinces the reader.
 
“The first mission of an advertisement… is to attract attention.  The attention of the reader may be secured by pictures, trade marks, striking headlines… Copy must be terse, clear cut, and to the point. It must consist of short, crisp sentences. Long words should be avoided where possible.  This is a busy world.  Few people have time for long-winded descriptions and explanations.” (Churchill, for one, agrees: “Short words are best, and the old words when short are best of all.”)

Then and now, you know if the copy pulls you in. Even if it’s your product-even if it’s your copy-you know. Now for gaining and keeping interest…

“To make your advertising interesting, you must not only set forth the merits and quality of the article advertised, but you must make clear how it will benefit the purchaser. For example, if you are advertising a moving picture machine for use in the home… Point out the great benefit to be derived from the ownership of such a machine. 

“Tell how it will entertain the whole family and their friends both young and old.  How it will help to keep the boys at home in the evenings… In selling an automobile the important thing to advertise is… the pleasure that the car affords; the joy and healthfulness of riding through the country… how it makes it convenient to call on distant friends, etc. etc.

“To tell what the article advertised will do for the purchaser in the way of entertainment, education, comfort, convenience, etc., is really of more importance than the thing itself.”

These words may have been written over 100 years ago but it’s hard to express it any better today, which is why you’re reading them here.

Next, the bottom line-convincing the reader. That bottom line is right where it has been all along, because it is not drawn in the sand of fashion; it has nothing (and everything) to do with hemlines and bumpers. The bottom line is drawn in the unchanging human heart.

“A salesman must first sell to himself before he can sell it to others… The advertisement that brings the best results is the one that is written by the man who honestly believes in the goods that he is selling.”

Does that conviction come through? You’ll know when it does, because it’s more contagious than influenza. Ted Nicholas, “The Guru of Direct Mail Marketing,” is as savvy today as the wise man of 1912. “Certain words produce amazing results, as if by magic. All you desire in life, including everlasting wealth, can be yours depending on the words with which you express yourself.  As with all the great truths, once known, they seem so simple.”

There’s an old saying, “Be your own best customer.” That’s all the more true when it comes to judging your advertising.

About the Author:

Robert Greenshields is a marketing success coach who helps business owners and professionals who are frustrated that they’re working too many hours for too little reward. Sign up for his free tips on earning more and working less at
MindPower Marketing

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Timeless Marketing Truth: How Do You Know Your Advertising Copywriting Is Good?

Manny Iriarte / Cigar Advertising

About the county

Italy, the birthplace of pasta and pizza provides a wide range of choices for artwork lovers to experience. A temperate climate exists here with very hot summers and not so cold winters. The weather is the best in spring and autumn with pleasant temperatures and scenic views. At that time of the year, the place isn’t crowded much and things can be enjoyed in leisure. Incase of emergency call 112. For fire call 115 and for ambulance call 118.

Culture

Italian is widely spoken and is the official language. English isn’t very familiar to the locals. Family ties are of utmost importance here and hence social courtesies mean a lot to the locals. There is a great impact of the Roman Catholic Church on the culture here. There is a high content of chlorine in tap waters, so bottled water is recommended for staying fit during the trip. Since Italian is spoken on a wide scale, it is highly recommended to learn few common Italian phrases which can be of great use. Social gatherings call for formal wear, but one can dress in casuals otherwise. At some religious places, sleeveless shirt and shorts are frowned upon. So they are better avoided. Purses and wallets should be well guarded and in case of any theft, police should be informed about the incident.

Site Seeing

The first thing to check out is the leaning tower of Pisa, where Olympics originated. At places like museums and art galleries, photography, especially flash photography is restricted. Check out the ticket counter for more information. Italy should be majorly discovered on foot for a thorough viewing of all the beautiful buildings and monuments. Coaches and trains are a good option to get to a tourist spot.

Shopping

Shops here are open from 9am to 8pm, closed for lunch. Quality of goods is great although the prices are very less. Items like crystals, lacework, leather good, and jewelry can be bought at the stores. Remember to hold on to the receipt. Tipping of 10% is customary along with the service tax levied on the bill. Italy is famous for top designers of the world, so do buy clothes and accessories to update your wardrobe. Cruises have formal gatherings in the evening, so ensure to buy a cocktail dress or some formal wear, though casuals can be worn at other times.

Electricity

The voltage used is 220 volts and 50 Hz frequency.

Getting there

Alitalia is the national airline of Italy. Many other flights connect to Italy from USA, Canada and Australia and there is big competition to attract passengers giving a wide range of offers to travelers. Rome airport is located 26 km away from the city and it takes 45 minutes to get there from the airport. Trains connect directly to Termini Station from where one can take taxi to get to their destination. Duty free shops, bank, car hire and restaurants are the other services provided at this airport. Milan has another famous airport here, which is at a distance of 45km away from the city.

Brindisi, Ancona, Naples and Venice are the major seaports of Italy. Italian State Railways connects many European cities. But, Eurostar provides the fastest train service.

If choosing to drive, don’t forget to carry international driving license and international insurance certificate. Roads connect Italy to France, Austria and Switzerland. Many coach services are provided from the neighboring countries.

Duty Free Items

1. 200 cigarettes or 50 cigars or 100 cigarillos or 250g of tobacco
2. 2liter of wine and 1liter of spirits (over 22 per cent) or 2liter of fortified or sparkling wine
3. 50g of perfume and 250ml of eau de toilette; 500g of coffee or 200g of coffee extract (if over 15 years of age)
4. 100g of tea or 40g of tea extract
5. Gifts not exceeding €89.96 (if entering from an EU country), €175 (if entering from a non-EU country).

About the Author:

Nicholas Tan has been involved in Article Writing, providing Free Articles, Internet Marketing, SEO, Adwords, & Adsense for more than 5 years and designs and develops websites. Submit your free articles and get your articles noticed! Get your Free Articles here! Submit Articles! We provide free articles and information. Check us out at Free Articles!

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Travel Tips To European Countries: Italy

Emirates Tower (Cigar Lounge)

The cigar ratings supplied by publications like Cigar Magazine and Cigar Aficionado form an important part of the modern cigar industry. For cigar smokers, these ratings provide guidance in a crowded market.

As pressed-for-time moviegoers may look to Roger Ebert for guidance at the multiplex, smokers use the magazines’ ratings to cut down on their in-store browsing time. For cigar makers, meanwhile, the ratings can be the touch of life – or the kiss of death. When Cigar Aficionado gave a high rating to a Fuente Spanish Lonsdale cigar, the magazine’s imprimatur helped to cause a run on the brand, rendering it scarce and highly sought-after and increasing the profile of Fuente’s cigars in general. Every cigar maker covets a 90-or-higher rating from these influential judges.

But where do these numbers actually come from? For staffers at Cigar Aficionado, the reviewing process starts at the store. While music and book reviewers are often given free “review copies” of CDs or books (a practice that makes things convenient for the reviewer, but also diminishes his or her independence), Cigar Aficionado tries to buy cigars at close to retail prices.

This leads to big cigar bills for the magazine – but it also means the cigars they review are as much like the ones you buy at the store as is possible. (Unlike CDs or books, of course, every cigar is slightly different in composition and taste.) Sometimes, if a cigar is hard to find in stores, the magazine will request “review cigars”; ditto for cases when the magazine is trying to preview a cigar before it hits stores.

The members of the panel – all of them longstanding magazine staffers – are told nothing about the identity, price range, source, or country of origin of the cigar. A “tasting coordinator” – not a member of the panel – removes the cigar’s band so that it cannot be identified by the panel’s members.

The blank, anonymous cigar is then assigned a number so that its identity can be retrieved after it’s rated. The members of the tasting panel then retire, separately, to their offices to smoke the cigars without consulting each other. Each member of the panel assigns the cigar a certain number of points, based on its performance in any of four categories.

First of all, cigars are rated by APPEARANCE and CONSTRUCTION. Is the cigar visually pleasing? Is the wrapper smooth, or wadded-looking? Is it moist to the touch or dry? Does it stay firm? Is it veiny or soggy? After all, a great-tasting cigar that wilts the minute you take it out of the box, or looks too unappetizing to be placed in someone’s mouth, does smokers no good. Cigars can win up to 15 points in this category for being well-made and attractive.

Secondly, of course, the cigar is rated on its FLAVOR – a category that carries with it 25 of the possible 100 points. Who needs a good-looking but brackish cigar? Cigars should not taste bitter or leave a nasty aftertaste. Both taste and aftertaste should be smooth but full, complicated, and rich.

A maximum of 25 points can be won for various qualities ranged together under the general heading of SMOKING CHARACTERISTICS. How does it burn? Is it hard to light? Does it burn one-sidedly? Will the smoke burn your mouth, or feel cool and comfortable as it should? How hard do you have to pull to get a mouthful? All these questions and more are considered.

Finally, the tasters each give a score (up to 35 points) for OVERALL IMPRESSION. (Flavor counts most here.) Is the cigar good, bad – or great? And the question utmost in any dedicated smoker’s mind – is it worth the money? The panel’s various scores in each category are averaged and a final score is the result.

Ratings, of course, are always subjective, depending on individuals’ taste – even if those individuals have well-developed, highly educated tastes. Your mileage may vary. For any smoker, the ultimate authority should always be your own tastebuds!

About the Author:

CigarFox
provides you the opportunity to build your own sampler of the finest cigars that include cigar brands like Montecristo, Romeo & Julieta, H Upmann, Macanudo, Cohiba, Gurkha and many more. Choose from more than 1000 different brands! Other cigar products include cigar humidors, cigar boxes, and cigar accessories like Zippo Lighters.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – How Do Cigars Get Rated?

CALDER RACE COURSE, 2007-11-10, Race 3

In the past fifteen years, the premium-cigar industry found itself in rebound. After decades of competition from cigarettes, the aging of its customer base, and overall consumer trends indicating a decline in smoking in general (we’ll return to this in a moment), many observers figured cigars were done for. Then came 1992. The fourth quarter of that year showed some of the first industry growth in years, and this trend metastasized in coming years. By 1996, the industry was seeing 36 percent first-quarter growth.

But cigars returned at an ironic time. High-profile class-action suits, controversy over Joe Camel, and decreasing general consumer interest in smoking, among other things, led to an increase in smoking bans in public buildings, offices, and, eventually, whole cities. Airports helped lead the trend; among the major travel hubs where you’re no longer welcome to light up are Los Angeles’ LAX and Dallas-Fort Worth.

All of which raises a question – if you’re a smoker going on vacation, what are your options?

Thankfully, the web site SmokingSection has, aggregating information sent in by smoking readers, listed and ranked over fifty major airports by their friendliness to smokers. Their rankings, like those of your high-school English teacher, run from A to E: A for airports where you can smoke by the waiting gate; E for airports where you not only can’t smoke indoors, but the nearest smoker-friendly outside areas require a small trip in themselves (and may be unacceptably far from takeoff gates).

So where should you travel if you want to smoke, not only when you reach your destination but on the way there? Well, the answer seems to be: Texas. The Lone Star State offers the only A-ranked airport out of the dozens surveyed. That’s Dallas Love Field, a smallish airport that receives only flights from major area transport provider Southwest Airlines. Frequently-flying cigar smokers who live in that wildcatter’s capital should feel lucky.

Texas offers us a B airport as well – these are the places where you can’t smoke near the gates, but that do offer smoker-friendly bars, restaurants, and/or lounges nearby. That would be at Lubbock – the same city from which Buddy Holly hailed. (But don’t take that as a bad omen.) Other southern and southwestern states are well-represented among the B airports, which makes sense, given the close links between many of these states and the history of the tobacco industry. Restaurants at New Mexico’s Albuquerque Airport, as well as at airports in Charlotte, North Carolina; Charleston, West Virginia; Phoenix, Arizona; Tucson, Arizona; Norfolk, Virginia; and – appropriately enough – Richmond, Virginia, that famous tobacco town. (Where would American smoking be without Virginia?)

Orange County, California, offers an airport named for John Wayne, and appropriately the tobacco-loving Duke’s namesake airport also offers B-class accommodations. So do the major regional airports in Tampa, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston, and New York City (both JFK and LaGuardia), in several large cities in Ohio (Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and Dayton), in Fairbanks, Alaska; Moline, Illinois; and Ontario, Canada. Visitors to our nation’s capitol can also light up at a few of Washington, DC’s airport bars, though these are apparently hard to find.

It’s a good thing that the weather in Texas and California is generally fairly clement, because some major airports in both of these states ban all indoor smoking – but outdoor smoking areas are available at a conveniently close distance. The aforementioned Dallas-Fort Worth and LAX both disallow indoor smoking, which accounts for their C rating, but they do invite smoking customers to step outside. The Worcester, Massachusetts airport has a similar arrangement. (Enjoy that brisk Massachusetts air.) These are the C-class airports.

After that it gets dicier. Quite a few major American airports seem to fall into the D or E classes, with smoking accommodations within the airport that require a bit of a hike, or (in the case of the E-class airports) nothing at all but outside areas located far from gates. Many D airports offer those ubiquitous glass lounges where smokers are invited to light up and take a load off; these include Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Las Vegas (McCarran), and Atlanta (Hartfield). Happy hunting!

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Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – How To Smoke On The Road: Finding A Smoker-Friendly Airport

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