CigarFox

Since the nineteenth century, Key West has comprised one on the historic hubs of cigar tradition. Erstwhile boasting more cigar factories per capita than anywhere else on the globe, Key West had always had a major part in the cigar industry. Shortly after the U.S. Civil War , this town turned into a Mecca for Cuban citizens taking flight from their nation’s revolution against Spain. By the late 1870’s there were over 100 factories making cigars.

Cuban influence in Key West commenced on a massive scale in 1868 when the first war against Spanish authority created a mass exodus. When Cubans confronted forced conscription into the Spanish army to battle against their countrymen, thousands of skilled cigar craftsmen and their families fled their native land.

On a single September day in 1869, over 2,000 Cubans lined the wharves of the Havana to escape their motherland. While some left for New York City or New Orleans, the majority got on steamships for the 12-hour trip to a destination ninety miles northward, a place Cubans called Cayo Hueso, today’s Key West.

The civil war against Spain died by 1878, nonetheless it created social turbulence in Key West as Cuban emigrants kept on arriving intermittently for decades, literally revolutionizing Key West’s social fabric and economy.

Prior to 1868, Key West had fewer than 500 occupants, notable chiefly for taking riches from shipwrecks, but a fresh form of riches was about to come when Cuban émigrés, with talented cigar making skills, descended in the thousands in the matter of a year or two.

At the apex of the industry, Key West constituted the biggest cigar-producing town in the nation. It bragged of fifty-seven major manufacturers of cigars–many of whom resettled from Havana–and each hired between five and five hundred workers. In 1883 exclusively, 42 million hand-rolled cigars were made.

To house their cigar laborers, factory owners frequently constructed little cottages–bungalow-style structures principally of frame construction–and rented them out for low sums. To assure an ample supply of laborers, these homes were adjacent to manufacturing plants. These structures still comprise the biggest category of frame vernacular (simple structures, made of wood with few or no ornamental details) in Key West proper.

They were built from termite-proof Dade County pine with high ceilings for ventilation. They were elevated off the ground, allowing air to flow under the houses where roosters and hens lived and were part of the family, raised for eggs or meat or were trained for cock fights.

Although little by today’s criteria, these cottages were far better than living circumstances in Havana they were surely far superior to condemnable tenement houses in Northern cities. Many times a cigar artisan would change jobs to another factory simply to have a newer house to live in. These homes were offered for inexpensive rent or with the option to purchase at a reasonable price to maintain a stable work force.

With good homes, high wages and the freedom to support the revolution, the cigar artisans lived well. Their smart unions secured significant strength, and while many labor union workers in the North were cowered in deplorable tenement lodgings, Key West cigarworkers were basking in paradise. Even their multiple strikes, which eventually helped bring about the decline of the cigar industry, reflected the luxuriousness of their situation. In the strike of 1918, work stopped, as was common, until the union demands were filled. The requests: no brooming before 6 a.m., ice in the drinking water, and coal, not wood, as fuel for wintertime heating.

The cigar cottages have braved the test of time. Most of these Key West buildings are tiny, only 300 or 400 square feet. They often have porches, little yards with picket fences and hardly any grass to mow. The cottages were created from Dade County pine by ship’s carpenters, who built with a tongue-and-groove technique which endures.

Property assessments are high, crime is low and the clime is near flawless. The cottages are adequate for one or two friendly people to dwell in–when you can be outdoors 350 days of the year. Key West has turned into such a desirable eden for artists, the wealthy and retirees that these rustic cottages now cost at the least $125,000–if you can find one.

About the Author:

For the best cigars, more tips and information on cigars including Cigar Smoking Etiquette visit http://cigars.gogoodpages.com

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Cottages and Cigars

Making a Cigar

Jeremy Fisher – Cigarette – The Ark, Ann Arbor

What can I use for ID in Australia/New Zealand…?

I’ll be visiting both countries in a few months and I’m wondering what I can use for ID to buy cigarettes/alcohol. I don’t really want to carry my passport around, and I doubt British ID cards would be accepted there. So what can I use? Any ideas.

Yes, passports are too big to fit in the pocket and too valuable to lose !

Any photo ID will do – Driver license, 18+ card, student ID card etc… doenst matter what country it is from – as long as it’s a photo and shows your Date of birth.

British Birds Collectables Cigarette Cards 1909 Tawny Owl Pheasant Bittern Redwing Quail Nuthatch

On a warm, sunny day, nothing tastes better than a piece of rich chocolate melting in the mouth. Of course, even on a cold day, there’s nothing more comforting and heart warming that your favorite bar of chocolate. Chocolates are for every season and every age. They are universal favorites, which make them a wonderful gift idea. Here at last is a gift that you just cannot go wrong with!

In the past, people had limited choices when gifting chocolates. At the time, the ultimate gifting idea was to buy the best liquorice chocolate or Swiss chocolates. Today, all that has changed. Personalized chocolate gifts are the flavor of the season. So, if you want to impress a friend, connect with a client or please your sweetheart, you can simply send them a box full of custom shaped chocolates. They’ll love you for the thought, the creativity and the gift.

These days, even the corporate world has taken to ordering custom shaped chocolates for their clientele. The reasons are obvious. Customers love receiving high quality chocolates. So, companies can easily use these chocolates as a great business promotional tool. Fortunately, chocolate shapes can be as varied as you want them to be. For example, you can have chocolates in the shapes of CDs or books. You can even emboss your company’s logo on these chocolates and include a small personalized message. Unlike business cards and letters that get shoved into the pocket or thrown into the dustbin, personalized chocolates stand a very good chance of conveying the message. Most receivers would take the effort to read the message or look at the logo before they pop the chocolate into their mouths!

Custom shaped chocolates come in a wide variety of concepts and shapes. Companies that manufacture these chocolates generally have a large number of molds that enable them to produce just about any chocolate shape that you want. One of the finest examples is chocolate coins. Custom chocolate coins are easy to make. So they are inexpensive. But they are powerful marketing tools because the coin can easily encapsulate a logo and a message. That is why personalized chocolate coins are quite popular with event planners and companies.

Whether you want to promote a company, an idea or an emotion, custom shaped chocolates are a great way of getting the message across. There is a growing demand for these favors as is evident in the large number of manufacturers catering to the needs of this niche. Most chocolate shapes are achieved using fine tools and molds. These chocolates taste good too since they are gourmet chocolate of the highest quality. You can order the chocolates in bulk for any special event or occasion, whether it’s a wedding, birthday or a promo event. Whether it is a small celebration or a big event, you will be able to get the chocolate shape of your choice if you order sufficiently early.

Ordering custom shaped chocolates is easy. Just go online and select a reputed company. Fill out the form and send your order. Some companies even allow you to design your own shape. That way, you can take customization to the highest level and make your chocolate favor a true blue ambassador of your thoughts and feelings.

About the Author:

Chocolate Favor World has the widest range of custom shaped chocolate.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Conquer the world with custom shaped chocolates

Cigars

Copyright (c) 2008 Stephen Malan

Buying cigars can be like buying fine wine….it can get expensive! Don’t shortchange yourself or your cigars buy storing them in a substandard cigar humidor. This article will discuss the major components of a quality cigar humidor.

Below is a short list of the more important items to consider when selecting a cigar humidor:

1. Seal: The most important aspect of a humidor is its ability to hold humidity. The seal will do that. When evaluating a cigar humidor, drop the lid from approximately 2-3 inches to see how it closes. If it lands on a cushion of air, the seal is fine. If it “clangs” when the lid is dropped, walk away because that isn’t a quality humidor….in fact, “it’s just a box”. Look to see what hinges are used to close the lid. Quality cigar humidors will have hidden quadrant hinges and/or piano hinges, which provide the best seal possible.

2. Exterior Construction: The sidewalls and bottom of the humidor should be at a minimum, ½” thick. Thicker than average sidewalls will create a more stable humidor interior with less fluctuations in temperature or humidity. Large temperature and humidity fluctuations will ruin your cigars. Check to see if the outside bottom of the humidor is lined with felt to prevent scratching of the furniture that you place your humidor on.

3. Interior Construction: It is extremely important that your humidor be lined in Kiln-Dried Spanish Cedar. This is the industry standard when it comes to quality made humidors. Kiln-Dried Spanish Cedar provides for less aromatic aromas than other woods which makes it the more desirable choice when selecting a cigar humidor. “You don’t want overly aromatic woods in your humidor as it may impart an unwanted flavor to your cigars”. Additionally, Spanish cedar is less prone to warping which is imperative when used in a high humidity application such as a cigar humidor. Should the interior of your humidor warp, the seal on the humidor will be broken and your cigars rendered useless. Having the interior Kiln-Dried gets rid of all the natural moisture that all woods contain. If the humidor you’re looking at has trays, make sure that they are ventilated to assure the humidity in your humidor can circulate to all cigars in the humidor.

4. Style: Are you interested in impressing your poker playing buddies or will a less fancy cigar humidor do? Matte finish or a multiple layer high gloss finish? One for the golf bag? There are so many styles to choose from it can be pretty confusing. Just make sure the humidor fits your personal style.

5. Quality: Don’t let price alone influence your decision as to what is a quality cigar humidor. There are many humidors on the market today that retail for less than $100 that will keep your cigars perfectly fresh for a long time. Look at all the variables discussed in steps 1-4 and you should have an easier time finding a quality humidor.

Try to avoid mixing mild and strong cigar in a single humidor…especially if they come without cellophane wrappers. They will marry their aromas and you will not have the cigars you thought you had. We always advise multiple cigar humidors if they have premium cigars without cellophane wrappers. Many premium cigars, such as La Gloria Cubana Serie line, have no cellophane on their cigars and these should not come in contact with other un-cellophaned cigars in your humidor.

Take your time…If you follow the 5 steps mentioned above, you will have a much easier time in finding the best cigar humidor for you.

About the Author:

Stephen Malan is the Managing Partner of HumidorVault.com, the internet’s leading retailer of cigar humidors and cigar humidor accessories.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – What to Look for in a Quality Cigar Humidor!

The best 25 Pink Floyd songs

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 learned 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.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Original Delta Blues Legend on his Broomstick cigar box guitar

Those who know their cigars well also, by that same token, know Brazil-albeit as a source of great tobacco rather than as a top cigar-producing nation. Brazilian tobacco, mainly produced in the country’s temperate northeastern and southern regions, turns up in such world-class cigars as Carlos Torano’s Toro, but the country’s cigar producers themselves haven’t always gotten the same respect. But that may be about to change. After all, Brazilian cigars-including the Angelina, Dannemann and Dannemann, Le Cigar, Don Pepe, Dom Porfirio, and Dona Flor (named for Jorge Amado’s classic novel Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands)-have already convinced many US cigar aficionados that this country’s cigars are as good as its tobacco.

But Brazil’s own rich history-and its sure-to-be-turbulent future-make it an important place for cigar smokers to understand. How has one of the world’s important tobacco-producing nations come to be the home of one of the strongest anti-smoking movements in the Western Hemisphere? And will these two opposing tendencies continue, uneasily, to coexist? Only a prophet could say-but perhaps a brief backgrounder on this Latin American nation can provide some helpful context.

The first thing to know about Brazil is that it’s big-in resources, landmass, and people. It’s the fifth-largest country in the world, and the fifth most populous. Among the world’s pro forma democracies, it ranks fourth in population size, and it controls a powerful economy, ranking ninth in the world in purchasing power. It’s a diverse country, too, with one hundred-eighty-eight living languages, and, interestingly enough, the world’s largest confirmed reserve of uncontacted peoples-small pre-industrial tribes that, for all practical purposes, have stayed sealed off from the rest of the world. In this single nation, then, an ultramodern economy exists side-by-side with some of the world’s last refuges of pre-industrial life, and gleaming cities (Sao Paulo and Brasilia) share the same boundary with huge swaths of rainforest.

What kind of culture does such a diverse country produce? Well-a similar situation produced artistic riches for the United States, and things are hardly any different for Brazil. Consider tropicalismo, one of the country’s major artistic exports. This musical movement, spearheaded by the legendary band Os Mutantes and the singer-songwriters Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and manic genius Tom Ze among others, fuses all the diverse musics of this country (along with a hefty dose of Bob Dylan, Velvet Underground and jazz) to create some of the best-regarded music of the 1970s. Whatever political and logistical headaches it may pose, such bursting-at-the-seams diversity is good fortune for any artist lucky enough to benefit from it.

Like many Latin American countries (and like the US), Brazil was originally the colony of an ambitious European nation-in this case, Portugal. Led by its Portuguese-born regent, Pedro I, the country won its independence in 1822. What followed was a long power struggle between Pedro (eventually replaced by his son Pedro II), various rebelling factions of the population, and the country’s economically dominant classes, who found Pedro variously useful and irksome, depending on the situation. Following the deposition of Pedro II in 1889, the country became a republic; during the twentieth century, though, Brazil fell frequently to military coups, some of them (most infamously in 1964) made possible by covert US assistance. Its current relative freedom has lasted only since 1985.

Made up of twenty-six states and a federal district (think Washington, D.C.), the country’s exports include (among others) coffee, iron ore, ethanol, textiles, shoes, and cars. With a major modernizing initiative underway-in 2007, the country’s government, under President Luis Ignacio DaSilva, dedicated three hundred billion dollars to renovating power plants, roads and ports-Brazil clearly intends to keep those exports booming. Including tobacco? Well-that’s dicier. Brazil is incredibly rich in natural resources, but that rainforest shrinks every day. The resulting controversy raises issues for tobacco farmers: only a sustainable ecology will ensure that Brazil continues to yield those fine tobacco crops, and yet some sustainability measures may threaten farmers’ short-term profits (small farmers, many of them, and small profits). It’s a difficult balance.

More threatening, perhaps, for those of us who value Brazil’s contribution to cigar culture, is the strength of its anti-smoking movement. The country has some of the toughest anti-smoking laws in the world, funnels large amounts of money into anti-tobacco campaigns, and forbids tobacco-products advertising in any form. Still, the total number of smokers grew slightly during the past decade. Some business experts forecast that the country’s tobacco industry will have to get used to a shrinking overall population of smokers, and concentrate instead on increasing brand value, making better and safer products. Cigars, designed to be used in moderation and savored, may well flourish in this environment. At any rate, the reported use of genetically-modified tobacco crops in the country’s southern region suggests that tobacco-related controversies will continue in Brazil.

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, Partagas, Gurkha and many more. Choose from more than 1200 different cigars! Other cigar products include cigar humidors, cigar boxes, and cigar accessories like Zippo Lighters.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Cigars in Brazil: An Uncertain Future?

Paw Paws Dobro Cigar box Guitar