E-Mail This Article to a Friend Up in smoke Where to go when you want to light up BY RUTH TOBIAS
	Strike a match at ... • Casbah Lounge at Tangierino, 83 Main Street, Charlestown, (617) 242-6009; www.tangierino.com. • Churchill’s Lounge, 40 North Street, Boston, (617) 227-0750. • Cigar Masters, 745 Boylston Street, Boston, (617) 266-4400; www.cigarmasters.com/. • Stanza dei Sigari, 290 Hanover Street, Boston, (617) 227-0295; www.stanzadeisigari.com. — RT

Fie, fie. You are accursed, wretched, and malodorous to boot. Nobody likes you, everybody hates you. Thou art a tobacco fiend, and we damn thee publicly.

Privately, of course, we wouldn’t have you any other way. After all, though your lungs be ever so much blacker, we see your money’s every bit as green as ours. And we want to ensure you’ve got somewhere to spend it, a place to go and mix with your own kind. Hence the smoking lounge. Even puritanical Boston possesses a few, so plot the following on your map to puffing pleasure.

As it is, even militants would be hard-put to refute the appeal of lighting up at Tangierino’s Casbah Lounge, a setting so suave you’d have to hack constant phlegm to lack sex appeal there. The room is wall-to-ceiling ruby-red, strewn with inlaid-wood octagonal tables beside plush red love seats and wrought-iron thrones strewn with gem-hued pillows. Lanterns and wall sconces enhance rather than muffle the candlelight. From here, your descent into decadence is only moments away, a mere matter of perusing the menu item by wicked item. It includes a small selection of both European cigarettes ($7–$8 per box) and cigars ranging from $9.50 to $23 each. But the real draw is the shisha service. For $25 you can expect a freshly cleaned and readied hookah complete with plastic tips to accommodate each person in your party, along with the shisha, or flavored tobacco, of your choice: rose, jasmine, apricot, strawberry, grape, or apple. If you’ve never tried it, you’ll find the experience relatively mellow, not at all like the havoc wreaked by your first cigarette. Need a sip to go with that smoke? Beyond beer, wine, and the so-called Sultan’s Sangria ($8 per glass, $22 or $36 per pitcher), there are sumptuous concoctions like the Salty Cur ($9), actually tangy-sweet with soju (a sort of rice wine), Moscato d’Asti, and red-grapefruit juice; and the cutely named Bellyni ($9), a heady blend of Champagne and guava juice that may prompt you to bare your midriff in a frenzy of Salome-style dance, in turn triggering a coughing fit. On second thought, best stay seated.

Worlds away, in the realm of old fogies with fat stogies, is Cigar Masters. Okay, to be fair, not all the patrons of this clubby establishment are old; sprinkled among the salt-and-pepper suits are the occasional baseball-capped twentysomethings, and if you hang out long enough, you might even catch a glimpse of (gasp) a skirt. But all are, or at least strive to be, old-school. Which isn’t a bad thing; indeed, a seasoned charm clings like, well, smoke to the contours of both barroom and back room, with their expanses of wood and leather. After five, every buttery winged-back armchair, every brass-studded sofa, and every barstool is occupied by gents in repose, talking shop, sports, and, of course, cigars. Aficionados browse through the walk-in humidor, at least half as large as the rooms themselves, to choose from hundreds of cigars. The inventory varies, but currently includes everything from a $5.75 Honduran Punch Rothschild to a $22 Dominican, the Partagas Limited Reserve Royale. Because the recently passed smoking laws dictate that 60 percent or more of a cigar bar’s revenue must come from tobacco sales, many such businesses are downgrading their alcohol licenses to beer and wine only, on the grounds that an abundance of cigar-friendly spirits will tip bar balances in the wrong direction. Even so, the menu still sports plenty of vintage port, a classic complement; we suggest you get some while the gettin’s good.

Meanwhile, over at Stanza dei Sigari, in the North End, no one seems too concerned about the law. No, we’re not implying anything Sicilian — although the subterranean joint does boast a shady past, having operated as a speakeasy during Prohibition, and the characters who frequent it do emit a sort of Ferragamo-and-Rolex glow. Rather, the likely logic behind the full bar is that a) since the Stanza is part of Caffè Vittoria, a hard-liquor license literally comes with the territory anyway, and b) given the relative costliness of the cigars (ranging from $10 to $35) and the cheapness of the booze, compliance with the 60/40 law remains a snap. A charming menu provides notes on each cigar, down to the names of celebrities who have smoked it, such as the "medium-bodied, earthy, and spicy" Cohiba Churchill ($24), a favorite of "General George Patton and, on occasion, Whoopi Goldberg." The menu further suggests appropriate pairings from a plethora of cognacs, single-malt Scotches, small-batch bourbons, aged rums, premium tequilas, aperitivos, digestivos including grappa, and more. A $9 martini list includes the Cuban Torpedo (combining Drambuie, Chivas Regal, and apricot brandy) and the Vendetta (made of Absolut Mandarin, Campari, and orange juice). Finally, the new hookah service provides an hour’s worth of exotic smoking enjoyment for $20; for a bit extra, the bartender will spike the filtering water with your choice of intoxicant. All this in a setting that’s as cool as can be, with rock walls and low ceilings, a gated cigar vault and a photo gallery of prominent puffers (from Freud to JFK, Groucho to James Gandolfini), shelves lined with antique pipes and cutters and racy old advertisements, and odds and ends like a barber’s chair and a faux-elephant’s-foot stool. Stanza dei Sigari is the funkiest of throwbacks, a shrine to decadent clutter.

If the aforementioned places exude copious character, the teal-and-burgundy interior of Churchill’s Lounge is purely functional. And that’s just as well, since Churchill’s — adjoining the Millennium Boston Hotel at the corner of North and Blackstone Streets — sits on a prime piece of people-watching real estate. You don’t need much more than a comfy chair and a clean ashtray when you’ve got Haymarket’s hagglers and Faneuil’s freaks and geeks going to and fro past the plate-glass windows to keep you occupied. Well, that and the wad of tobacco for which you came. Churchill’s, which belongs to David P. Ehrlich Co. — at 138, one of the nation’s oldest tobacconists — has plenty to offer. In the far corner, labels on a dozen or so pipe tobaccos ($2–$3/oz.) read more like ice-cream flavors: cocoa, amaretto, honey. In the nearby humidor, says owner Barry Macdonald, "we carry a lot of popular cigars"; for instance, "we’re one of the only Davidoff dealers in Boston. You have to be an appointed merchant to sell Davidoff." The brand goes for $12 to $22 "a stick," but most of Ehrlich’s premium cigars are in the $6-to-$9 range. There’s also a small selection of exported cigarettes and rolling tobaccos. The bar, meanwhile, regularly "switches up" a limited variety of California wines, ports, and beers on tap (Macdonald suggests Murphy’s Irish Stout, which as a "full, rich winter beer goes great with a cigar"), as well as about 10 bottled brands. All told, there’s plenty to generate a good solid buzz to go with the hustle-bustle view.

Ruth Tobias can be reached at ruthtobias@earthlink.net.