‘Cigars at Union Station in Washington, DC’
courtesy of ‘dc-hulls’
The owners of Landini Brothers Restaurant on King Street in Alexandria are opening a new, private cigar lounge opening in Alexandria this spring. Landini Brothers had previously been cigar-friendly until the Virginia smoking ban. It will include all of what you’d expect from a private cigar club with a $5000 membership fee- private humidor lockers, special house cigar blend, state-of-the-art ventilation system, etc. as well as more contemporary features like free WiFi. But there’s also the decidedly retrograde “all female waitstaff” on the list of amenities. Way to embrace the stereotype, guys.
Tiffany Baxendell Bridge is an Internet enthusiast and an incurable smartass. When not heckling the neighborhood political scene on Twitter, she can be found goofing off with her ukulele, Bollywood dancing, or obsessing about cult TV. She is That Woman With the Baby In the Bar.
Tiffany lives in Brookland with her husband Tom, son Charlie, and two high-maintenance cats. Read why Tiffany loves DC.
I’ll have that lung cancer with a side order of emphesyma to go, please.
It’s too bad it is going to be members-only. The DC area can you use another cigar lounge besides Shelly’s Back Room.
Or I could just sit on my back porch and smoke for free…
I have no real problem with cigar-smoking and used to occasionally indulge myself, but the “all female waitstaff” thing is beyond hostile to women who might otherwise want to pony up the $5000 to join. Great marketing, bros – you just lost a big segment of your market.
Must be a douchebag or wear a crappy man scarf to join, I am sure.
It seemed to me, Brittany, that the reason such a choice is economically feasible is that the proportion of female cigar enthusiasts (enthusiasts to the point where they’d pay that kind of money to be a member of such a club) is so vanishingly small that it made more sense to be the rich guy’s Hooters.
But perhaps I am staggeringly underestimating the proportion of wealthy female cigar enthusiasts?
My brief google turned up no reliable-looking current stats, so I have no idea how many women smoke cigars. Anecdotally, back in college when cigars were briefly “in,” there were generally equal numbers of boys and girls having a Scotch and trying to seem “grown up” and “sophisticated”. Do the kids even do that anymore? That said, I have never been in a Hooters, so maybe plenty of women do go there also?
I think there’s a non-trivial portion of Hooters’ clientele that are indeed women, but I think that if Hooters decided to go upscale and start charging $5000 for the privilege of eating their wings and looking at their waitstaff, I expect that number of women who would do so would immediately drop off.
Which is NOT to say that women wouldn’t spend $5000 for private club membership, only that they wouldn’t do it to join a club that is so obviously not intended to cater to them, just as I expect most men would not pay $5000 for the privilege of joining a club not geared for THEM. For 5k, you expect some accommodation, no?
Oh, indeed I do…
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Where establishments in Northen Virgina are cigar friendly–specifically Alexandria and Arlington?