Well the Big Smoke has come to a close, and what a night it was. Not having ever gone to one of these, I have to say that I was amazed at the scale of this event. I have never been to the Vegas one, so I don't really have anything to compare it to, but it was a good time. Last night Jim (laxjb1) and myself walked around in amazement. All said and done, we walked away with 42 sticks, smoked a bunch there, and drank untill they kicked us out. I apologize if this post is long but I have a few pictures and lots to say.
First, we can start off with a little eye candy...Not us, but the Flavourettes...myself being on the right, and Jim being in the middle...how he got himself there I don't know but I was jealous.
Now here's the one that you really want to see.....
CAO had a massive booth, taking up almost the whole back of one of the aisles with Frank Vincent from the Sopranos taking pictures and signing autographs, the flavourettes taking pictures and some behind the shades dancing. I have to say their marketing department is outstanding....when you got to the booth they gave you your cigar and said that if you smoked it down to the band, they would give you another one before you left. Everyone in the place was smoking the CAO Soprano. (what I didn't think of was grabbing a few bands and scoring that CAO Hat deal.....)
While we were there we met Michael Cusano, from......well Cusano. With him we talked about the C10 which he convinced me to smoke immediately, and he also revealed that we should be on the lookout for some new things in the near future....namly the Cuvée Grand. From what I hear Alex should be recieving these shortly...If I remember correctly, they're supposed to be more full bodied than the C10...amazing. While we were there we managed to score 2 of the Paired Maduro, and 2 of the C10, one of which we smoked there. Excellent smoke.
After wandering around a little longer, we headed to the Oliva booth where we met Bulz(between Jim & I), and a couple other great fellas. We also learned of a Cigar Lounge, fumé, in Montrlair, NJ that I will be checking out int he near future. Here we scored 2 of the Serie O and a Master Blend 3.
Here's a look at the Ashton Booth
The punch booth was pretty cool, I got to be in my own Cigar ad.
We also got to take a look at the Cigar in a Bottle. I didn't take a picture of the display they had there because there was just too many people there to get a good one, but here's the flyer that I picked up
The amount of people there was unreal. You could barely walk in most places around the room. I hope that next year they use a bigger venue, unless we won't be able to smoke there. The good part was that most people got in, ran around and got all of their cigars, and then left. Towards the end, it was much easier to talk to the exhibitors.
Now here's the best part.......
All in all it was a pretty insane night. I had a lot of fun, and learned a lot as well. Now I just have to do alot of smoking because I don't think that this is all going to fit in the humi....ha ha