NORMALLY IT'S PIGEONS

While I was outside earlier there was a large flock of seagulls monopolizing the intersection. As well as crows on one of the further buildings. I had woken up from three remarkably pleasant dreams which were largely devoid of people, and cigar related, despite the fact that I rarely smoke cigars.

The woman who anxiously warned me to clean up all the cigar-pornography (cigar brochures, magazines, pamflets) was the woman she herself had warned me about. Cigar-pornography is illustrations of cigars and cigar boxes, particular brands, all very lovingly photographed, with a background of beverages or tropical plantations, or sometimes well-dressed glowing hip people enjoying life, glossy print, heavy paper stock, and blurby texts about tradition, matured leaf, attention to detail, deserved reputations, etcetera. There is no actual human nudity or naughtiness involved, but it's luscious.

A cigar-smoking bar owner I knew well passed away last year. I revisited some of the spots of North East San Francisco of which he was fond. Daylight, mild weather, soft shadows.

For some reason I was back in Valkenswaard, a city shaped by the cigar industry that once thrived there. At one point there had been over a hundred factories making cigars. The air used to be tinged with the almost floral reek of fermenting tobacco, nearly everybody in the schools to which I went had a connection in some way to the manufacture of cigars, and by extension the tropics. Sumatra wrapper leaf (dekblad), Besuki filler, a mild inclusion of something spicy from Latin America, which was perhaps the binder (omblad).


I do not collect cigar publications or literature. Though the little informational folder included in some boxes (particularly Oliva) is lovely. The stuff from Fuente is, frankly, boring, and many companies insofar as they "publish", provide little romance or actual information.

And there's only so much you can do with pictures of plantation environments.

Judging by their boxes, La Flor Dominicana would have some lovely literature, if they translated that aesthetic into a major printed poofle effort.



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