Esquire Cigar

Jaclyn Youhana
The Journal Gazette

The old schoolhouse was still under construction in late June when Rudy Mahara walked in the front doors. Dan Hoffman pushed him out.

“You can´t come in here yet,” Hoffman remembers telling the man.

“I want a membership,” Mahara responded.

“Not yet. We´re not open,” Hoffman said.

“That´s OK,” Mahara said. “I want one now.”

Hoffman said no, and Mahara insisted that he would be the first person to buy a membership to Esquire Cigar Club when its doors finally did open.

Mahara kept his word, buying the six-month membership for $385 on July 13, three days after the club opened, Mahara says.

Esquire Cigar Club, 1036 S. Thomas Road, is a gentleman´s gentleman´s club, Hoffman says. The décor is reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and, frankly, cigars: deep burgundy leather furniture, portraits of hounds, framed images of cigar ads, a boldly colored fleur de lis stained-glass window on an exit door. It´s all very old-school class, but with flat-screen televisions mounted to walls and Wi-Fi availability.

Hoffman came up with the idea to turn the 1878 schoolhouse into a cigar club in January. He promptly called a Realtor, and six short months later, voilá.

The idea is to provide a place that´s not home and not work, a place to relax with friends, lovers or co-workers. Hoffman mentions one member who recently came in with his adult son. The two men watched the game, smoking two cigars apiece over three hours.

“I could hear them laughing downstairs,” Hoffman says. “You know, that´s what this is supposed to be about. It´s not about the cigars. It´s about the father and son sitting there on a Saturday night, having a good time together.”

Hoffman remembers when his 5-year-old son was born; he smoked a cigar. He remembers the conversation, the friends, the feeling, but he doesn´t remember what kind of cigar it was.

It was one of the best cigars he ever had, he says – the circumstances insisted on that.

Less than a week after opening Esquire, Hoffman had sold about a dozen memberships. More than 500 people had toured the building. Some weren´t even smokers – they were simply intrigued by the historic building.

“For what I know, (the cigar club) is the only one like it in the world,” Hoffman says, “and that´s all right with me.”

To use the facilities – a conference room, parlor, private room with poker table and more – one needs to be a member. Members receive 26 guest passes, though spouses or significant others can accompany for free. Members get use of a temperature-controlled humidor/locker and receive 10 percent off everything in the shop.

But Esquire Cigar Club isn´t for members only – anyone can peruse and buy from more than 150 types of cigars.

Recently, Ryan and Elizabeth Burkhart of Columbia City checked out the club´s walk-in humidor. The couple had visited similar clubs in northeast Indiana, but they called Esquire nicer.

“The old building gives it a lot more character right off the bat,” Elizabeth Burkhart says.

The selection is large – “We have some stuff in here that you just can´t find anywhere around here,” says Hoffman, pointing out a few cigars whose companies produce only 1,000 boxes a year – and cigar prices are about half of what they would be elsewhere, Hoffman says.

Hoffman overhears Ryan Burkhart talking to an employee as he buys his cigars.

“Say that again,” Hoffman asks, grinning.

Ryan Burkhart holds up a cigar and says, “It´s about double the price” elsewhere.

“And I didn´t even pay him to say that,” Hoffman says.

In the first week of his membership, Mahara visited Esquire three or four times. On one visit, he and his son-in-law picked up sandwiches from Penn Station – to get around Fort Wayne´s smoking ban, the bar cannot offer food items, Hoffman says, though it does provide coffee and soft drinks – and headed to Esquire for lunch.

The son-in-law is to be deployed to Iraq in August. He has been married to Mahara´s daughter for four months, and she is three months pregnant. She will live with her parents while he´s gone, and Mahara wanted to have a heart-to-heart with him before he left – financial suggestions, fatherly advice and the like.

He immediately thought of Esquire.

“I wanted someplace private to talk to him about the things that you´d want to talk to your son-in-law about going into that situation,” Mahara says. “I took him there. He had his first cigar.”

jyouhana@jg.net