Each weekday, a cloud hovers above the corner of Randolph and Clark Streets–cigarette smokers enjoying a post-lunch puff at the Thompson Center plaza. But Tuesday, there was a distinctly Dominican air. Cigar lovers shared space with the Marlboro set.
The Club Macanudo Relaxation Tour stopped in Chicago, inviting lunch-breakers to suck on stogies, enjoy a massage and get a shoeshine within a furnished tent, or as the cigar company’s press release labeled it, “an elegant oasis appointed with buttery-soft leather sofas and scenic images from the world of premium cigars.”
OK.
Guys dressed in golf shirts, suits and Sox jerseys entered the tent, amazed at their luck. Like big kids in a grown-up candy store, they plopped on vibrating chairs or sprawled on couches, sniffing the complimentary cigars.
Others made themselves at home outside the tent. Malik Thomas grinned from ear to ear as he lounged on a deck chair, exhaling plumes of white smoke into the humid atmosphere. “This is the Macanudo lifestyle,” said the 36-year-old mortgage banker, sounding like a pitchman. “It soothes the soul.”
A few flicked their ashes under Jean Dubuffet’s “Monument of the Standing Beast.” Sadly the black-and-white sculpture failed to ignite. The smoke drifting south across Randolph into the windows of City Hall, however, might have bolstered support for the citywide indoor smoking ban.
“The smoking ban is bull—-,” fumed Khurram Jahir, 28, taking a hit off his Macanudo but missing the point of the Relaxation Tour.