Thursday October 16th, 2008 7pm

Live music performed by my good Boston buddies - Grip on the Sun

http://www.myspace.com/griponthesun

Halloween Party at Patriot Cigar Co.   Drew Estate Event

Friday Oct. 24, 2008

Come out and celebrate Halloween early this year with Drew Estate Representative Chris McDermott. Ghastly deals and amazing giveaways on all your Drew Estate favorites.

Thank You Bob Fumo for paying such a compliment to our Patriot Cigar Company in your following letter...

By Bob Fumo:

In different cultures around the world people assemble with one another in different ways. For example in Italy and France, people go to the café, in England and the British Isles they go to the pub and in the Middle East, India and China they congregate around a Tea Salon. The coffee, tea and beer are almost secondary, although everyone insists that it must be top notch. I mean I can’t imagine and Italian going to a café that served bad coffee or a Brit going to a Pub that had bad beer. That being said, the main reason people frequent these establishments is because of the camaraderie, friendliness and the interesting conversation that they find there. Unfortunately we in America don’t really have that kind of establishment, unless you place a bar in that category. I personally find most American bars depressing.



HOWEVER, I’m going to let you in on a secret, I have found the perfect place to convene, have friends and indulge in interesting conversation. The caveat is that you must like cigars and as I said before, the product is secondary, but it must be good and in my secret place it is much better than good. My secret place is the Patriot Cigar Company on 132 E. Broad Street in Quakertown, Pa. Yes folks, Q’Town, Pa that slice of Americana tucked away in Northeastern Bucks County.



I came upon it one day when I was passing through E. Broad Street in Quakertown, something that I thought people did in Quakertown, pass through. However, my eye caught a sign that said Cigar Store. I slammed on the brakes of my Toyota pickup and jumped out to see what the establishment actually was. I don’t know about you but anyone who even infrequently smokes cigars is drawn immediately to any sign of this wonderful indulgence. Unfortunately it was closed that day but I vowed that I would come back the next day to find out what it was all about. I returned the next day and entered a world that would keep me coming back for days and months to come. When I entered, the owner smilingly greeted me. Not the type of owner that I imagined in a cigar store in Quakertown, PA. Khuong is a young Vietnamese/American who would do just as well on the cover of GQ as in his cigar store. The store consists of a great walk-in humidor for the cigars a café bar which serves many different kinds of coffees and espressos, a back room with leather chairs and couches with a large screen TV, perfect for watching the game, and a front portion that has a round coffee table with comfortable chairs around it for smoking and talking. This place would be at home in any large cosmopolitan city in the world, but it is ours right in here in Q’Town, PA.



Let’s enter into this world of cigar aficionados for a while. First of all Khuong is extremely conversant about cigars and he can sit for hours and tell you about how cigars are made, how they are blended, why different cigars taste differently than other cigars and any other bit of knowledge that one can associate with the cigar world. How did he get all this knowledge? I don’t know. I know that he is a graduate of Penn State and he worked for the EPA before opening up this store. Maybe some of his EPA knowledge was transferable; slim chance of that. He is hooked up with a fairly famous cigar maker, Rocky Patel, who makes the Edge and the Vigilante. I can tell you from my own experience that the $ 5.00 Edge is the best cigar that I have ever smoked. In fact, I have given the Edge to several of my friends who are serious cigar smokers, and they have loved them and have asked me to buy boxes for them. It is worth going to the store just to experience the Edge.



Besides Khuong’s knowledge of cigars I would like to illustrate for a moment his personality, which is really the reason why people keep come back to the store time and time again. This guy is the true American success story. His journey to America began when he was 5 years old and Saigon was falling. Yes, he is a Vietnamese boat person and not to belabor his long journey, he ended up, because of the Methodist church, with his family of three brothers and five sisters in Doylestown, Pa. When I first heard this I thought, “Wow, this guy hit the lottery”, but as I got to know more about him and his family I realized that we were the ones that hit the lottery. By we, I mean Americans. He has a following; a sort of “Khuong Kult”. His following is comprised of every different type of person that exists in the world; white, black, Asian, Hispanic, men, woman, rich, poor, working and retired alike. You can sit at the round coffee table and engage in conversation with truck drivers with hu ge tattoos, people that own restaurants, lawyers, people that fly there own planes to New York City every day, women that are beautiful and fluent in French, a person who works with emotionally challenged veterans, aging hippies that play the guitar as well as Eric Clapton and one large ex-cop from New York. They all have two things in common, cigars and Khuong’s friendship.



The conversations around the table can consist of, cigars, woman, men, guitars, trips to South and Central America, unmentionable parties the night before, relationship problems, money problems, real estate in the area and various and sundry other interesting subjects. If you enter the door with any of the day’s stresses on your mind, they are quickly scattered when a chorus of salutations and “where have you been” greet you immediately. You chose your cigars, take a seat, order a coffee and within a minute you are immersed in the conversation of the day. After an hour at Patriot you feel as if you have just had the greatest massage and spa treatment in the world and any of the day’s stresses are wiped from your mind. In fact, when my wife reminds me how bad smoking is for my health, I counter by saying that I know that maybe a cigar takes a day away from my life every time I smoke one, but the atmosphere and congeniality at the Patriot adds two days to my life. The way I figure it , I come out ahead by one day every day that I go there and have a cigar.



Khuong also has these fantastic events that he sponsors. He has Cigar Nights at the shop, where he features a specific brand of cigar along with a micro brewery. There are also special “Cigar Dinners” at area restaurants that happen to belong to several of his patrons. The “piece de résistance” is however, his yearly 4 day trip to Honduras to visit the cigar factories that are used by Patel and other owners. I understand that these are 4 days full of food, rum and cigars not to be forgotten.

In summary, do yourself a favor, go to the Patriot, meet Khuong, chose a cigar, sit down and enjoy some real conversation. For my money this is the best thing to happen to Quakertown since the Farmer’s Market.