It's On the Way

Like other cities where weed has been made legal, my hometown of Stamford, Connecticut has been beset by smoke shops.  Seemingly legal retail locations selling the paraphernalia of smoking, often as a front to distribute marijuana illegally.  With cigars acting as a cover for those crimes, bringing respectability through the front door by virtue of the demographics, which for cigars are overwhelmingly male and grey. 

With countless smoke shops, a few better cigar stores and two cigar lounges to serve Stamford, I’ve ditched the humidor and buy as I go.  Considering the convenience and variety a perk of urban living, I’ve nearly convinced myself that walking for a cigar is part of a healthy lifestyle.  A lie which brings comfort while enjoying the alt-nightly routine, which the lady of the house considers an addiction, though compulsion feels more accurate. 

Either way the habit has me spending time in smoke shops, preferring the ones better staffed, stocked and maintained than the grey market shops.  Though sometimes location and timing can limit my choice, leaving me to patronize stores I wonder if Stamford PD will be visiting soon, as they appropriately harass illegal operators.

The sketchier shops offer less variety and caution is advised when selecting a stick, with these retailers spending little time rotating their stock or maintaining the homogeneity of the boxes, so that shopping requires more effort.  Further explaining why these stores are my second choice on cigar night, with the exception of one retailer with a particularly good location.  And a go-to-market strategy which makes shopping there a thrill, so that I plan to keep shopping there, until I read about them in the paper.      

Because beyond its location there’s another perk of shopping there, one embedded in their bad retail habits.  Which are so sloppy that many cigars are unpriced, with many of those not even scanning at point-of-sale.  Leaving a clerk who couldn’t guess my age within a decade to guess how much I’ll pay to smoke that night, with $10 being the default.  Making an “arbitrage” possible if you know the price of a cigar, so that stepping into the humidor is as exciting as playing a scratch-off, with the thrill lasting until you’ve checked the last box. 

And the store is on my way.   

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On my podcast this week was a run through the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book of current economic conditions, intelligence gathered to inform monetary policy in advance of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which meets eight times each year.  The Beige Book published September 4^th portends challenging times, for the larger economy and our segment in particular, with the demand for architectural coatings likely to remain soft while prices continue to rise.  Stagflation, at least in our segment according to the Fed.

Next week I’ll have a fresh episode to keep Do it Best/True Value (DiBCo) in the news, which is my plan until I determine what happened to cause a group of independents to give up their faith.  And their relationships with independent paint and applicator manufacturers to “partner” with Sherwin-Williams, moves which have cost the hardware cooperative its relationship with Benjamin Moore, and any semblance of a competitive paint offering.

THE Final Draft!  

At the end of the month I’m delivering a document which took months to create and still needs more to become a final draft, explaining the cigar musings today as they take less time than preparing a typical blog.  A genre you can expect from me in the coming weeks as I handle to extra workload, with no blog planned for September 24^th .  Which won’t mean that Heidi get's the week off.