My Ride Out to Smokies Cigar Lounge in Reading PA

I’ve been hearing about Smokies cigar lounge in Reading PA for a while now from a few guys I ride with and hang out with regularly. Every time it comes up the message is the same: great place, great service, wish it were closer. That kind of consistent word of mouth from people whose opinions I trust is enough to get me on the bike.

This one is a little different from my usual riding content. It’s an old-school motovlog, just me talking on the way to a destination. If you’ve been around the channel for a while you might remember this format. It felt like the right way to tell this particular story because there’s actually a lot of backstory here, and most of it has nothing to do with motorcycles.

The cigar hobby goes back further than you might expect. Getting into it wasn’t some deliberate decision. It just kind of happened the way a lot of good things do, one person, one occasion, one conversation at a time. By the time I finally made it out to Smokies I had years of cigar shop history behind me, and that context is what makes this visit mean something.

How I Got Into Cigars in the First Place

It started at a cabinet shop where I worked years ago. One of the guys I worked with was close with his father-in-law, and whenever the father-in-law came around they’d share a cigar. And I mean share literally. The guy would cut it in half and they’d each smoke a half. At the time I didn’t think much of it. Now that I know more about cigars I can tell you that’s a pretty odd move.

That friend eventually left the shop to do contracting work on his own. One day he was out doing a job for a new customer, an older woman, and somehow cigars came up. Her late husband had been a serious collector. She asked my friend if he wanted them, he said yes, and suddenly he had a significant stash on his hands.

He started going through it and pointing out what was what, and honestly I had no idea what I was looking at. But I tried one. And then I kept trying them because he had so many and it turned into this thing we did together. Get together, have a couple of beers, smoke a cigar. It was a good time.

Finding My Way Into the Hobby

When the stash started running low I went online and started ordering from JR Cigars. A lot of what my friend had been given were Cuban cigars, and since we couldn’t easily get those we figured the Cuban alternatives had to be the next best thing. That logic made sense at the time.

From there the hobby expanded. I made a few friends who were deep into cigars, started hunting for boutique and rare stuff, and realized pretty quickly that cigar shops were half the appeal. You get to meet people, hang out, have a conversation. A good shop is its own thing.

The Shops That Came Before

I bounced around a few places before I found one I actually liked. For a good stretch that place was Kensington Tobacconist in West Reading. It was maybe six minutes from where I was working at the time, which was convenient enough that my dad and I turned Friday afternoons into a regular thing. We’d get out early, head over, hang out with the owner Kurt, smoke a couple cigars, and just enjoy the afternoon.

Kurt had a personality that took some getting used to. Dry sense of humor, very limited filter, not everyone’s cup of tea. If he didn’t like you he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. But if you could get past that he was genuinely a good guy and one of those people you can have real conversations with. I spent hours in that retail space just talking with him.

When Kensington closed it was a real loss.

After that there were two other options in the area worth mentioning. One was Suburban Tavern, a bar and grill that added a cigar lounge on the second floor of what used to be an apartment building. The space was never really renovated properly for it so it felt disjointed, a collection of old rooms that didn’t quite work together as a lounge. I heard they eventually opened it up and made it more communal but I wasn’t around long enough to see it.

The other was Cigar Cigars in the Fairground Square Mall. When they built it out the space looked great, but it was buried in the back of a dying mall and nobody could find it. They were locked into a long lease so the place just lingered. Ceiling tiles got stained from a leak that never got fixed, tiles started falling out, a bucket showed up on the floor to catch rain. The smell followed. It went from a store with real potential to the kind of place where unsold inventory from other franchise locations seemed to pile up. When it finally closed I don’t think anyone was surprised.

Sir Stogies and a Long Run in Boyertown

After I moved out of the Reading area and settled near Boyertown, Sir Stogies became my home shop. The building itself is worth describing. It’s a three-story brick factory building that at various points had been a cigar factory and then a textile operation making shirts and underwear. Tim and his wife Sandy bought the place, renovated the third floor into a massive apartment for themselves, turned the second floor into Sandy’s custom flag business, and made the first floor into Sir Stogies. Tim had spent years in maintenance and this was his soft retirement.

It showed. The guy genuinely loved being there. Loved the people, loved the atmosphere, loved what the shop had become. I spent basically my entire cigar budget in that place for years. At some point it became a kind of secondary office for me where I’d wrap up my work day and then head over with my laptop and keep working from the lounge.

Tim and Sandy eventually decided they were done with Pennsylvania winters, sold the shop, and headed south to Alabama. The shop changed hands to someone I respected and it stayed open. I kept going. But the social energy wasn’t quite the same after Tim left and over time, for reasons I’m not going to get into, I stopped going. That was almost a year ago now.

Finally Getting to Smokies

The guys I’ve been hanging out with since then kept bringing up Smokies cigar lounge in Reading PA, and after hearing it enough times I pointed the Yamaha MT-09 in that direction and went to check it out.

I’m glad I did.

The place is genuinely impressive. Nice furniture, clean space, a ventilation system that actually works, and mezzanine seating up above that gives the room a lot of character. The selection goes beyond the usual Montecristo and Rocky Patel lineups. There were boutique brands in there that actually had me interested, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.

I wasn’t planning on staying. I just wanted to take a look around. But the place pulled me in and the next thing I knew I was sitting there with a cup of coffee and a cigar. The manager came over and checked on me three times, topped off my coffee, and told me the coffee was on the house. The other people in the lounge were friendly and easy to talk to. I ended up texting a couple of friends who had been there before to tell them I finally understood what they were talking about.

Prices are about average. Nothing that jumped out as unreasonable, nothing that felt like a bargain either. For the experience you’re getting I don’t think that’s a problem.

I’ll be going back. It’s a longer ride from where I am but it’s worth it.

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