Consummate D.C. insider Terry McAuliffe resides in the governor’s mansion built by tobacco farmer James Monroe, demonstrating that Virginians have always elected those who excel at peddling its staple crop. The farms that blanketed the I-95 corridor between Washington, D.C., and Richmond are mostly gone now, the land purchased by political profiteers. The stalks have been replaced by glass towers housing the media, contracting, and consulting giants that now serve as the backbone of the Virginia economy. Yet there are some members of the transplanted D.C. caste—former Marines, ambassadors, and George W. Bush appointees—who still pay tribute to the much maligned weed; they can be found at the Embassy Cigar Lounge in Stafford, Va., which celebrated its first anniversary on May 1.
The shop is a converted warehouse, a couple hundred square feet of stamped concrete doing a convincing impression of faded dark wood, dropped about three miles south of the Marine Corps Museum. There are 60 different cigars, ranging from $5 Rocky Patels to $32 Arturo Fuentes, available at the glass counter or cedar bookcase humidor at the entrance. Regulars can purchase one of 28 humidified lockers next to the cramped office.
The overflow crowd packs into a hodgepodge of leather chairs dotted with brass studs that once decorated congressional offices—"we paid for it twice," one investor quips to all in earshot. Latecomers gather on a patio double the size. There under the massive white tent sits Marine Sergeant-Major Terry Bennington, an Embassy Lounge co-owner who is consumed by a much more important anniversary.
On April 30, 1975, Terry, then-22, boarded the last helo ride out of Vietnam with 10 other servicemen. He appeared on the Dick Cavett Show, and after the fifteen minutes was up, returned to the Corps for another 21 years of service before settling down as a contractor training Marines. He spent the previous evening with six of his comrades to mark the solemn occasion, but is gregarious, foul-mouthed, and excitable by the time I get to him.
"I feel refreshed. I’m just glad I didn’t miss that bus because it would have been the last bus I ever missed," he says.
Terry doesn’t smoke cigars; he’s a Pall Mall man. His interest in the business is purely personal.
There are only three cigar shops left in Northern Virginia and D.C. that allow the use of tobacco indoors, according to Perdomo Cigar ambassador Walt Kudier. Smoking bans spread like cancer after New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg eliminated indoor use in 2002. It spread through blue states and eventually overtook tobacco states as well; Virginia fell in 2009.
"It’s devastated lots of existing shops going non-smoking," Kudier says. He hopes that liberals’ embrace of marijuana will encourage them to give tobacco users a break for consistency’s sake. Until that change comes, he says, would-be tobacconists should follow Embassy’s lead.
"I was surprised when I found out about the new shop. They had a lot of determination and they weren’t going to be stopped. That’s what you need," he says.
Embassy stands out as the only cigar shop devised in the pews of Stafford’s Regester Chapel United Methodist Church. Several church couples started getting together for wine tours across the state in 2005. The men developed a taste for cigars, their wives a taste for keeping it out of their homes.
"We started it because we were tired of freezing our asses off in the garage," says John Beiswanger, a Marine and contractor turned stogie slinger.
The couples and their friends put up $120,000 to renovate the abandoned warehouse attached to The Globe and Laurel, a legendary Marine restaurant. Bennington’s wife, Candy, does the decorations. Eric Edelman, the former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, picks the cigars; each investor spends one day a week at the shop peddling with sales averaging 500 cigars per month. Mary Beth Long, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs under George W. Bush, who did not attend the anniversary, had the hardest job of all; as the resident lawyer she had to navigate the group through hostile state and local agencies, according to Beiswanger, who handles the group’s public relations.
"Every door we opened had three more behind it," he says. "The bureaucracy of it all surprised me."
The warehouse was a mess when they found it, but bringing it back to life with furniture, flooring, and a fresh coat of paint wasn’t anything beyond the group’s reach. The costliest part was compliance. There needed to be separate ventilation, walls stuffed with sealants to prevent the tiniest bit of smoke from entering the restaurant. A liquor license was only available if the shop served food, according to Beiswanger.
It took about 18 months to get the shop off the ground. The Globe and Laurel‘s proprietor, a retired Marine named Major Richard Spooner, exhibited patience throughout the process; he’s well aware of government obstruction.
Major Spooner, 88, enlisted in the Marines at 17, fought in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, and is probably the only man alive who can still pull off a white blazer with matching pencil mustache and crew cut. He opened the restaurant to be a modern day Tun Tavern—the shuttered Philadelphia spot that birthed the Marine Corps—after being forced out of service on medical discharge over his objection in 1972.
"I hated [the medical board] for that, but I let them into the restaurant so I could show them I was just fine. They’re all dead now," he says with a guffaw and an apology for an imagined speech impediment he attributes to a stroke he suffered a couple years back. He sounds fine.
Spooner is hailed as the "living historian of the Marine Corps" and every inch of his restaurant lives up to the moniker. His tchotchkes would make any self-aware TGI Fridays franchisee reconsider his life choices. Autographed Marine portraits cover every wall, along with Medal of Honor citations, and glass-encased combat knives. The ceiling is plastered with patches donated by police officers. All of the memorabilia had to be transported from the restaurant’s original location a couple miles north in 2008 after the state used eminent domain to seize his property of four decades. He went from owning a restaurant to renting one with the flick of a pen.
"I’m going at a loss now, but we’re fighting hard to stay in business. The money doesn’t matter. We keep going for all the young Marines and law enforcement out there because they expect us to be here. We’re here for them," he says.
Antagonizing the anti-tobacco busybodies that populate state government would seem to be the last thing an unprofitable establishment would need. Timing was key to the pitch. Beiswanger approached the elder Maj. Spooner as he enjoyed a cigar on the patio in the middle of Winter.
"At 17 degrees it sounded like a good idea," he says.
Spooner’s confidantes advised him against making the move.
"I said, ‘Dad we’ve never had a partner before. Why start now?’" his son, Major Rick Spooner, Jr., says.
Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Ron Coleman, who has been friends with Major Spooner since he stepped into the Globe and Laurel in 1981, told him to pack it in when the state seized his property.
"I told him to go and retire. I was wrong—he wouldn’t be alive today if he took my advice," Gen. Coleman says. The cigar bar "was a great call. I didn’t know anywhere down this way where you could smoke inside."
The restaurant’s natural audience has taken to the cigar shop as an enhancement. Tour buses of young Marines pull over to see the memorabilia and marvel at the cartoon above the urinal captioned in French: "to piss without farting is like a band without music … I served in Haiti."
"Marines, the FBI, DEA, they all come to here … to pay respects [to Maj. Spooner]," Beiswanger says. The New Orleans Saints’ quarterback, Drew Brees, toured the place to honor his Okinawa veteran grandfather. John Bunnell, host of World’s Wildest Police Videos, stopped in for a quick smoke a couple months back.
The location also helps. Jefferson Davis Highway is one of the most heavily trafficked areas in Virginia, and the fact that it’s only two lanes makes the calculation easy for patrons: spend an hour in traffic or wait it out over a cigar and drive home without the hassle. Michael Truelove, a Navy flight crew veteran, has only been a cigar smoker for five years, but he found an immediate home at Embassy.
"I come here for the camaraderie more than I do the cigars," he says.
The owner working the counter on a given night is in charge of the minutiae that comes with a small business, managing inventory, emptying ash trays, counting the cash, and locking up. The biggest task is enforcing the only House Rule: no sitting alone. That’s why retired generals mix with enlisted men; federal agents with NFL quarterbacks.
"People come in for the first time and by the end they know all of us by first names. Cigars are a social sport," Beiswanger says. Especially when you’re not freezing your ass off.