Geoffrey from New York

About me I travel to discover how people elsewhere live, how they manage living with low incomes in expensive cities, how they grapple with hard times and failing economies, how they deal with ageing or crumbling families and how they themselves age and adapt. Knowing and loving New York comes from having lived through many of its manifestations while witnessing its changes....

Oct 4, 2025

Martinez Handmade Cigars New York

Hand-rolled cigars

""Martinez Handmade Cigars" in New York City is a good compromise among the many terrible cigar options available here. I like smoking on site..."

In the USA, where Cuban products are wanted but cannot be bought, compromise is in order. There is little point in seeking an underground market for say, cigars, or rum unless you have very good connections, which take time to establish.

So, the ascendance of Dominican tobacco as a replacement makes sense because 29% of the city’s 8 million residents are Hispanic, the majority Dominican, and 10-15,000 more Dominicanos arrive each year.

To avoid the many terrible cigar options available, compromising cigar smokers now consider a shop down on 29th Street near Penn Station --- “Martinez’s”, a small, old shop, walls adorned with baseball mementos (remember the great pitcher Juan Marichal? --- Dominicano) and painted portraits, family photos, and a rotation of three or four cigar makers smoking near black cigars within the beautiful, smoky atmosphere they create.

There are five or six random office chairs, two for customers, where I sit to smoke and spend twenty minutes in observation or conversation. The only thing missing is a barber chair.

About Martinez' product, the cigar site Kaplowitz posts: “Creamy, lo not barnacle-building tobacco core… balanced by piquancy of white pepper which turns to peppercorn through the schnoz, and a slight Diner cup a’ joe. Butterscotch is on-board. Roasted salt. Leather. Under-belly is dirt with some sweet influence. Smoke stays cool as a cuke. Pass me my tooth-pick, please.”

Whatever that means.

Art & culture

Shopping

This week 25% off

with the code fall25

*on our yearly membership

About this spot

West 29th Street 171

Small cigar:

US$

Website

2122394049

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