FIRST IN A NYC CIGAR SERIES—2 BLENDS, 1 BOX. Pick your side. Baseball bat cigars or knife cigars? Get ready to rumble over cigars named after the weapons of choice by rival gangs in West Side Story, 1957 play/1961 movie/2021 reboot. The 20-count boxes of West Side Story cigars feature both blends, which you can tell apart by their secondary bands. You get 10 blue bats (Mexican San Andres) and 10 red knives (Brazilian Arapiraca).

Blended and hand rolled in New York City, West Side Story cigars are a collaboration between Martinez Cigar Factory and Amendola Family Cigars.

Rob Gagner interviews Owner of Martinez Cigar Factory, Jesus Martinez, and Co-owners of Amendola Family Cigars, Jeff Amendola and Chris Monaco.

What is Boveda? Boutique cigars brands and large manufacturers protect their blends with Boveda 2-way humidity control—that brown pack that you find in the box with your cigars. Boveda preserves the flavor and character of premium cigars by keeping them at ideal humidity. At home, continue to use Boveda in your humidor to keep cigars well-humidified or they can be hard to light, burn to too fast or get moldy. With Boveda in your humidor, you'll enjoy full flavor and perfect smoke from every cigar.

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00:00 Never risk your cigars, use Boveda

00:30 This is Box Press

00:45 Shopping for cigars in NYC? Visit Martinez Cigar Factory, 171 W 29th St off of West Side Hwy

01:14 Made the Hangry for Luxury Cigar Club

01:29 First generation cigar blender, Jeffrey Amendola, founder and co-owner of Amendola Family Cigar Co.

02:19 Learned how to roll in Miami's Ybor City

03:19 Creating the West Side Story cigar

04:05 Toast to the NYC cigar with Jeffrey Amendola and Chris Monaco

04:19 Why is it called the West Side Story cigar?

04:46 Box of cigars with two different kinds of cigars inside

05:28 Choice your weapon—baseball bat cigar or knife cigar

05:47 NYC cigar release party

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- There's a story inside every smoke shop

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with every cigar and with every person.

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Come be a part of the

cigar lifestyle at Boveda.

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This is "Box Press."

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- We're at Martinez Cigar

Factory in Manhattan, New York,

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and I am with Jesus, the owner,

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and your father was the original person

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that opened this up, correct?

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- Yes, he opened it up in 1974.

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He was a roller in Tamboril,

Dominican Republic,

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when he came to the States,

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and he was working in another cigar shop

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for a couple of years,

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then he just decided to open up his own.

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Right after high school,

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I'd come in, help him out with packaging

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and so, you know, I stayed here.

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We roll all our cigars here.

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Of our own, we have five different lines

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and then we make other brands.

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- I've had like the, the

Hangry from Luxury Cigar

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- Oh yeah, that's right we did-

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- That as a great cigar.

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- That was, yeah, we did

really well with that one.

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- Yeah

- Yeah, with the Hangry

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- And now we're here

with Jeff from Amendola.

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- With Jeff, yeah, Jeff and I-

- West Side Story.

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- Yeah, Jeff and I, we've been friends,

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for I don't even remember how long.

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Every time he was in New

York, he would pop in

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and we would just smoke cigars.

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He told me rolling his own brand

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and you know, we used to exchange cigars-

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- Yeah

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- Straight up and we became friends

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and then one day he's like,

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why don't we do a cigar together?

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- My first love or passion for cigars

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started here in New York,

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in the Bronx first on Arthur Avenue,

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there's a little factory there.

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I started hearing about

Martinez in Manhattan.

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So I was just, I was

younger, I was 18, 19,

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but when I came down to visit,

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see family and stuff,

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I would try to pop in.

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I learned how to roll cigars in 2012.

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Self-taught, I was watching,

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I would hang out here a little bit,

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hang out in the Bronx.

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I learned how to roll cigars in Ybor City.

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But when I learned the craft,

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I needed tools like the molds.

- Sure.

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- These guys wanted me to

buy 50 at a time or pallets

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and I'm like, look bro, I need five.

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There's nowhere to get them.

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I was trying to find, you know,

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like a couple Robusto

sizes, couple Coronas,

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couple Laguito, just so I

could start making them,

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start selling them,

whatever I was gonna do.

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- Where were you getting your tobacco?

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- Nicaragua.

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(indistinct)

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- Yeah, I had to import her.

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- You're spoiling the interview.

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- But yeah, we'll do it

without the camera (laughs).

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I think I called Jesus out of the blue.

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I was trying to buy some

of his hand-me-downs.

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Jesus started giving me

his old hand-me-down stuff.

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Molds, Chavetas,

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He really was influential in

helping me start my own factory

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and becoming a cigar roller

where I was living at the time.

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That's where our relationship started,

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and then since then we were

just became really good friends.

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Every time I was up in the area,

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come by, we hang out, we

talk business, talk family,

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smoke good cigars.

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And here we are today,

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now we're actually making a cigar

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for Amendola Family

Cigars in this factory,

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called the West Side Story.

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There's a lot of challenges

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when you're creating a new cigar.

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I think a lot of people don't realize

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what really goes into

the behind the scenes.

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Behind the scenes is

acquiring the tobacco.

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We're a smaller brand,

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some farmers, dealers,

maybe don't feel like

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we're good enough

business for them, right?

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So we have to go find it first.

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Then we know what we have to work with.

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When I first wanted to

get into this business,

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I really wanted to focus on

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learning how to put tobacco together

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and be a blender and a roller.

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Because I don't care

if I do anything else.

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I want to know how to do this.

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I wanna do it as well as I can,

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however long it takes.

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That's the fun part, create.

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Chris was the same way.

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He spent hours on the

designs and the marketing.

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His forte is fine tuning

all the little details,

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which I don't have a mind for.

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- West Side Story is

something special to us.

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It had to be born and

raised in New York like us.

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We call it the West Side

Story because Martinez Cigars

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is off of 29th Street on

the West Side Highway.

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So that's where the name

came from in the beginning.

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You know, we were gonna

kind of go with one blend,

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which we had already previously released

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for another one of our retailers

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on a really small run.

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We got a lot of really

good feedback on it.

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- We went out to 500 people.

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- Yeah, that was it.

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We blended an original

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and then we started tweaking the blend,

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then we liked that,

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and you know, one thing led to another

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where at first we were like,

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listen, it's gonna be too much of a hassle

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to put that on Jesus,

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on Dave [Rivera] and the guys at Martinez

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to try to get that done

two weeks before showtime.

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On my end, you know,

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I was like, man, I don't

know how we're gonna,

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you know, differentiate the two,

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come up with names now, secondary bands,

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you know, as far as the marketing side

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of having two different cigars in the box.

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So we kind of let it go.

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Then we ended up having

a conversation with Dave

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and he was like,

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"Man, which one do you guys want?

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"You want your original brand?

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"You want your Arapiraca brand?"

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And we were like, "Man, we like both."

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And then he was like,

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"Well, what if we could do two?"

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And my ears perked up.

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I'm like, "Man, tell me you could do two."

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And then Jeff was like, "Oh, shit."

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- Like if they're willing to do it-

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- If they're willing to

do it, then let's do it.

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And they said that they could do it,

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they made it happen.

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The juices started flowing,

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it kind of grew legs and we

wanted to go off of that,

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like "Gangs of New York" theme.

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That's why it's, you know, pick your side,

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like, bats or knives,

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kinda old school street fight.

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- We thought it'd be best suited

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to do our release parties

back home in New York.

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So this whole weekend,

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we have four events scheduled,

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but we're kicking it off here tonight

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at Merchant's Cigar Bar.

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The West Side Story is gonna

be the feature of the night.

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We got a DJ, old school DJ, Nino Brown,

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everyone's gonna get two cigars.

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If you got a ticket,

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you got a bourbon tasting.

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- We're doing it in our

city with our people,

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people who've been

supporting us since day one.

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It's all about authenticity, man.

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You know, we don't want sit here

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and say we're making a New York City cigar

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that's being made in Nicaragua

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by a bunch of people that

aren't from New York,

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don't have that vibe.

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Shout out to everybody who's got,

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is coming out this weekend,

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you know, South Shore.

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Shout out to Merchant's, Harry's

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and obviously Barclay, Rex,

the whole family over there.

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We love you guys.

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We're really appreciative of

Boveda the coming out here

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and putting a spotlight

on what we're doing.

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And I hope everybody in the industry

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really appreciates it and enjoys it.

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- We love what we do

and this just shows it.

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And I love being able to come back here

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and actually release the

cigar in our home city.

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It just represents who we are, you know.

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It's great.

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- New York, stand up,

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this one's for you.

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