For cigar lovers who create personal lounges, the finished product often differs from initial expectations. The lounge-building process is dynamic and unpredictable, requiring constant on-the-fly adjustments that set the smoking spot on a new course. Just ask Ernie Alvarez. The SoCal native started with a warehouse meant to become his office and ended up with a cigar space so impressive that he felt compelled to share it, turning it into a private, members-only speakeasy cigar lounge.
While others may start with a cigar room vision and make modifications as they go, Alvarez didn’t even begin the process with cigars in mind. He calls his spot an “accidental lounge” where, over the course of a year, “one thing led to another.” It all started a few years ago when he purchased a warehouse in Torrance, California, intending to convert it into an office for his custom home construction business. When he first purchased it, the interior of the warehouse had a spacious, open layout.
Early on, Alvarez tapped into his entrepreneurial instinct and started conjuring up a vision beyond an office space. He decided a portion of the warehouse could be used for high-end car storage, an idea that emerged from conversations with peers. “I hang out with a group of guys who have just a ton of cars, and they have problems with not having enough space,” says Alvarez, who has six rides of his own. He added a car lift, designated 1,200 square feet for garage space and set up a membership model where owners can pay to store their vehicles. He says Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches have been kept there, among others.
For Alvarez, building this dream spot came naturally, just another day in the office. “It was easy because this is what we do on a day-to-day basis,” he says.
Alvarez then decided to add a second floor in the remaining warehouse space. On the lower level, he created a kind of work/lounge hybrid area complete with pool and poker tables. Alvarez originally considered installing an open loft in the newly created upstairs space, but he soon changed his mind. “I ended up enclosing it, creating a separate door and a speakeasy out of it,” says Alvarez. The stairs to the second floor are guarded by an inconspicuous, secret door that looks more like an art display than anything else. On a vine-lined strip of the wall are three decorative flower boxes, but one is more than it appears to be. The middle box, if you push its front, opens to reveal a keypad. Enter the right code and the wall opens up, allowing you to climb a staircase leading to the second-floor cigar lounge. For some aficionados, such an isolated smoking spot is something of fantasy, a place of perfect solitude they can only imagine in their dreams. But for Alvarez, having the lounge all to himself didn’t sit right.
Muhammad Ali, Clint Eastwood and a chess board: the perfect cigar room decor trio.
“It’s something that I originally built for myself, then I thought well this is such a cool little spot, I got to share this with my buddies,” says Alvarez. As an avid lover of lounges and the social cigar culture, Alvarez decided to convert his personal space into a private, members-only cigar lounge and social club. “It’s really cool, very low key,” says Alvarez. “It’s very private, no one can look us up, they can’t Google us because it’s a private speakeasy.” Though the speakeasy label is slapped on quite loosely in present times, Alvarez delivers a genuine interpretation of the Prohibition era moniker. The club operates on an invite-only membership basis and each member gets their own personalized code to open the hidden access door on the lower level. Alvarez keeps the lounge secure with cameras and other measures, but he says members are largely individuals that are known and trusted, so it’s a relaxed environment. “They can come and go as they want,” says Alvarez.
The 500 square foot cigar room is quite alluring—albeit a little intense. “I kind of wanted the New York loft style, with the brick background, everything black,” says Alvarez. Its dark, industrial interior, with exposed ductwork and brick alongside vintage furniture, makes for a gorgeous space that marries its warehouse roots with a modern take on a backroom cigar bar. Alvarez further supplemented this ambiance with the inclusion of a poker table, chess board, an electric fireplace and ample leather seating. The room's decor also pays homage to the days of yesteryear with photos and paintings of familiar cultural favorites such as Winston Churchill, Muhammad Ali and Clint Eastwood.
The speakeasy, backroom feel is undeniable in Alvarez's spot, almost as if it were out of an old-school movie.
Three large flatscreen televisions are spread throughout the space, which, along with the diverse seating arrangements, help offer different settings for the smokers. Alvarez also installed three industrial exhaust fans, air purifiers and diffusers, which he says works wonders in terms of smoke management. “Sometimes I get 15 to 20-plus people smoking cigars and none of us are ever in a cloud of smoke,” he says. Another central feature of the lounge is the commanding bar off to the side. The hulking structure, backed by a brick wall, grabs your attention with its bright white lights that place further emphasis on its all-black finish. Alvarez keeps the bar stocked with plenty of fine spirits, although members often follow a bring-your-own method. A full-length counter in front of the display offers space for barstool seating, but it’s also home to individual cubbies for each member, which include a humidor in each. Outside the room’s double doors, on a landing just at the top of the stairs, there are also a few rows of sizable lockers available under a different membership option.
Alvarez set up the club to serve his friends and fellow cigar lovers, above all else. “I’m not looking to make a profit,” he says. “I was just looking for a place where people can hang out, have a good time, smoke a nice cigar and have good conversation about smokes.” He’s not kidding either, his membership options are admirably affordable. For a basic membership, that comes with just the cubby, it’s $50 a month or $600 annually. If you want a full locker, it’s $75 a month or $900 annually. Members can bring friends too, as long as they clean up after themselves. There’s currently 14 members in total for the cigar lounge, which gives them access to the lower level portion as well, which is non-smoking. The garage business is a wholly separate enterprise, although one person is a member of both. The majority of the lounge members are business owners and professionals, guys that are looking for a simple place to enjoy a smoke after work or to entertain their clients. There are technically hours of operation, which are essentially late afternoon to late in the evening during weekdays and late morning to late in the evening on weekends. Plus, the lounge is closed Wednesday. But Alvarez says there’s flexibility as needed since there’s a strong level of trust with all members.
The two secret doors. The left one will lead you to the cigar room, the right is just at the top of the stairs and guards Alvarez's “Manager's Quarters,” which is essentially a place for him to crash should he ever feel like it.
The environment is very communal and casual, a shared place among friends. “Everybody stores their own alcohol, everybody stores their own cigars,” he says. “For those who run out of their own sticks, they can grab one from the house.” The house in this case isn’t his private stash, but a separate humidor included for this scenario. Alvarez doesn’t sell alcohol or cigars, but if a buddy runs low, he allows them to grab from that humidor and only asks that they reimburse him the same retail value for the given cigar. “In there, I got everything from My Father to Arturo Fuente to Gurkha,” he says. But, despite this generosity, he does like to save his favorite stuff for his own collection. “The Davidoffs, the Padróns, those are all in my box,” he says with a chuckle. His personal, built-in-the-wall humidor contains “a little bit of everything,” though he prefers medium-to-full bodied cigars. “I’ve got my nice Nicaraguans, Dominicans and Habanos in there,” says Alvarez. “It doesn’t have to be the most expensive cigar either.”
The lounge remains a personal reprieve for Alvarez. “There’s a lot of times I’m here by myself,” he says. “My wife and I, she loves to smoke cigars, we come and enjoy this place all the time on our own.” He estimates he’s in there for a smoke at least three times a week. Alvarez, who is in his mid 50s, has been smoking cigars for over two decades, after getting introduced to them on the golf course. “Ever since then I never left it, I just got more and more into it,” he says. “It’s one thing that I’ve always enjoyed and loved.” Cigars have extended beyond mere pleasure for Alvarez, who says they’ve helped facilitate relationships and his business. “I have shared cigars with people that, just by accident, has evolved into a multi-million dollar business venture,” says Alvarez. One time on the golf course, he shared one of his Partagas Serie D No. 4’s with an inquiring fellow golfer, which led to conversation. The man happened to be a developer, and soon after, they made a deal for Alvarez to build a home for him on the coast. “That’s the kind of stuff that cigars can do for you.”
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