On Al Goldstein & On if You're Old Enough to SCREW, Why Can't You CIGAR?

"Have you Kaplowitz'd to-day?"

On Al Goldstein & On if Yer Old Enough to SCREW, Why Can't You CIGAR?

Alvin Goldstein was smut-peddler par excellence and of no small infamy within even those particularly infamous circles. His New York Times obituary reads for all eternity: "a cartoonishly vituperative amalgam of borscht belt comic, free-range social critic and sex-obsessed loser who seemed to embody a moment in New York City's cultural history: the sleaze and decay of Times Square in the 1960s and ‘70s." Another critic (and isn't everyone one) decreed him to be, "a hairy, sweaty, cigar-chomping, eczema-ridden fatso."

Mr. Goldstein was born in 1936 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The proper amount of time afterward, he went on to serve the good ol' USofA in the Army as a photographer. Then at Pace College, he interviewed Allen Ginsberg. Was also a photojournalist, snapping Jacqueline Kennedy on a 1962 state trip to Pakistan and Raul Castro--for which he spent several days in a Cuban jail. Then, bit the publishing or perhaps the porn bug...

SCREW was established in 1968, in its inaugural issue he promised subscribers "never to ink out a pubic hair or chalk out an organ ... we will apologize for nothing. We will uncover the entire world of sex." A perchance keen observer surmised: "raunchy, obnoxious, usually disgusting and sometimes political." Writ one Will Sloan both later and retrospectively, 

"Goldstein was the first journalist to seriously review porn films. Had he not written a rave review of a low-budget film called Deep Throat 'I was never so moved by any theatrical performance since stuttering through my own bar mitzvah,' it would never have become a hit at New York’s World Theater, would never have been targeted by the vice squad, would never have spawned a First Amendment cause célèbre, and might not have led to the modern porn industry."

Then, Bitch Magazine "takes women out of politics and puts them back on their back where they belong," National SCREW (1976-1977), National SCREW (1977), Death Magazine (1979), SCREW West (1979-1980) with eyes on answering burning questions such as, "Where can I get laid in San Francisco? What's the best swinger's club in Los Angeles? How do I find all those out-of-the-way Pacific Coast nude beaches? And what are those bawdy brothels outside Las Vegas really like?" Burning questions, when answered, oft culminating in it burning when you pee.

I digress. Wrote Mr. Gary Korb in his seminal internet article 5 Things I Wish I Knew About Cigars Before I Began Smoking: 

"My earliest cigar education came not from a cigar store sales clerk or a cigar-smoking friend but from a little-known, short-lived newsletter called CIGAR. It was published during the early 1980s by porn king, Al Goldstein, of SCREW magazine fame who had almost as much of a penchant for cigars as he did for sex. Within its pages each month I learned about cutting cigars, lighting, wrapper leaves, humidors – the whole schmear. Al was definitely on to something, but his timing was way off. Interest in premium imported handmade cigars was still little or nil, so he put the kibosh on the newsletter. Less than 10 years later, Cigar Aficionado magazine premiered, marking the dawn of the 90s Cigar Boom and became the cigar smoker’s bible."

Here's another quote to put/stick in your pipe and smoke: "Cigar smoking is not just a part of life, it is everything." - Goldstein, in CIGAR's initial editorial. He then sadly-shortly went on to lose a good portion of said everything, to the tune of some $200,000 1980s USD via the ill-fated/timed cigarcentric venture. The run lasted a mere four issues, a sprint, really. Another fast-forward and to flesh out this bony bio: he died on December 19, 2013 at 77 years of age in a nursing home in Brooklyn, having carpe'd more diems and assorted other unmentionables than maybe you and I together ever shall.

"... and might not have led to the modern porn industry." OK, but what if Goldstein's CIGAR did that, but for the premium tobacco cigar-centered industry? Would a void then not be left to be filled by one Marvin Shenken's Cigar Aficionado something like a decade later? Say what you will about the current state of CA, as I have, there is little doubt the publication steered the industry into-through the 90s boom and somewhat even still today. What if Al Goldstein was at that helm instead?

I'll answer that in conclusion. I say cigars would have a far less general population acceptance, not that there's an awful lot of that now. But I feel it safe to say the lifestyle would have retained its seedier roots; its more behind-closed-doors mystic. The lifestyle just might have continued below the radar, avoiding the legislative bullshit we face as an industry today. For one. "Kids smoking cigars? Never. That's for gross old men." Ah, what might have been. "What thoughts I have of you tonight, Al Goldstein." In a riff off of Ginsberg's A Supermarket in California; as Tobacco 21 is in place for roughly a week at the time of this writing. 

Chrissakes, if you're old enough to SCREW, why can't you CIGAR?

::: very :::

NOTE: this is a (re)re-working of a previously posted thing. (7/7/21)