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Silver Age (1956-1969)

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Cigar Shops Have Changed As The World Has Changed

A cigar shop is a retail establishment that exists either as a storefront or an online catalogue. A walk-in store gives the smoker access to the most premium, fine cigars. It also gives the new smoker or the smoker on a budget, access to less expensive or newer brands.

One of the great things about a storefront cigar shop is it also gives smokers a place to actually smoke, and it also maintains a wait staff who can attend to clientele and answer questions.

An online cigar shop is a virtual realm that replaces the old storefront. It transcends geography, and it gives smokers from all over the world access to a very large inventory. A community management program is initiated to provide clients with customer service, specials, and information. Online cigar stores also offer a variety of prices so people on a budget can also enjoy fine tobacco.

Regardless of whether or not you are walking into a storefront cigar shop or surfing the catalog of an online equivalent, you can always count on finding premium cigar brands, less well-known but very good brands, cigar lighters, cigar cutters, and cigar humidors.

Many cigar stores also carry specialty cigarettes, such as electronic cigarettes, or cigarettes made from additive free tobacco. Many also carry pipes and pipe tobacco as well.

Gift items are also very popular through online resources. Cigars can now be purchased in gift packages, and special accessories like coffee mugs, special ashtrays, and golf cart clips can also be obtained. Such gifts can be great gestures of appreciation in a world that seems to be appreciating smokers less and less on a daily basis.

But who needs them when we have each other, right?

As things have changed in this great and mysterious world that we live in, so, too, has the old imagery and feel of many cigar shops changed. What we often visualize as iconic is really a memory of a bygone era.

That is not to say that you will not find the same images and motifs present in a modern cigar lounge or store, but there is a greater diversity of products and clear evidence of globalization in even the smallest of haunts these days.

In the old days there was little difference between what we now call a cigar lounge and a cigar shop. Both were places to purchase and smoke cigars, and smaller stores had limited inventories or maybe even only a handful of brands to offer. In those days as well, many European immigrants to the United States were truly and utterly illiterate and could not read even so much as a sign over the door of a store.

So it was decided by cigar store owners at that time to symbolize the establishment with a wooden statue of a Native American man or woman standing at the door. This symbol was chosen because Native Americans introduced Europeans to tobacco when first contact was made between the two cultures.

Today, it is considered bad form to use a racial symbol like this. It promotes a negative stereotype of Native American people, and it is also no longer necessary, considering how European-Americans have since learned to read, and even shop online.

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What jobs can a Boatswain Mate in the Navy do in the civilian world?

goin in the navy in as soon as i find out what job i want. i jus want to know what jobs are available when i get out, with the skill i will aquire with the Worlds Finest US Navy

The ideal job for an ex-Boatswains Mate is to become a Merchant Mariner.

In the U.S. Navy, a BM will splice lines and cables, operate mooring equipment, scale and paint surfaces, handle small vessels, act as part of gun crews, work in damage control teams and do most of the interior/exterior general maintenance aboard ship. In the Merchant Marine, this exact same work (sans the gun crew activities) is carried out by the deck department; namely Ordinary Seamen, Able Bodied Seaman, and the deck foreman, known as the Boatswain.

75% of the seatime you get from the U.S. Navy will count towards testing for endorsement in the Merchant Marine as an Able Bodied Seaman (AB) and (once you get your STCW '95 and Lifeboatman endorsements) you're pretty much good to go anywhere in the Merchant fleet.

I know right now Reinhauer Transportation Company of New York is paying Able Seamen with a Tankerman's endorsement $489 per day, with a rotating schedule of two or three weeks on and two off. Not a bad wage for a general deck department member.

Boatswains Mates are valuable; Navy ships couldn't operate without them, and their skills are no less valuable in the Merchant Marine. Many of the deck department seamen aboard my last ship were ex-Navy BMs. A good AB is worth ten times his weight in gold.

Civilian side? Not too much a BM can do. I suppose what yak said about being a painter, though that can be done by anyone even if they were never in the Navy. You might be valuable as a shipyard worker or in a drydock facility if you also have welding experience on deck.

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