Now Vacant: Village Cigars

The Timeless Tobacconist in 2010

Sometimes a cigar shop is more than just a cigar shop.

Earlier this month, I learned that the iconic Village Cigars at the corner of 7th Avenue South and Christopher Street in lower Manhattan closed its doors and became vacant as of February 7. This one hurt.

Never mind today's infinitesimal market for cigars. Never mind that the tiny, 373-square-foot, triangular shop was not a model for a sustainable business. And who cares that I had only ever entered that space once or twice in 40 years and never did a damn thing to support it? (I might have bought some Tic Tacs once with Joe.)

Lou Reed, 1980s

With its bold red, enveloping exterior signage and perfect location, 103-year-old Village Cigars was an immutable symbol of Greenwich Village for generations. It telegraphed "New York" in films and television. Anyone who ever took a 7th Avenue cab below 14th Street, anyone who ever alighted the #1 train at Sheridan Square, was conditioned to make passing eye contact with Village Cigars. It was the improbable Mount Rushmore of lower Manhattan and the gateway to the West Village. You nodded in its direction and then went about your business.

In the years that I lived several blocks south, Village Cigars was a lodestar. Spotting it meant I had reached my home turf and could put away taxing days spent in uptown offices. Situated as it was to the west of Sheridan Square, the historic Stonewall Inn, and a pair of gay piano bars, The Monster and The Duplex, this anachronistic establishment was an essential part of the semiotic firmament and – surprisingly – gay landscape of Greenwich Village.

Activist Marsha P. Johnson at the 1982 Pride March
Photo: Barbara Alper, Getty Images

The last time I strolled Christopher Street, I didn’t know what to make of it. There were some bougie new boutiques and even a Milk Bar, but most of the gay establishments (dive bars, sex shops, and awful eateries) of yesteryear were gone. Pet's Kitchen, which delivered my cat Max's food to my apartment for years, had closed. McNulty’s Coffee was still, reassuringly, there. So was the semi-notorious but also unintentionally hilarious Leather Man, a purveyor of kinky apparel and other apparatus to the gay S&M subculture.

Village Cigars anchored all this.

I, along with millions of New York lovers and other sentimental fools, can take some comfort in the fact that, as New York magazine reports, the landlord is “looking for a new tenant who is willing to preserve the building’s rich history — and, in particular, keep the iconic red signs that flank the front door.” One wonders, though, what kind of business can make it in a 373-square-foot space with misleading Cigar Store signage out front.

New York magazine reports that Village Cigars hadn’t paid its rent since the summer of 2023. Inside, there wasn’t much to see or buy. Last year, in a case of mission drift, I noticed a row of bongs. I'm sure there were also vaping supplies. The most interesting thing about this shop was always The Hess Triangle at its threshold.

But still.

My next trip to New York is in May. Hidebound by nostalgia, I will undoubtedly go by this sacred spot. I hope I can report that at least the red signage is still in place. Until then, I await news that the Empire State Building has been taken over by Starbucks.

@jenscribblesny | used by permission

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