Yes there is.....Yes there is. I came into this world fully clothed, in a Armani suit and I plan to leave it wearing pink overalls and a green trucker hat.

MCS

And cake, don't forget the cake.

I feel compelled to reply in this thread (even though it's not in context with the last few posts).
Just wanted to say I'm saddened by what was bound to happen at CS. I just deleted all my info off my profile and as weird as this sounds I was a little sad (and mad) while doing it.
CS was the first on line community I had ever been on and like so many of us am sad that it came to this.
Oh well, onward and upward I guess. I'm just glad a soft place to fall in to was created for us by the 11.
Thanks,
Bear

Having been "behind the scenes" for a long time at CS, I would debate this statement of Jon's. Paul may have made a profit from the final sale, but for years he put his own money, as well as his own sweat and blood, into CS to keep it the community he and Rob originally envisioned. Anyone who thinks that their donations when Paul owned the site were going into Paul's pockets is mistaken in my opinion. :-)

The check bounced, Adam, so I made the ink "neon". :-) :-)

Funny how we kept quiet till the day of transition. Hope is the second to last thing to go I guess. Wait with Viagra etc now I guess it's the last. :-)

I'm as guilty as anyone dissing the changes and projecting my view of the new owners intent here and on the old place. Got it mostly out of the system but who knows. I think we all learned from the experience. Some of the worst things that ever happened to me turned out in the long run to be the best things. This situation is one of them.

Honestly, wishing the new Puff venture all the best is probably good karma, it costs nothing, and also does good for all of us in the long run as their promoting ways help folks find and enjoy the world of cigar boards.

And you say I am the nice guy, Dave. :-)

I am glad to see this thread has gone from people wanting to get banned to some really good comments and heartfelt thoughts.

When this site went live, I got an email from Tom and a voicemail from Gerry - both of which made my day. To think these guys would take the time to drop me a note, that is what CS created for me. A bunch of friends I have actually flown places to meet (Hey Tom, when are you finally going to make it out to California to smoke some cigars?).

When the mod team left I saw a bunch of guys who all joined around the same time as me try to keep the ship afloat and I jumped on board to try to help. If it wasn't for Blake Lockhart (I still remember the Dave's old username), I wouldn't have 300 plus 5 finger bags still ready to be used. :-) I have traded cigars with most of these guys and I will honestly say, being a team member with them has been an honor. I can now see how the team of 11 became such a strong group, when you have to look over every post and make decisions as a team, it drive the bond beyond cigars.

As for puff.com, I work on the internet. I work in online advertising and I understand what Jon is trying to do. Almost everything on the internet is commercial (except for maybe wikipedia and this place). Every member here is lucky that the team of 11 has both the time and money to run this place without the need to ask for help or to flash ads to pay the bills. It is amazing how these guys are willing to spend both the time and money to keep this place running (I can imagine hosting a site this size is not cheap). With that said, I would assume there is a limit to what they can do. I doubt the team of 11 can produce cigar videos for example. Well with this group, they can probably do anything. :-)

I made a post earlier in this thread about Cigar Aficionado and the cost to advertise with them. Unfortunately, if you look around, the other CA is really the only place a cigar manufacturer can advertise these days (Cigar and Smoke are horrible magazines and the ECCJ, while great is more of a European audience). So they can charge whatever they want and continue to produce a magazine that has less than 5 articles about cigars. Print advertising is dying as more people move online. In addition, it is very hard to track results in the print world, so advertisers really have no way to know if the money they spend is actually increasing sales for them. If someone wants to profit from that transition, who am I to say it is wrong. We all want to make more money and as a person who works online, I am interested to see if Jon can do it. If he can provide a better platform for cigar manufacturers to advertise and increase their business, while making money, it doesn't seem that bad to me (but again I work in a very similar business).

The idea of a central place to go and read about cigars, watch videos, read interviews, is inherently interesting to me. If that means I have to see ads for wine and liquor, so be it.

Just in case anyone is wondering, no one asked me to write this. These are my thoughts and my thoughts alone.

Thank you too, Aaron for the kind words....I look forward to the day (hopefully soon) when we can drop the "Cyber" from our "Cyber-Herf" together. :-)

That reminds me, I need to send you guys a PM about the next cyber herf! No reason we can't all smoke some good cigars right! :-)


[edit] For some reason I cannot seem to edit my last post, even though it was less than 30 minutes ago. I want to add one more thing, I don't know Jon's master plan and have not talked to him about it. I just happen to work in online advertising and have seen websites try to do something similar.

I think ours is less time. One of the few perks we got as mods there was exemption from the search time delays (you must wait 30 second thingie). Didn't remember it existed at all until afterwards and then.. arrgh.

I liked your post and agree. Puff will take the place of Cigarlive in my frame of reference (has that feel already). A different more commercial place that has it's value and vibe particularly for folks early in the journey. The videos are cool but lookng at Lopez is starting to make my head hurt almost as bad as reading stuff from KevinG. :-)

Amen to that. :-) :-) :-)

I was a member at CS for a couple years, I cant say I am sad to see it go. The reason being is that the heart of it is here at CA. Home is where the heart is! Everything we had there we have here, I just happen to log on in a forum with a different name, almost as if the other place never existed. Change comes to us in many different ways, some good some bad. We are fortunate that this change brought us a whole lota good. Its a small world when you choose to make it one, where family and friends are concerned.

I joined CS the summer of 2007 and immediately felt welcome and comfortable with the forum. I was also one of the members who said we should all give it a chance after the change was announced. As someone who didn't have the time and effort invested in CS that some members did, I was willing to wait and see what the new management would do to the site.

The biggest changes I saw after Caputo became the owner was not anything he did immediately but the negativity that came out of a number of the old time CS members who did not like the fact that change was occurring and the vibe I got from some members who moved over from other forums. That changed the CS environment and when I was provided the information about the Asylum I joined.

Now that the official change has been made to Puff.com, I would say that many of the predictions made about the other site have come true or coming close to happening. That makes me glad to have the Asylum to visit.

But I am not giving up my membership at the other site. Why? Because it may not be the same old CS and I may not personally like everything that has happened over there, but it can still be another source of information about cigars and the world in general. Hey! I don't like everything in Cigar Aficianado. I don't like everything about Cigar magazine. But I still read them.

And I have noticed that there are quite a few of us who are still participating in discussions over there - at least for now. The number of times I visit the other site is decreasing and I think many of you are doing the same. That will mean less traffic for the other site in the short term, but then those numbers will bounce up and down as other "clubhouses" are brought on line so I would guess that losing a few hundred active members will really have little affect on the other site.

That's just my opinion.

I like to think I am not completely ignorant when it comes to financial matters, but am stumped on something;

Why would Jon buy CS then change the name? Wouldn't it have been cheaper to just start Puff and use the undisclosed amount he used to purchase CS to spread some goodwill or something?

I guess the answer probably is that Jon never expected the mass exodus of former CS'ers and figured them membership came with the price of the name?

I honestly am not intending this as a jab at Caputo, I am sincerely curious.

Is it possible he has more bucks than brains? (that was the jab part)

he could care less about the name ClubStogie... as you can see it didnt last long.. what he really wanted to purchase was our memberships... even if we dont use our accounts, our accounts are still active. The more members, the more $$ he can charge for advertising.

A membership at ClubStogie now is kinda like herpes, once you got it, you aint gettin rid of it

YIKES!!!:-)

CS will always hold a special place in my heart.

I have nothing but the utmost respect for the moderation team of old CS members in place at Puff. All the guys here know you mods there have your hands full trying to keep order during a chaotic time. I am partially to blame for thinking I could stay until CS changed before making a decision to leave, but my heart was not in it, and the last person I will lie to is myself.

Many of us CS moderators (myself included) felt the mod team no longer dictated the flow of things there. Decisions we agreed on as mods were being overridden by Jon. I personally felt my services there as a mod were no longer needed.
With the collective efforts of the old CS mod team, we decided that something had to be done, but what could we do?

At that point, the Asylum was born. Never intended to compete against any other cigar forums. Never designed to plague or cause distress to other websites.
Our only intention was to create a safe haven for those who felt as we did. All 11 of us felt we had a responsibility to the members of Club Stogie to provide a place they could go to if they chose to do so.

While it is flattering that many folks feel a loyalty to Cigar Asylum, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a member of multiple cigar forums.

As regards Puff, I could have learnt to live with the addition of new sections and advertising. The former is not necessarily a bad idea and could provide the user with interesting information, and the latter, provided it remains cigar focussed, could actually be of commercial interest to the user or, if one dislikes it, could easily be blocked by security software. Furthermore, I am not intrinsically opposed to his having turned CS into commercial venture.

That said, the particular form that his venture took I dislike. I find the new logo and name unattractive, to say the least, and the relegation of the forum is lamentable. CS, Louie, and the jungle as a social forum for, and community of, cigar lovers, should have remained paramount.

Ji,
I don't know you from Adam, but that was some fine posting. Take care my friend.

One of the truest sentiments mentioned. I, for one, am grateful (and, like many others, would definitely become a site supporter here given the option).

:-)