GoodFellas Cigar Factory Cigars by nice guys

Many people hired to ply their trade at events probably wouldn't fare well with a home base -- who wants to drive to a store to have a singing gorilla congratulate them on their son's briss? For the exception that smokes the rule, hit GoodFellas Cigar Factory, open Friday.

Fellas is a smoke shop and lounge headed up by a motley trio: a Puerto Rican golf pro, a DPD homicide detective, and a McAllen-raised former financial consultant who at one time had a cigar outlet on Lower Greenville, but for over a decade has dispensed his custom-crafted stogies at golf tourneys, classy soirees, and soirees that started out classy, only to end with Rick McMasters never being welcome back at the Adolphus. Dominated by a wall-width jazz mural, the front serves as a work area, where the talent rolls his own line on an antique writing desk using Connecticut-grown wraps and mixes of Cuban-seeded leaves from Dominica/Honduras/Nicaragua/Costa Rica; there's also a humidor-equipped grab & go store for his wares and more (Opus X, Fuentes, Monte Cristo...), plus locally hand-crafted humidors, lighters, cutters, ash trays, and cases by Xikar, who decided to be productive while waiting for his home planet to beam him back up. Step into the back room, to find a wooden Indian-sentry'd, flatscreen-adorned sitting room filled with puffy leather loungers, laptop-tray'd theater seats, and domino & poker tables; the space is BYOB, so bring whatever gets you royally flushed.

Fellas plans to host liquor-sponsored festivities at least twice a month, as well as hazy educational seminars; also planned are "lingerie nights" with service by scantily-clad, stogie-learned babes called Smokin' Cigar Hostesses, with whom you'll try to get to home base, only to end up spanking the monkey.