"Beverly Hills votes to ban tobacco sales, but exempts Schwarzenegger’s favorite cigar club"

LAT:

Cigarettes are out. Vapes are dead. But for an elite group of aficionados, hundreds of whom swamped committee meetings and wrote the city in protest, cigars will be spared — as long as they’re smoked inside one of three dedicated lounges.

Entreaties have poured in to City Hall from top executives at real estate offices, security firms, talent agencies — and from former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Nearly all of them are acolytes of the Grand Havana Room on North Canon Drive, a club so exclusive its members need a special key to get in.

“The Grand Havana Room, which I have been a member of since its inception, provides a treasured home away from home,” wrote Schwarzenegger. “It is unthinkable that the city might adopt a policy that would intentionally or unintentionally cause the closure of this character-defining institution.”