I am not an expert on cigars, so I can only imagine what the Smoke Out Block Party outside Rudy’s Cigar Shop on Brackenridge Street is going to look like today: Premium cigar vendors in every direction, some selling cigars as slender as a strand of a spider’s web, others selling cigars roughly the size of precast concrete piles.  

There will be cigars in boxes. Cigars in tubes. For all I know, there will be cigars in artisanal crystal boxes and fire-resistant box safes.  

I am exaggerating here, but if you are a cigar-lover, today’s event will be like visiting Cigar Xanadu. Top cigar-industry professionals will be in attendance. Phenomenal deals will be the rule rather than the exception.  

At the conclusion of the event (at which beer and food will also be available), a major prize will be raffled off: A presumably cigar-related trip to Honduras with the soon-to-be-former owner of Rudy’s, Rudy Mahara.  

The man in charge today is Ken McNeil who is the current operator of Rudy’s and is in the process of taking over the business from Mahara.  

One purpose of today’s event, McNeil said, is to give people a preview of what Rudy’s will soon become.  

“Rudy’s is going to be a destination in the Midwest in less than six months,” he said. “We’ll have one of the top three humidors…in the state of Indiana.”  

McNeil’s extensive background in the tobacco business includes owning cigar stores, staging cigar events and helping bring cigar lounges to professional sports venues.  

McNeil said he was introduced to Mahara because Mahara had been wondering aloud whether it was time for him to move on.  

“He and I didn’t see the same vision,” McNeil said, “because he operates Rudy’s like a friendship club and I’m a retailer.”  

McNeil’s plans for Rudy’s include sprucing up the facade, doubling the square footage, adding a rooftop deck or patio and expanding the kitchen so Rudy’s can offer more substantial food items.  

McNeil has also been trying to obtain a 3-way liquor license for Rudy’s.  

As for the beer garden, McNeil describes it as an institution and said he wants to assure devotees that it will be part of any future incarnation of Rudy’s.  

Two additional nearby properties are also part of the deal, McNeil said.  

“We’re going to put a coffee/tea shop in one, and a…cigar club in another,” he said.  

McNeil has big plans, obviously, but he said he doesn’t want his big plans or anything else to dwarf or diminish the man without whom there would be no Rudy’s: Mahara.  

“As long as that man’s alive, he can walk around this store like he owns it,” he said. “That man is a Fort Wayne institution. He has done so much and gets so little praise for it. His whole life is about having a legacy that involves Fort Wayne.  

“I don’t care about myself,” McNeil said. “I care about Rudy looking good.”  

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