It wasn't the Los Angeles smog or Tony Danza's aftershave that made breathing so difficult at this July 13 opening. No, it was clouds of thick, trendy, politically incorrect cigar smoke. We're talking about the debut of the United Restaurant's Grand Havana Room in Beverly Hills, a couch-filled lounge where, for a $2,000 entry fee (plus $150 a month), you can puff along with old masters Milton Berle and Arnold Schwarzenegger or new fogies Jason Priestley and Linda Evangelista — or just quietly stash your stogies in one of 350 humidors (total capacity: 175,000 cigars). The lounge, part-owned by actor Joe Pantoliano (Bad Boys), hosted celebs and celebs-in-waiting (like Gina Gershon, whose racy Showgirls opens this fall) — about 400 in all, which made the fire marshals a bit testy (total capacity: 150 people). Along with a good dose of secondhand smoke, we managed to catch a few sound bites:
Breathy Bullets Over Broadway star Jennifer Tilly on sexual politics: ''I think one of the attractions of cigar smoking is that [men] know it drives all the women out of the room.''
NYPD Blue's Dennis Franz on fast living: ''In grade school, my buddies and I would get together and play cards, and we'd buy a box of very cheap, stinky cigars. We just thought we were big shots smoking them.''
Actress Shari Belafonte on the morning after a smoke: ''I don't want anybody to kiss me; I don't want to kiss anybody; I don't want to swallow. It's just so atrocious.''
New James Bond Pierce Brosnan on the floor-to-ceiling humidor vault: ''It's like Forest Lawn, isn't it?''
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