Cigar City Magazine

Big Turn Out For Ybor Tours

2011-01-27T19:32:00.000-08:00

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Tour

Cigar City Magazine is fast becoming the go-to source for new and exciting Ybor City tours!

It's all the rage in newspapers like the St. Petersburg Times and The Tampa Tribune's Friday Extra and is featured on sites like TBO.com, as well as most of our local TV stations! It’s “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” tours in historic Ybor City, Florida.

These two exciting tours have been selling out since September 2010. With the next tour coming up this Saturday and running through May 2011, now is the time to book your tour.

One of the tours- “The Gangland Tour”, is lead by Scott M. Deitche, author of five books on the mob including, Cigar City Mafia, The Silent Don: The Criminal Underworld of Santo Trafficante Jr., and The Everything Mafia Book. He has also had guest appearances on A&E Biography (Santo Trafficante), The Discovery Channel (Mob Scenes), and The History Channel (Declassified: The Mob in Havana). Deitche will take you on a two hour-long jaunt through Tampa's Mafia history. The tour will take you to old gambling palaces, street corners, and alleys where some mobsters met their demise, and restaurants where wise guys like famed boss Santo Trafficante Jr. held court.

The other is the “Ybor City Tour,” which is lead by Cigar City Magazine’s Contributing Editor, Manny Leto. Join this exploration of Tampa's only National Historic Landmark District. We'll gather on 7th Avenue to grab a drink special at King Corona before embarking on a walking tour that will forever change the way you look at the Historic District. We'll visit landmarks both large and small, reveal the stories of the famous and infamous, and take you to the grand clubhouses that have come to define the Cigar City.

A few tickets are still available for tomorrows tour, call now.

Click here to purchase tickets or for more information.

Yellow Fever in Early Tampa

2011-01-27T19:31:00.000-08:00

Tampa experienced the worst of the yellow fever epidemic.

Death is not always gentle or timely. As you visit Oaklawn Cemetery, Tampa’s c.1850 public burying ground at Morgan and Harrison Streets, it is a jarring fact that many of the early Tampans interred in that peaceful spot died in violent and painful conditions, and many at a young age. Most of Tampa’s founding families lost members in that fashion.

They were victims of yellow fever, a grim epidemic that struck Tampa repeatedly in the city’s early history–five times, in fact, from the city’s charter in 1850 to 1905 when the last case was reported. To a doctor or nurse at the time of the final incidence, the causative agent of yellow fever was well-known. However, in Tampa’s pioneer decades–the 1820s to the late 1890s–the disease was still a frightening mystery, a cruel and unwelcome visitor that came and went without warning.

(read more)

Radical Press

2011-01-27T19:30:00.001-08:00

In 1886, Tampa was a city in transition. A small outpost on the west coast of Florida, Tampa was a community of less than 800 residents in 1880. The arrival of Henry Plant’s South Florida Railway and the establishment of the cigar industry transformed Tampa into an ethnically diverse urban center in the New South. By 1900, over 5,000 people called Tampa home.

Vicente Martinez Ybor, Ignacio Haya and other leaders of the cigar manufacturing industry relocated to Tampa on 40 acres of wooded swampland just north-east of downtown hoping to establish a company town, a controlled environment in which cigar rollers would live and work. Ybor’s Land Improvement Company constructed low-cost houses for factory workers and promoted the area to other cigar manufacturers. In 1900, the port of Tampa received over 1,180 tons of tobacco, collecting 1 million dollars in tax receipts, making it the 10th busiest port in the nation. Cigar production reached its zenith in 1919 with the production of 410 million cigars and Tampa enjoyed the title “cigar capitol of the world.”

(read more)

The Drive-In Era in Tampa: Food, Fun and a Little Flirting

2011-01-27T19:28:00.000-08:00

For years, the phrase “heading out for a meal” meant driving to a restaurant, going inside to eat and then heading home. Your vehicle was simply transportation to get you there and back. Today, you can get a meal from just about any restaurant without ever leaving your couch. You can have any cuisine delivered to your door, and your car stays in the garage the whole evening.

But for a few decades, a popular choice involved leaving your house and staying in your car. The drive-in is remembered nostalgically as a teenager-dominated slice of American history, and it was the destination of choice for younger drivers–and whoever they could pile into their car–in the 1950s and 1960s. But even before that, the drive-in was a popular dining option among adults and families for several years, and Tampa businesses were happy to offer curb service to patrons hungry for food beyond the normal fare of burgers, fries, sodas and shakes normally-associated with teen hangouts.

(read more)

The Floridan Hotel

2011-01-27T19:27:00.000-08:00

The Resurrection of Downtown Tampa’s Crown Jewel

The red neon “Open” sign in the window of Franklin Street News Stand would flicker on at 7 a.m., followed by the neon signs for the news stand's neighbors–the Shoe Hospital and Carmen's Sandwich Shop–shortly thereafter. A block away, the homeless people sleeping in front of Sacred Heart Church would wake up, roll up their blankets and seek shade from the hot sun. And then, for the next two hours, downtown would lay quiet, waiting for the rush of attorneys, judges, politicians and financial analysts who made downtown their home from 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. Packed into their offices, they left for only an hour each day to eat at one of the few restaurants scattered throughout downtown, and then disappear when work ended. The neon signs would shut off. The homeless would return to Sacred Heart's lawn, and the downtown would once again become a ghost town.

Up until a few years ago, this was the average weekday scene in downtown Tampa. Today, though, this once forgotten area of the city is bustling with life 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Condominium towers adorning seemingly every corner of downtown Tampa are filling up with residents. To accommodate these downtown denizens, new restaurants, bars and cafés are popping up around the towers. A new Tampa Museum of Art will open this fall. Electric golf cart taxis shuttle people about. Business at the Tampa Theatre has never been better. Even venerable dive bar The Hub opened new digs in 2002.

Yes, downtown Tampa is alive again. There are reasons to live and play in downtown. Vehicular and pedestrian traffic fills the streets and sidewalks from the early hours of the morning until, well, the early hours of the morning.

(read more)

Protecting The Barrio in Ybor City

2011-01-27T19:26:00.001-08:00

I purchased my Ybor City cigar maker’s casita in 1992. I had been working in Ybor City for several years and its Latin ambience, distinct and evocative, had taken hold of me. The urban character of Ybor City was irresistible and I decided it was where I wanted to live. As I settled into my tin-roofed wood frame cottage, the seduction grew deeper. I was (and continue to be) endlessly fascinated with the complex and colorful past of Ybor City. With each step in and around my neighborhood, this unique history was like a ghost shadowing me. With each breath, the smells of Cuban food, roasting coffee beans and cigars tantalized me. With each glance, the architecture of a proud people, expressing its magnificence and its humility, captivated me. I had planted myself in a multi-ethnic, immigrant town whose roots ran very deep.

I also began to understand the admonitions, stated in different ways, that our future path is made clearer by understanding where we have been. It may not have been the past of my specific forbearers, but it was the past of a place I now called home. By caring for this history, we create a salve that eases the discomfort of feeling lost in a constantly changing society, one that worships the "newest of the new."

(read more)

A Tampa Midwife’s Records

2011-01-27T19:23:00.000-08:00

I came upon the records of Tampa midwife Maria Messina Greco 3 or 4 years ago. I was a member of an Internet Genealogy email list at Rootsweb.com where the topic was limited to Hillsborough County genealogy. One day a lady named Marisol sent an email asking for genealogy help in Tampa. I’m an avid genealogist, and could not resist. Marisol lived in Havana, but her grandparents lived in Tampa and her mother Candida was born here in 1906, long before births were required to be registered with the state. She gave birth to two sons in Tampa but later moved to Cuba where Marisol was born.

Marisol was seeking reputable proof that her mother was born in the United States –the ultimate goal was to obtain a copy of her birth certificate. Although my efforts to help Marisol proved unsuccessful, my search for her mother’s birth record resulted in an amazing find. Since Marisol had mentioned that Candida was delivered by a midwife, I used FamilySearch.org, the genealogical website of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, to search for midwife records from Tampa. I was doubtful any existed, and was truly amazed to find two microfilm rolls of Tampa midwife records from 1908 to 1939. Unfortunately, Candida was born in 1906 and I could not find an entry for her.

(read more)

Horror In Ybor City

2011-01-27T19:22:00.000-08:00

Blood soaked the beds and dripped off the sides, forming thick red puddles on the wooden floors of the Ybor City casita. Mangled and mutilated bodies were strewn throughout the house. A dying boy lay in his bed, struggling for his next breath. And under the front porch, a dog caked in its own blood let out one final whimper before joining the afterlife. The home looked like something out of a modern day horror flick. Just hours before, sadistic acts turned this once peaceful home into hell on earth. Yet, no one in Ybor City knew anything was wrong.

(read more)

Ybor City's Lady of Spain

2011-01-27T19:21:00.000-08:00

In the late 1800's, Ignacia Gutierrez Ramirez was living a difficult life in Zaragoza, Spain. Raising her children alone was not easy considering the small income she made cutting the hair of the affluent women of the town. She also had the well-known prostitutes of this same town as regular customers–a secret she had to keep. But Ignacia knew if she had to choose one group over the other she would easily choose the prostitutes–they paid better.

When an unknown woman showed up on her doorstep, Ignacia's life changed dramatically. As the two women spoke, she discovered the man she loved and the father of her children had a secret of his own–he had a wife in another town.

The two women spent the afternoon talking, comparing their lives and trying to make sense of the painful discovery. It became clear how easy it was for this man to lead two separate lives. His job as a railroad engineer took him from town to town for long periods of time.

Soon after their meeting Ignacia knew she needed to change her life, so she packed up her young children and took them to the train station. The man she had loved followed and pleaded with Ignacia to stay, but she boarded the train for Barcelona and never looked back.

(read more)

Coming Together Through Music

2011-01-27T19:18:00.000-08:00

In the factories, social clubs, and neighborhoods of Ybor City, several distinct ethnic groups evolved into a “Latin” community. Several factors aided this slow but eventual transition.

To begin with, the ethnic groups making up the majority of Ybor residents settled within a few blocks of each other, helping to facilitate cultural interaction. Additionally, the five mutual aid societies–Centro Asturiano, Centro Español, Círculo Cubano La Union Martí-Maceo, and L’Unione Italiana, born out of revolutionary struggles or the need for “mutual protection”–began to work together. The ethnic societies regularly provided each other support in times of need, sharing meeting facilities, loaning supplies or equipment for special events, and hosting dances that were open to all. It should be noted, however, that this interaction generally excluded the Afro-Cuban community of Union Martí-Maceo.

By the turn of the 20th century, Ybor City was a growing, cosmopolitan immigrant community. With the cigar industry as its stabilizing economic force, each of the neighborhood’s mutual aid societies provided a host of amenities with an especially wide array of cultural offerings, providing members a chance to socialize, debate politics, dance and see international performers. Socials, dances, and concert recitals were a regular part of life in Ybor City between 1900 and 1950 and, because dances were attended by a cross-section of Ybor residents, music was one key factor in unifying the various ethnicities of Ybor City into a “Latin” community.

(read more)

Playing the Latin Name Game

2011-01-27T19:17:00.000-08:00

Collectively, we’re Latins. Ybor City Latins. West Tampa Latins. The Latin Community. We were here first. That’s the deal. There are newer immigrants–Dominicans, Mexicans, South and Central Americans–arriving here every day, making Tampa one of the most diverse cities in the United States. Only, we don’t call new immigrants Latins. In Tampa, that title is reserved. The Spaniards, Cubans, and Italians who “Founded Ybor City” are the real Latins.

Some people disagree with the term and who it includes. I spoke with an irate Italian woman the other day, someone’s grandmother, no doubt. I could easily have mistaken her for my grandmother, her West Tampa accent making her pronounce the word cigar as SEE-gar and say anywheres instead of anywhere. She called to tell me that I was all wrong about Ybor City. She wanted to tell me that, as far as she knew, Ybor was completely founded by Italians. “More of them lived in Ybor than anyone else,” she said. She called to proclaim that the Italians are being erased from Ybor’s history. “All anyone talks about are the Cubans,” she said, adding, “Now everyone down there is drunk,” before hanging up on me. I took offense, especially since it was before noon and I hadn’t started drinking yet.

She wasn’t the first. I’ve gotten dozens of e-mails and phone calls from fist-shaking Nanas and Nanos fearful that their Italian identity has been casually melded into the larger cultural brew. “We’re not Latin, we’re Italian,” is what my mother says.

And she’s right: the word “Latin” is used in Tampa to broad stroke several diverse ethnicities and “Latin” is also how we imagine an entire era of Ybor City history. “Tampa’s Historic Latin Quarter” is what it says on faded tourist brochures from the 1950's, at the expense of Jewish and German immigrants who lived and worked in Ybor in the early 20th century.

(read more)

The Ferlita Factory Revisited by Emanuel Leto

2010-02-24T09:31:00.000-08:00

It’s 9 a.m. in City Council chambers and Ken Ferlita sits listening to attorney Michael LaBarbera rattle off the list of maladies associated with the building Ferlita’s immigrant grandfather once owned. The roof is gone, the grout between the bricks is crumbling, the walls are bowing.

He already knows the story. For the past year or more, Ken Ferlita has tried to find a way to save the former Ferlita Macaroni Factory, which his Sicilian grandfather founded in 1912 in West Tampa.

Giuseppe Ferlita moved the factory to 1607 22nd Street in Ybor City in 1924. The building served both as his family’s primary residence and business. Giuseppe embellished the building with neo-classical columns and a grand front entrance to mirror the nearby Italian Club, which was constructed just a few years earlier, in 1917. The business eventually outgrew its Ybor City headquarters and, in 1946, Ferlita sold the building to Pedro and Digna Diaz Perez, who used it as a cigar factory and residence. The family eventually sold the cigar business but

continued to live in the building until 1974.

In 1985, Less Thompson purchased the property and, after 25 years of ownership, has brought LaBarbera before the Barrio Latino Commission to argue his case for demolishing the historic blonde brick structure.

Faced with the threat of demolition in February of 2009, Ferlita approached Joe Capitano, a past president of the Italian Club, local business owner, and Ybor City native, for help. Capitano proposed that the Italian Club’s Building Trust acquire the old macaroni factory through a partnership with an un-named tenant, who, sources report, may have been the Columbia Restaurant. Ferlita’s architectural firm and a host of others agreed to work pro bono. The deal fell through when sufficient parking could not be secured. With no parking, the deal was dead.

“I don’t know why this burden should fall on the shoulders of a non-profit,” said Ferlita, who feels the city and the Ybor City Development Corporation could take a more active role in saving the building.

There’s no doubt the old factory needs work. To stabilize the property, an internal steel cage would have to be erected since the existing walls are too weak to support any meaningful restoration- a financial hardship that Thompson argues he cannot bear, hence the demolition request.

The real issue, however, is why Thompson, who purchased the building a quarter century ago, was allowed to let his building rot. According to the City, Thompson has never filed a single application for repairs or modifications of any kind on the building. A progression of aerial photos presented by the City during the hearing show a small hole in the roof growing like a cancer. The roof caved in last year, which prompted the first demolition request. Thompson, by the way, owns a roofing supply company.

To read more go to www.CigarCityMagazine.com

Passport To Cigar City Scores an A

2010-02-12T12:12:00.000-08:00

check this out, from Tom Chapman one of our readers who went on the tour...AWESOME!

http://cigarweekly.com/magazine/cigarticles/02-10-2010/a-tour-of-ybor-city-s-cigar-heritage

Ferlita Factory escapes wrecking ball – for now

2010-01-19T14:07:00.000-08:00

Ferlita Factory escapes wrecking ball – for now

This piece is written by CL Contributor Manny Leto

It’s 9 a.m. in City Council Chambers and Ken Ferlita sits listening to attorney Michael Labarbera rattle off the list of maladies associated with the building Ferlita’s immigrant grandfather once owned. The roof is gone, the grout between the bricks is crumbling, the walls are bowing.

He already knows the story. For the past year or more, Ken Ferlita has tried to find a way to save the former Ferlita Macaroni Factory, which his Sicilian grandfather founded in 1912 in West Tampa.

To read more about this story go to:

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/dailyloaf/2009/12/15/ferlita-factory-escapes-wrecking-ball-for-now/

Healing the broken Tampa-Cuba connection at an Ybor City forum

2009-06-30T05:20:00.000-07:00

By Manny Leto
Cigar City Magazine Editor and POHO Contributor

You may not have even known it was happening, but “Rapprochement With Cuba: Good For Tampa Bay, Good For Florida, Good For America,” a conference sponsored by the Alliance for Responsible Cuba Policy Foundation and held Saturday at the Italian Club in Ybor City, was, by its very existence, a milestone in repairing the tattered relationship between Tampa andCuba.

About 150 guests, panelists, professors and local politicians filled the grand, neo-classical Italian Club, once the social, cultural and political epicenter of Tampa’s Italian community. Whether the speeches, panel discussions, and networking sessions will really accomplish much toward ending the 50-year-old U.S. embargo, no one is really sure. However, to get a sense of where the Cuba barometer is pointing, you could start with the venue itself.

In 1955, a young, verbose Fidel Castro arrived in Ybor City. This was no accident, no anomaly. In fact, it made perfect sense. Castro, in a bid to gain popular support for his uprising against CIA-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, he followed — literally — in the footsteps of an earlier young, charismatic Cuban revolutionary, Jose Marti.

Marti was the ideological voice of the first Cuban Revolution; the one American school children call the Spanish American War. In the 1890s, after an earlier 10-year conflict between Spain and native Cubans, Jose Marti rose to the fore of a new effort to oust Spain from the island of Cuba. Like Castro, Marti was an intellectual, a writer, poet. He traveled extensively throughout Florida between 1891 and 1895, raising money for Cuban independence. He visited Tampa some 20 times, giving speeches to Tampa’s cigar workers and strategizing with the exiled leadership headquartered in West Tampa and New York City. Marti’s revolution began in 1895. Teddy Roosevelt and the U.S. Army showed up a couple years later, in 1898. Read More

July/August 2009 Issue Out

2009-06-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

http://issuu.com/cigarcitymagazine/docs/july-aug2009

The rebirth of landscape architect Dan Kiley’s world-renowned gardens in downtown Tampa

2009-06-19T12:21:00.001-07:00

By Manny Leto

Cigar City Magazine Editor and POHO Contributor

Kiley Gardens, the hotly contested riverfront park nestled between Kennedy Boulevard and the new Tampa Museum of Art off of Ashley Street, will be saved after all.

Well, most of it will be saved.

Locals have fought for years to restore the park, designed by world-renowned landscape architect, Dan Kiley. Completed in 1988 and neglected almost from the beginning, when plans for the new art museum were announced back in 2000 during the Greco administration, Kiley Gardens was scheduled for demolition. It seems that in Tampa, to create art, you must destroy art, which is, I’m sure, exactly the postmodern statement city officials were trying to make. Irony notwithstanding, local architects and others began to speak out. After what is now nearly a decade of debate, studies and grass roots activism, which reached a highpoint in 2005 and 2006, the Downtown Partnership hosted a forum this morning to assess the current plans for Kiley.

Longtime Kiley advocate, Chris Vela of the Urban Charrette, and developers, Chuck Jablon of Skanska and Morris Lopez of Par Development participated in a panel discussion and, despite years of neglect and poor construction, the news looks promising.

Problems with the park’s original construction were myriad. Drainage was insufficient, causing the brackish water of the Hillsborough River to backflow into the gardens, killing the crape myrtles. Sprinklers and irrigation systems leaked into the parking garage below. The large limestone pavers and topsoil were too heavy for the garage’s crumbling supports. Even the crape myrtles themselves, planted back in 1988, were the wrong species. Read More

Hillsborough Community College changes course in historic Ybor City architecture dispute

2009-06-19T12:19:00.000-07:00

By Manny Leto
Cigar City Magazine Editor and PoHo contributor

It’s 8 a.m in Ybor City, and there’s not a construction worker in sight at Hillsborough Community College’s new Student Services building on Palm Avenue. Pillars for the fourth floor reach skyward, while exposed rebar twists in the wind.

For weeks now, a group of influential Ybor City property owners, the Barrio Latino Commission, the city’s Office of Historic Preservation and the Cuban Club has battled HCC over the design of it’s new Student Services Building which by anyone’s standing is clearly out of place along the brick streets of Old Ybor.

There’s a reason why the architecture of HCC’s Ybor Campus, including the design for the new Student Services building, has never really jibed with what the Barrio Latino Commission considers the “historic patterns” of Tampa’s National Historic Landmark District: It doesn’t have to.

At least, that’s what college officials say. Read More

Hit the bricks:a historical street paving opportunity in Ybor City

2009-06-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

By Manny Leto

Cigar City Magazine Editor and POHO Contributor

Most Tampa folks believe there are tunnels under the streets of Ybor City. People say they criss-cross 7th Avenue and were used by bootleggers in the 1920s to smuggle booze between establishments or stash cash in hidden vaults. Sounds sexy. I’m not sure whether it’s true. I met someone once whose family owned a grocery store on 7th. Apparently, she played in the tunnel under the family store when she was a little girl.

Maybe. After last week the only thing I know for sure is hidden under the asphalt in Ybor City is Augusta Brick.

After the city worker pounded on my door at 8:30 a.m., telling me to move my car or he would tow it, he and his crew from the Public Works department began “resurfacing” 4th Avenue, the street I currently call home.

When I came back during my lunch hour I was surprised to see red brick - and a lot of it – peeking out from cleared-away sections of asphalt.

I know this may not seem like a big deal. But it’s significant for several reasons. Read More

2009-05-20T07:27:00.000-07:00

1ST 100 PEOPLE TO TAKE CIGAR CITY SURVEY WILL BE ENTERED TO WIN PRIZES & $$$.

GO TO www.CigarCityMagazine.com AND LOOK FOR THE READER SURVEY

TAMPANIAN

2009-05-18T15:36:00.000-07:00

IT'S COMING...TAMPANIAN

MAMA KNOWS

2009-05-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Mama,

My mother keeps telling me that she's going to hit

me with her chancleta. What is a chancleta?

Julio

Dear Julio,

What kind of "latino" are you! A chancleta is a

flip-flop style shoe that goes "clakita clakita"

when you walk. Although considered a multi-functional

item, mamas mostly use them to throw at their

kids to get their attention when they are misbehaving.

The main reason the shoe is thrown is because your

mama can't sneak up on you to whack you on the

head with it because of the "clakita clakita" sound.

Chancletas can also be used to throw at the family

pet when they are doing something wrong,

and for killing roaches and flies.

Mama

Dear Mama,

What kind of summer camps did kids from Ybor

and West Tampa attend in the olden days?

Mary

Dear Mary,

You gotta be kidding...we didn't have summer camps!

For fun, when we heard the mosquito truck coming,

we would run behind the truck as it sprayed the

mosquito killer mist. We would steal avocados and

mangos from our neighbors' trees, and sometimes

go swimming at Cascaden Park. On Saturdays, you

would get dropped off at the movie theater, and

given 50 cents. The 50 cents would cover the cost

to get in, popcorn, coke, and a pickle...

and you could stay all day.

Mama

Dear Mama,

Last night my mama beat my butt with a

big wooden spoon. Should I call HRS?

Too Sore to Sit

Dear Sore,

First of all, HRS will take you out of the house

and your mama will finally have some peace

and quiet. Secondly, I'm sure you deserved it!

And last, when you get home your butte will

hurt even more than it did the first

time around.

Mama

Dear Mama,

I offered to take my elderly neighbor around

town to run a few errands. But I have no idea

where she wants me to take her. I haven't

lived in Tampa very long, but I thought I

knew my way around. Can you tell me where

Guolmar, Besbai, and El Pobli are?

Need a New Map

Dear Map,

You don't need a new map, you need a

lesson in Spanglish. Guolmar is Wal-Mart,

Besbai is Best Buy, and El Pobli is Publix.

Just in case you offer to help her on a

regular basis, Quemar is K-Mart, Guindici

is Winn-Dixie, and Wagrin is Walgreen's.

Mama

Dear Mama,

I was researching my family history at the

public library and found my grandparent's

listing in a city directory from the early 1900s.

It listed my Nonno's name and his occupation,

then my Nanna's name and her occupation ... stripper!

My sweet little Nanna was a stripper! Then, to

make matters worse, this is published in a city

directory for all of Tampa to see. All of my life I

have been told that my Nanna worked in a cigar factory.

I don't know if I can ever look at her in the same way.

Ruth who can't handle the truth

Dear Ruth,

You're a complete babba! A stripper was someone

who worked in a cigar factory and stripped the

tobacco leaves from its stem.

Mama

CCM is Digital!!!

2009-05-09T15:28:00.000-07:00

check out our latest issues online at

issuu.com/cigarcitymagazine/docs/cigarcityissue22

Jan/Feb Issue of Cigar City Magazine out now!!

2009-02-08T06:19:00.000-08:00

Cigar City Magazine's Jan/Feb 2009 Issue features:

1933 Florida Gators & The 1944 Florida Seminoles

The Galloping Ghost-Red Grange

Boxing In Tampa in the 1950s

The Buffalo Soldiers

Pick up a copy today at Barnes & Noble (south & north tampa locations)

For more retail locations or to subscribe today go to www.cigarcitymagazine.com

West Side Stories: A Tampa Blog

2006-10-17T21:39:00.000-07:00

West Side Stories: A Tampa Blog

2006-10-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

West Side Stories: A Tampa Blog
Cigar City Magazine presents Cigars and Stars on Friday, November 17th in the Garden at the Ybor State Museum. You will have an opportunity to smoke some wonderful Arturo Fuente Cigars and enjoy some delicious food. There will also be an open bar and entertainment. Try your hand at sinking a 50 foot putt and win $1,000. You can buy tickets online at CigarCityMagazine.com.

West Side Stories: A Tampa Blog

2006-10-17T21:21:00.000-07:00

West Side Stories: A Tampa Blog

2006-10-17T21:18:00.000-07:00

West Side Stories: A Tampa Blog