In the early days of Tampa, you could stand on the banks of the Hillsborough River and if the wind was blowing just right, you might smell the thick aroma of cedar permeating the air.  As cigar factories from Palmetto Beach to West Tampa hummed with workers, a number of ancillary businesses sprouted to support the booming industry. Restaurants and boarding houses kept workers fed and housed. While other businesses manufactured equipment and tools necessary to produce quality hand-rolled cigars.

Miami say the sandwich, or some version of it, was a pre-Revolution staple of cafeterias and bodegas in Havana. Tampa begs to differ! Read our story Welcome to Cuban Sandwich City HERE first. Then take a look at the artcile in The Miami Herald and tell us what you think!!

Shadow? What shadow?

A lot of people would become frustrated growing up with the same name as their famous father. It makes forging your own way in life all the more difficult. People may believe that your fame and fortune are due to his hard work or even mistake your accomplishments for your father’s.

Joey Redner, the founder of the popular Cigar City Brewing and the son of one of Tampa’s most infamous individuals, does not flinch when asked if he ever detested living in the shadow of the “Strip Club King.”

Date: August 14, 1928

Time: Shortly after 9 p.m.

Place: Outside El Dorado Café, Eighth Avenue and 14th Street in Ybor City

Surely someone had to have seen something.

Two men shouted violently at one another in a popular Ybor City café bustling with business. One of the men stormed from the room. The other soon followed.

A gunshot echoed throughout the establishment.

Moments later, a man lay on the sidewalk in front of the café bleeding to death from a gunshot to the abdomen.

In April 1980, the flood of Cuban refugees continued for several weeks from the port of Mariel. Cubans fled in a desperate flotilla, and Fidel Castro let them go. Family members in the United States suddenly saw hope for relatives still living under the Communist yoke. A desperate boatlift ensued, often undertaken by shrimp trawlers and fishing boats of questionable seaworthiness.

Memories Rediscovered, Remembered and Relived by some of our Tampa neighbors.

In the early 1900s, after years of making cigars at his workbench, he decided to try opening his own cigar business. He borrowed $150 and purchased a bale of tobacco and convinced his father to let him make cigars in the back of his grocery store. He hired 2-3 workers and cigar production began and Antuono was on his way to greatness!

 “My responsibility as ‘el lector’, which means ‘the reader’ in English,” I explained, “is to read to the workers who roll the beautiful cigars such as these we gentlemen are smoking.” I held mine up for consideration. “I sit at a high platform in the middle of the floor of the factory for several hours and read from newspapers, periodicals, various novels and other literature as requested by the workers, translating them if necessary into Spanish.”

Cities often grow because they have a fine harbor, an excellent climate, and a railroad junction. For these reasons the City of Tampa grew, and became the largest Gulf port in the state of Florida. But West Tampa, just across the Hillsborough River from Tampa, grew, not of the geographical or climatic possibilities, but because one “Tampan” (Hugh C. Macfarlane) saw an opportunity, and grasped it.

Today Ybor City is not the Latin Quarter it once was. Instead, playing the part of an old historic actor, waiting in the wings for its next big role, Ybor City waits prepared for a true renewal, identity, and recognition of its past history.