If you’re looking for the finest handmade cigars in Florida, then take a walk down Seventh Avenue in Ybor City. It was once a melting pot in the 1880s of immigrants from Spain, Cuba, Germany and Italy. With its brick buildings, balconies and the old-fashioned feel, Ybor City in Tampa is home base for some of the world’s most famous, authentic cigar shops. Many residents of Tampa made their living from the cigar trade. By the 1900s, Ybor City became known as the “Cigar Capital of the World.”
With more than 150 factories and the reputation of out-producing Havana, countless cigars came out of Tampa in its early days.
“There’s no secret that Tampa used to be the cigar capital of the world. We used to make close to 600 million cigars a year,” Yanko Maceda said, the founder of Tabanero Cigars in Ybor.
Today, this is not the case. Even though there are a variety of cigar shops in Ybor, with premium handmade cigars, a single cigar factory still stands, J.C. Newman Cigar Company.
Maceda believes that cigar making and the culture of cigars is not as important as it used to be when Vicente Martinez-Ybor arrived. When Ybor first traveled to Tampa, there were only 700 citizens. After Ybor moved his cigar industry to Tampa the amount of citizens raised to about five thousand citizens, with many of those people working in the cigar industry.
At that time people’s lives revolved around cigar making and the cigar trade. Cigar rollers in Cuba began to leave so that they could continue their work in Tampa, where they usually earned better wages.
Several factors began to complicate the tobacco industry. The Great Depression, the 1962 U.S. Trade Embargo by John F. Kennedy, the consumption of cigarettes and the growth of machinery used for rolling cigars all played a part in the slow downward spiral of premium cigar making in Ybor City.
Maceda has high hopes that the people of Tampa will help bring the cigar trade back to a sustainable economy.
A worker at Tabanero Cigars rolls the handmade premium cigars in Ybor City.
“I learned that history tends to repeat itself and there’s so much heritage here in Tampa, there’s so much culture about the cigar lifestyle. That I believe we can repeat history again,” Maceda said. “It’s not going to be the same as 600 million cigars, but I believe we are about to put Tampa back on the map when it comes to premium cigars.”
There are three elements that Maceda thinks will return Tampa to cigar prominence. The tobacco supply, the cigar rollers and the passion of the people of Tampa.
Nikolaos Psilopoulos, a worker at King Corona Cigars, finds that people still enjoy the cigar culture in Tampa.
“It’s definitely grown from people just making their own house cigars to actually making this a retail destination as well,” Psilopoulos said.
King Corona Cigars sees people taking advantage of their outside seating every week as they smoke their cigars, drink fine wine and imported beer and relax. People even have the opportunity to smoke in doors, which Psilopoulos finds as a unique aspect of their shop, since indoor smoking is banned at most other places.
It’s not common for people to be smoking everywhere in Tampa and tourists are shocked that smoking inside, or even outside is allowed, according to Psilopoulos. He views it as a special experience for people visiting Tampa.
While the cigar atmosphere is still prevalent, people can look forward to the Cigar Heritage Festival in December. There are over 100 vendors from premium handmade cigar makers, cigar accessories, and cigar art.
With the pride that lives in Ybor and the cigar culture that continues to linger, the people of Tampa have the chance to get the “Cigar Capital of the World” back on its feet. They just need to see the potential to transform it back to how it used to be, just like Ybor saw the potential to transform Tampa into a cigar capital.
“We live this industry in our veins, we enjoy what we do a lot,” Maceda said. “I want to encourage more entrepreneurs to come down to Tampa and help me to revive what Tampa used to be.”
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