Cigar City: Tales from a 1980's Creative Ghetto

Cigar City is a collection of linked short stories about the young artists writers poets musicians and actors who inhabited Tampas Ybor City in the 1980s. Drawn by urban authenticity and cheap rents they created a surreal chaotic arts scene set against the backdrop of the empty cigar factories and shotgun shacks of Tampas immigrant past. The Ybor City scene drew international artists like James Rosenquist and mirrored what was happening in New Yorks East Village.The stories are fictional but they capture the spirit of the district during the 1980s. The collection is illustrated with photos posters and graphic images from the era.