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Neighborhood Report

Cigar magazine finds an audience

Three women who love a good, old story celebrate a first birthday.

By ALEXANDRA ZAYAS
Published November 3, 2006

It's only fitting that the lease for Cigar City Magazine's new headquarters - a historic casita on N 19th Street - begins the same day that the magazine's first issue launched one year ago.

Publisher Lisa Figueredo can stand on its roomy front porch and look down the street at La Tropicana Cafe, where the ideas began to take shape that summer, over cafe and tostadas.

Figueredo sat with her aunt, Marilyn Esperante Figueredo, and longtime friend Vienna LoCicero Santisteban and recalled the summers spent with her great-grandparents. She would ride the bus to Ybor City with her great-grandmother, Nena, and join her great-grandfather, Lee, on trips to cigar factories, where he would collect stems of tobacco plants to fertilize his lawn.

The women wanted to tell their family's stories, and they wondered how many other stories were buried in the oral histories of West Tampa and Ybor City. So they decided to launch a bimonthly magazine out of their West Tampa homes.

Santisteban sold advertising space to local businesses like the Tampa Sweethearts Cigar Co., the Radiant Group and the Oliva Tobacco Co.

Marilyn Figueredo wrote many of the stories and enlisted influential locals, including West Tampa historian Maura Barrios and cigarmaker Wally Reyes, to contribute articles. Lisa Figueredo, who also owns an ad agency, put the design together.

The women, who live on the same street in West Tampa, worked out of their homes. They recall nights of no sleep, running from one house to the other in pajamas, on deadline.

The magazine launched on Nov. 1, 2005.

"I didn't think we'd get past Issue 2," Lisa Figueredo said. The seventh was released Wednesday.

From 56 glossy pages, the magazine has grown to 64. Circulation has reached 25,000, with subscribers as far away as North Dakota and Afghanistan. Some of her cigar company advertisers mail a free copy of the magazine with customers' orders.

Figueredo attributes much of the success to her readers, who spot photos of relatives and call with stories. Cigar City has taken on a life of its own.

"It's getting out there," Barrios said. "It's giving people in the historic Latino community a voice and a place to tell our stories and talk about our very special, unique history."

There's no place more fitting to tell those stories than in the magazine's new digs, a shotgun cottage typical of Ybor's cigar heyday.

There's not much furniture yet, but black and white photos of relatives are already finding homes in cozy corners.

"It's filled with the memories and ghosts of our ancestors," Figueredo said of the casita. "So we're very proud to be here."

Alexandra Zayas can be reached at 226-3354 or azayas@sptimes.com

For more information

To subscribe, advertise or contribute to Tampa Bay's Cigar City Magazine, call 875-4929 or visit www.cigarcitymagazine.com.

[Last modified November 2, 2006, 12:32:33]