Cigar City Magazine Smokes!

Cigar City magazine is so cool. And I'm not just saying that because they published an excerpt of my book Man Overboard in the May/June issue. The cover story, by Editor Emanuel Leto is about our very own roller derby jammers, the Cigar City Darlins. I saw them a couple of years ago at a roller rink in West Tampa with my pal, Cosmic Cowgirl Susan Cain. Even though they have cheeky names (and often cheek-baring costumes), these are some tough contenders. There's also an interesting piece about Naviera coffee mill and cafe by USF food historian Andy Huse and lots of info about local cigar smokers.

The mag's website is cool, too, with old photos, a nice Spanish guitar solo, and some great features about historical tidbits, like the guayabera shirt. But my favorite feature of all is Mama Knows, a hysterical advice column from a saucy old lady who can tell you a thing or two about the town you think you know. For example, do you know where Guolmar, Besbai, and El Pobli are? If not, check out Mama Knows.

Speaking of wonderful Latin things, if you're looking for something fun to do tomorrow night at 8, you might check out the Tango show at La Pollera Colorada restaurant at 2315 Linebaugh Ave. The dancers, Victoria and Frederico, are Argentinians who live in Tampa, and La Pollera has the best fried yucca on the planet.

Here's Lookin' at You, Kid

Once I spent a year wandering up and down Nebraska Avenue, stopping in the bars and pawnshops and diners. Poking around the trailer parks and old motels. Watching. Listening to hookers, bikers, kids, barflys, street people, waitresses, scrappy entrepreneurs and all the other riff raff drifting along this asphalt river running through the heart of Tampa. In the wild and wooly days of early Florida, they called it The Great White Road. A year of peeling back the layers of grime and tawdriness to find the the diamond core of the place, hard and brilliant, forged by devastating heat and force.

I hated history in school, but Tampa's past utterly fascinates me. It haunts the old buildings, and I've been fortunate to have an intimate affair with three of the most fascinating old gals in Tampa: The glorious and dilapidated former Tampa Bay Hotel (aka University of Tampa's Plant Hall), Ybor City's venerable and disreputable El Pasaje and the phantasmagoric Tampa Theatre, whose very guts I have spelunked, from the Mighty Wurlitzer's pipe chambers high above the prosecenium to the backstage warrens and basement chambers where ghosts mingle with rock stars.