Most students know what Ybor City is like after about 10 p.m. on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night.
The loud music thumps in the air with bouncers guarding the coveted entry door into the hottest club of the night.
Seeing a sober person is rare, but mainly happens when a family’s car gets stuck right in the heart of downtown.
The parents shield their children’s line of view, recalling nostalgically exactly what it was like to be in college.
Ybor, as we know it, though, has not always been this way.
At around 1885, Vicente Martinez Ybor founded the city with the benefits of good ports, Henry Plant’s railroad line (whom Plant Hall is named for), and a humid climate.
The city was immensely popular during the first part of the 20th century for rolling cigars and became home to many Cuban and Spanish settlers.
Thousands of workers would sit in the brick buildings rolling cigars day in and day out, meeting the demand for this luxury item during the first decades of the 20th century.
At this time in Ybor city it wouldn’t have been surprising to see white Americans sitting at a table rolling cigars with a man from Cuba.
On Oct. 11 in the Grand Salon in Plant Hall, UT had a speaker from the USF who came spoke about the history of Ybor and the true meaning behind it’s historical significance in Tampa.
Dr. Gary Mormino has published a book entitled The Immigrant World of Ybor City, about the settlers of Ybor and how they thrived to become literate in a world where those from their culture would not normally seek education.
An “el lector,” or reader, Mormino said, would come to the cigar factories and read to the cigar workers while they rolled.
Mormino, who has researched and studied Tampa history since 1977, says “Cigar factories may be the only industry that is silent.”
Imagine for a second what a cigar factory was like: there were no machines or equipment to move around, just be the sound of knives hitting the cutting board as cigar after cigar was produced.
The lector was seen as a prestigious job in the community.
The natural ability of the reader to speak in front of public audiences was a desire for the general population.
Readings would last days or months, depending on the book chosen by the cigar factory staff, and Ybor locals had favorite lectors that varied according to each factory.
Unfortunately, in 1931, the economy crashed and the idea of lectors and cigar factories eventually left the minds of Americans.
They no longer could afford the luxury of smoking cigars and instead focused on staying alive during the Great Depression.
During the next seventy years, most businesses in Ybor steadily declined until about the year 2000, when the city focused on more development.
Now the streets are lined with clubs, restaurants and the other nightlife that attracts tourists from around the state.
The history of our home city is rather expansive, but finding ways to relate it back to students is difficult.
Speaking about cigars, however, may do just that.
Todd Sanborn can be reached at toddalan@me.com.