Ybor City Cigar Factories

Tom Ufer, the Tampa Cigar Examiner, has begun an interesting series of articles that profiles all the different cigar factories that once were located in Ybor City (there’s only one left that still makes cigars). With a blend of historical references and a look at what some of those buildings are being used for nowadays, one is owned by the Church of Scientology, this is an interesting series of articles. The pictures, look below for an example, are also great – a glimpse back into the past.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I would just like to take this time to thank each and everyone one of you who have stopped by to read about my thoughts on cigars.

Now go and enjoy some turkey, your time with loved ones and, if you get some time, enjoy a great cigar or two!

World’s Longest Cigar

A Floridian created the world’s longest cigar last Saturday when he built a cigar measuring over 180 feet. Now, I’m sure some of you are saying that this is a pointless endeavor and that this guy should be worried about more important things; like creating tasty cigars in a more manageable vitola.

You scoffers are obviously overlooking the buzz this guy is creating for his brand, which means more sales for this guy. You would also be missing the point that it’s just cool doing something like this. After all, if you can’t be the best, you might as well be the longest.

From the story:

“We still here and we still making big things,” said Wallace Reyes, the man who hand-rolls cigars at the Ybor City Museum almost every day, and the man behind the world record attempt. “So why not bring the worlds longest cigar to the cigar capital of the world?”

Over the past few weeks, Mr. Reyes rolled super-long cigars sections in preparation for Saturday’s record attempt.

***snip***

On Saturday morning, the sections were joined over a several hour period and the final adjudication was made later that day.

Before the announcement, Reyes said, “We’re gonna have a brand new record!”

Fortunately, his hard work paid off, and the record was his.

And if you are one of those people who do not believe everything you read then here is video proof!

That is one BIG cigar!

Winston Churchill Cigar

Everyone knows that Winston Churchill loved his cigars and, I think, many people admire him partially because of his ferocious appetite for the good life, which included lots of liquor in addition to the cigars. Now, have you ever wanted to know what one of Sir Winston Churchill’s cigars would cost today? Wonder no more!

The cigar has now been valued at £800 by an expert during the filming of the Antiques Roadshow.

Student Christian Williams, 33, was given the cigar when he was just 12 by his grandad Ronald Williams, a WWII veteran.

At over six inches long the cigar has never been touched by its owner, who keeps it safe in a sturdy wooden box.

It was taken from a historic meeting between Churchill and the other Allied leaders at the famous Casablanca Conference.

Based off current exchange rates that means the cigar is worth something like $1 million – that’s an expensive cigar! But, based off the looks of it, I don’t think anyone is ever going to be smoking this cigar due to the poor conditions it was stored in.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="460" caption="Winston Churchill D-Day Cigar"][/caption]

Still a cool cigar and an interesting story.

Cigar Rights of America Photomosaic

A couple of weeks ago I was playing with a program called AndreaMosaic. What it does is takes a bunch of pictures and arranges the to look like another picture. This sort of thing is more commonly known as a photomosaic.

What I did was upload all of the Twitter avatars of everyone who is following Cigar Rights of America on Twitter. The thing is that since there were only slightly more than 400 followers at the time the ending image looked horrible. So, I cheated and created the image that you see above by reusing images as often as the program wanted to use them and by having more tiles (images) make up the mosaic.

I also created this other photomosaic that you see below using the images less often, that means less tiles.That also means that you can make out the individual images a lot better.

The reason why I like this second one the most is because you can actually see the individual pictures that make up this photomosaic. And, if you click on this image, you can see a larger rendering of this image. So you can see the individual avatars that make up the Cigar Rights of America logo even better.

Creating these photomosaics only took a couple of hours. Oddly enough, the most time consuming part of this endeavor was the manual uploading of all the Twitter avatars. That involved lots of clicking and some file conversions – not fun. Actually creating the photomosaic was a snap because AndreaMosaic automates the process, all I had to do was put in a couple of parameters and ipso facto you get what you see here!

Cool, huh?

StogieRate iPhone App Review

When I started to really pay attention to cigar bloggers one of my favorites became Doc Stogie Fresh. I also started following him on Twitter (@Doc_StogieFresh). Basically, if you are new to cigars or just want to learn more about your pastime then you should read, watch and/or listen to this guy’s stuff (yup, he uses all types of media).

Alright, enough with the introductions, now onto the fun part, his new iPhone/iTouch app: StogieRate.

For me, the most important part of this app is that it gives you an easy-to-use mechanism for reviewing your cigars. This means scoring the cigar in three different categories: Burn & Feel, Flavor & Aroma, and Burn & Construction. For each category there is a five point scale with most of the weight going to the Flavor & Aroma category (the way it should be, in my opinion).

There is also a notepad available to type in tasting notes for the cigar. For me, that meant typing in the different flavors with an adjective or two thrown in (i.e. “peppery spice” or “decent burn”). I also rate each cigar at the end of each note. (More on this later.)

All of this is done well and is the main reason why I bought this app (retails for about $5.00) but there is some room for improvement. (I’ve been talking with Doc on Twitter – btw: you can tweet me @Travis_Lindsay – and he has assured me that there are going to be many free updates on the way, so the more input we give him the better this app will become.)

For example, there are not a lot of cigars put into the app. In order to put, for example, the Cain Maduro into the StogieRate system so you can rate it you will need to fill out all the information about the cigar yourself. But this is a minor problem and considering the gigantic cigar universe that is out there it is somewhat unreasonable to expect every cigar to be in the StogieRate database whether this be version 1.0 or version 10. In order to get all the information correct you will probably have to go online and find the right info.

My other quibble with the rating function of this app is that if you tell it you have 24 Cain Maduros then you only get to rate those cigars as a batch. As we all know, there is going to be variations amongst cigars of the same line no matter what. Some will have a tighter draw while others will have a more pronounced cocoa flavor to it. That’s just the way things are and, with the current version of this app, I cannot rate the cigars individually unless I put in 24 unique instances of the Cain Maduro. That would be a pain so I just rate each cigar in the notepad and tweak my overall ratings as time goes on.

Those are the only deficiencies with this app that are worth mentioning. Now onto some of the other features.

Besides the rating functionality available there are links to some of the great videos that Doc has done. This would be especially valuable for the novice cigar smoker or, if you’re waiting at the airport for your flight to arrive, you can pass the time by watching Doc talk about cigars, which is fun no matter what.

You can also assign your cigars to different humidors. So, if you have a main humidor, an office humidor and a bedroom humidor you can put your cigars in the right place. Of course, if you rotate your cigars then things may get a little hairy or if you only have one big humidor then this is a superfluous functionality. This type of information will help you identify any problems you may be having with your humidors or will just help you keep track of your stashes of cigars.

There is also a section that describes the different cigar shapes, cigar sizes, and a section about the different wrappers.

The StogieRate iPhone app is a great tool for any cigar fan. I definitely recommend this app.

Nice Tight Ash Review of Ambos Mundos

It’s actually two reviews in one! One review for each wrapper (Habano and Ecuadorian Sumatran). These are medium mild-medium cigars that are cheap (going for around $5.00 apiece). Besides these reviews being great reviews there’s two reasons I decided to post this review. First, it goes well with the previous post about Pete Johnson from Stogie Review. Secondly, Nice Tight Ash is putting on a great contest and I wanted you to know about it. Without further ado, here’s the Nice Tight Ash Ambos Mundos Reviews.

Cigars for Service

From The [Florida] News-Press:

The nonprofit Cigars for Service has sent more than 7,000 cigars to members of the armed services on overseas assignments since it was organized about six months ago, leader Chuck Ley told the Lehigh Acres Chamber of Commerce today.

For more information or to get involved:

Website: cigarsforsoldiers.org

Phone (Ley): 239-471-2325

Email (Ley): Chuck@LeydBack.com

Win Some Free CAO Cigars on my Friend’s Blog

The winner will receive: a 3 pack of CAO Bottle-rocket Cigars… and 2 CAO LX2 Lanceros…. Good Luck!

Now, who wouldn’t want to win this? You have until Friday at midnight Eastern time to enter this contest and you can find the contest’s rules if you follow the link above. The contest is being put on by a cigar blogger I truly respect (Barry at A Cigar Smoker’s Journal).

What are you waiting for? Click on the link and get working on your entry!

I Reached the end of Cigars On the Internet

StumbleUpon has turned out to be fun and educational… mostly.

With StumbleUpon you can click a button and be immediately whisked off to another site, post, picture, video, or news item. You can even pick your category and one night I decided to pick the category “cigars.”

I was directed to some review sites but I have already seen all of those so I didn’t get to see anything new there. I did, however, get introduced to a bunch of retailers. That wasn’t fun or necessary. Not really a good marketing strategy if you ask me. It doesn’t hurt either since it is free to Stumble a site but the conversion rate must be astronomically low.

Anyways, what else did I see? There were a few sites about cigarettes, which AREN’T CIGARS!!! Come on people, they have nothing in common. Stumble correctly.

There was a picture of a smoke cloud but I doubt it came from a cigar. And then it happened. I reached the end of the cigar universe according to StumbleUpon.

How is that even possible? There are dozens of sites that are dedicated to reviewing cigars not to mention all the message boards, cigar maker sites, and retailers. There are instructional videos on YouTube and pictures of people smoking cigars all over the place.

That is why I’m going to start Stumbling every cigar page I like. It just does not make sense to me that you can literally get to the end of the cigar-related Internet in the matter of an hour. It’s a travesty!

From this day on, if you put up a good review, post a great video, or make me laugh about something related to cigars you will be Stumbled by me (that’s a good thing just in case you are still a little fuzzy on exactly what StumbleUpon is). And you should also sign up for StumbleUpon and start spreading the word about your favorite cigar-related sites.