Festival honors Tampa's cigar heritage

 

(TBO) Pat Dixon puffed on the nub of a Romeo Y Julieta cigar, enjoying the smoke and the music and the balmy breeze as he stood by a table at Cotanchobee Fort Brooke Park. It was a cigar aficionado's heaven.
Dixon and his 2-year-old son were among an estimated 2,000 who showed up at what was billed as the First Annual Tampa Cigar Festival.
For Dixon, 47, a retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. now working at MacDill Air Force Base as a Department of Defense civilian contractor, the festival was a chance to sample some of the product that made Tampa famous.
Among the smiling faces in the crowd was cigar scion Arturo Fuente, 81, son of the man who started the Arturo Fuente cigar company a century ago. Continued