Author Paul Wilborn talks 5 years of “Cigar City: Tales From a 1980s Creative Ghetto”

Back in the 1980s, Ybor City was far from the raucous nightlife mecca it later became. It was a sparse and quiet neighborhood with a bar or two, a legendary gay nightclub and a couple of theater companies, populated largely by young artists, writers, poets, musicians and actors.

Paul Wilborn was one of them.

Five years ago, Wilborn, a long-time local journalist who’s now the executive director of the Palladium Theater at St. Petersburg College, published his first book of fiction, a collection of stories set in 1980s Ybor.

“Cigar City: Tales From a 1980s Creative Ghetto” went on to win a gold medal from the Florida Book Awards.

To celebrate the book’s fifth anniversary, and promote a recently released  “gold medal” edition with improved printing and graphics, Wilborn is presenting a series of readings and talks. The next one is scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday, August. 15th, at Tempus Projects in the Kress Contemporary, 1624 E. Seventh Ave. in Ybor City. Wilborn will talk about the book and Ybor City in the ‘80s and ‘90s, He and his wife, actress Eugenie Bondurant, will read excerpts from the book. Wilborn and Bondurant also present "Stories of Ybor City" at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, 1630 E. Seventh Ave. in the Kress, at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 17. That event is in conjunction with the FMoPA exhibit "Photo Ybor: Then and Now," which runs through November 17th.

“It’s nine stories, each with a clear protagonist, male or female, that are completely fictional,” Wilborn says. “Some real-life people make appearances, but they’re all part of the supporting cast.”

Ybor in that era, he says, was an arts incubator, with nationally known painters such as Theo Wujcik and James Rosenquist living and creating there. Wilborn’s talk at Tempus Projects coincides with the gallery’s current exhibit of Wujcik’s work, “Theo Wujcik: Too Big For Tempus.”

“In the 80s, Ybor was a lot like the East Village in New York, an immigrant neighborhood where the immigrants had moved out and artists had moved in,” Wilborn says.

Wilborn and other in the Artists and Writers Group initiated a couple of legendary annual events in the Cuban Club, the Artists and Writers Ball – intended as an underground alternative to Gasparilla – and Guavaween, which was eventually taken over by the Ybor City Chamber of Commerce and attracted well over 100,000 people every year.

“We started these parties and we could do them without bothering anybody,” Wilborn says, “because nobody was there.”

By the mid-1990s, mainstream businesses and national chains started taking notice of Ybor City, and instead of being compared to the East Village, it started to be
considered Tampa’s Bourbon Street. The independent bookstores and music shops gave way to nightclubs and fast food places.

“Cigar City” is a paean to that bygone era of the 1980s and early 1990s. But in the five years since the book came out, its author sees some encouraging signs that Ybor’s artistic spirit is not lost forever.

“In the last few years I really see Ybor heading back in the right direction,” Wilborn says. “Gay people are coming back. The gay people had left. And the arts and artists are coming back with the Kress building and places like Tempus Projects and FMoPA (Florida Museum of Photographic Arts).”

For more information, go to Wilborn Writes and Tempus Projects