Nobody asked a man in Havana to hold their cafecito, but that’s exactly the energy Odelma Matos brought to Ybor City this past Saturday.
Matos, the queen of Ybor City and a fourth-generation Cuban cigar roller whose image adorns every inch of wall space at La Faraona Cigar Factory and Lounge (1315 E 7th Ave and 1515 E 7th Ave), did what no one in her family and frankly no one on this entire rotating space rock had ever done: rolled a 465-foot cigar, smashing the previous Guinness World Record into a fine tobacco dust.
Let that number sink in. Four hundred and sixty-five feet. That’s taller than a 40-story building. That’s longer than a Tampa Bay Lightning power play feels when they’re down in the third. That is an objectively absurd and magnificent achievement, and we are here for every single inch of it…