Reviews
"To those who lived in or knew of the Ybor City of the 30s and 40s, it is a catapult into the past, the days of high school heroes, trolley cars, street vendors, town scandals and landmarks long forgotten." "Today's Ybor City of art deco wekends and promenades along traffic-less Broadway, of Ybor Gold beer and restoration projects, can't hold a candle to the Ybor City of first generation immigrants. The Ybor City I knew."
--Merritt Island News
"A thoroughly delightful text. Pacheco's Art of Ybor City gives one a visual treat as brimming with flavor and texture as the Columbia's arroz con pollo and as deeply felt as his Chronicles. Like those, this text reveals a time not that long ago when the cities we inhabit were truly tropical in the habits and haunts - a place the palm trees in the bricked-in windows of large silent cigar factories."
--Key West, The Newspaper
"Pacheco's Art of Ybor City, by Ferdie Pacheco, is an art book that turns out to be much more." "In this book are powerful and sensitive images of Ybor City's people and places, depicted as they were during the 1930s and 1940s when Pacheco was young. In his memory it was that community's golden age and he describes it lovingly." "Through pictures and text, the reader encounters wonderful people at work and play. Ybor City must have been a vibrant place then - cigar factories, social clubs, cafes, trolley cars, picnics in the park - a distinctive ethnic enclave now mostly lost to time and an exodus to suburbia."
--Stuart News
"Ferdie Pacheco's mural-like paintings dazzle in Pacheco's Art of Ybor City. . . ; the text by the colorful fight doctor is flashy, too."
--St. Peterburg Times
"This jewel of a book proves once again that the author is indeed a man of all seasons." "Recommended for inclusion in any Florida history collection and any collectio of art books."
--Florida Times-Union
"Pacheco offers 33 carefully designed, brilliantly hued paintings that established him as an artist of exceptional talent." "This picture-book portrait of an artist is a history lesson and memoir."
--Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel