Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Forum Is Hot Ticket: The St. Pete Times Forum ranked sixth among venues in the United States and ninth among worldwide sites for total tickets sold for concerts and family shows in 2003, according to Pollstar, an international music industry publication. The Forum, in its eighth year in downtown Tampa, sold 328,700 tickets last year. The study ranked the top 50 worldwide venues with seating of 15,000 or more.

The Tampa Bay Lightning, who plays at the Forum, won again last night, and closed to within 3 points of East leader Philadelphia. For those of you that are not hockey fans, this means: lightning = very good. In fact, as of this writing, they have the 5th most points in the entire NHL. If you’ve never seen a game live, I recommend it – It’s a lot better than watching on TV. Go watch them play one of these nights.

Prince is scheduled to come to the Forum in Tampa on April 26th. I’ve never seen Prince live. I am not really one of those hard-core fans of Prince – if there are any of those. But I liked his songs, I think he’s a great guitar player, and he’s one hell of a songwriter. Also, I get the impression that he would put on a pretty good show. I’ll have to think about getting a couple tickets to this. Hmm. maybe since the Forum is doing so well, they could find a couple tickets to give to me.

A handful of recent articles related to central Tampa and the latest “creative class” ideas, which is supposedly necessary for cities to attract more business.

Seminole Heights: Can it be a place to live and work?

Local talent can help area reach creative goals

Ybor City still a good place for creative types to work, Well, at least architects.

Will an arts-centric magazine work in Tampa Bay? Diane Wood hopes so.

Like, surf: The Critical ‘I’ notes that some folks (midwesterners, mostly) think that just because the address here has “FL” near the end, and beaches are just moments away that we must be a bunch of surfers. HA! Tell ‘em CT: You can’t surf here. Oh well, at least we have the beaches and the sunshine.

In another post, CT laments the pulling of The Grand Prix of St. Petersburg from this year’s schedule. A road race has been run on and off (mostly off, it seems) for a dozen or so years in and around downtown St. Pete. I’ve been to a couple of them, and it’s cool to see the cars hauling ass around the same streets I drive. I hope somebody pulls this thing together once and for all, so the area has a world-class race. Daytona and Sebring are both nice places, and easy to get to from here, but it would be nice to have one in our backyard. Oh well, at least we have a hockey team.

Friday at 8pm: Under the Grand Chapiteau (Big Tent) next to Tropicana Field, in St. Pete Cirque Du Soleil If you’ve never seen Cirque before, I highly recommend. Seriously incredible performances. There’s nothing quite like them.

Saturday afternoon: It’s Fiesta Day in Ybor City!! A family-friendly celebration of Ybor’s magnificent ethnic heritage and culture! Make sure to get some paella.

Sunday morning: Check out the Hyde Park Art Festival Yup, it’s in Hyde Park, just south of Swann on Rome.

Sunday evening: It’s Oscar night at Tampa Theater. Dress up in your best, strut around downtown, and act like a star!

First of all, Bayshore Blvd. is not the only place in Tampa where cars & pedestrians don’t mix well. 40th St., Kennedy, Dale Mabry, Brandon Blvd., and the main thoroughfare by your house each have their problems. Walking anywhere downtown (at least during weekdays) – even at the crosswalks – can be an exercise in just staying alive. I recall reading an article that Tampa is one of the worst places in the country for pedestrians, or some such. So, to focus on the latest Bayshore incident seems to show some favoritism, at the very least.

Now comes the news that 41% of the speeders caught on Bayshore are the local residents in those neighborhoods. What??! The locals complain about the speeders (they complain about daredevil walkers/runners/joggers/skaters too), and the first thing the task force finds, is that these evil speeders live right there in the Bayshore area.

We don’t need new signs. We don’t need speed bumps. We don’t need more task forces. There could be a sidewalk on the resident side of Bayshore. There could be one or two more places for peds to cross. And definitely give the speeders more, higher tickets. But for the most part, people in all parts of town need to get off the phone, slow down, and pay attention when driving OR walking. We’re all in this together.

According to this article, there are more than 105 million parking spaces in the United States. I bet your car is probably in one of them right now. And at the end of every day, people are found wandering around, looking for their car. Of course, in Florida, it’s mostly the tourists who are roving aimlessly. Not only do they fail to remember where they parked, but they forget what make, model, and even what color car they rented. If you’re a local, and you see these people, there are two reasons you should help ‘em out.

1. You’ll have a great story to tell your friends & family, with great laughs at the expense of those snowbirds. And
2. Even though they cut you off, drive 15 mph below the speed limit, and generally increase your commute time, they really do spend a lot of money here – we want them to come back.

Orlando’s airport does not help:

One day in 1998, rows and floors at Orlando’s airport garage were renumbered without notice. (Level 3 became level 1; row G became E.) Hundreds of people returning from out of town roamed the structure, assuming that their cars had been stolen. Retiree Jim Hobbs spent an hour looking for his car. “I thought, ‘Good God, I’m in the Twilight Zone,’ ” he recalls.

This story includes some Tampa parking lot “wayfinders” detail on the back page of the World section of the print edition Tribune this morning, but I couldn’t find the article on trib’s website.

The Florida Strawberry Festival opens today in Plant City, the “Winter Strawberry Capital of the World.” Make sure you go over there the next couple of weeks. And since you’re there, and you are going to have some Strawberry Shortcake, please stop by St. Clement’s church’s “Build Your Own Strawberry Shortcake” booth in the main hall. The strawberries used in this dessert are true, authentic Plant City strawberries. You can build your own personal shortcake at high as you want, and they’ll still top it off with one more huge strawberry. Don’t forget to say hi to my Nana & Pepére.

Go to Ybor City on a Sunday in the early evening. Break into one of the nightclubs. Prop open the doors with anything handy. Pull a table and two chairs out onto the sidewalk. Grab a bottle of rum (it’s Gasparilla season!), some snacks & some smokes. Sit down at the table, and invite any passersby to join you for some lively conversation. Wait for the police to show up. More details here.