Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Three local kids are top-ten finalists in Pillsbury’s “Kids Bake it fun” contest. From Valrico: 13 year old Danielle’s Nutty Toffee Hedgehog. From St. Petersburg: Funshine Cake, invented by 14 year old Laura and another from Valrico: Jeepers Creepers chocolate cake from Tyler, 12.

Each of the kids have already qualified to win $500. The grand prize winner gets $25,000. Please go vote for one of them right now.

Chris Thomas passed away this morning. Chris was the sports anchor for local NBC affiliate NewsChannel 8 for many, many years. He was the afternoon sports talk show host for 620am WDAE, and referred to himself as “the mediocre sports hunk.” He was a huge proponent of “unity in the community.” He will be sorely missed in this community. Please send good thoughts and prayers out to his family, including his seven year old daughter.

Tune in to 620 AM radio, or listen on the internet; his coworkers and friends are giving him quite a tribute this morning. A fund is being set up for his daughter - check back here and at www.620wdae.com for further info.

So, you found a good article/blurb/quote in the New York Times. And you want to link to it in your blog. Alas, the Times is subscription-based. Well, Sullivan found a way to link to a diary/blog post or just read the paper without signing up. You’ll have to scroll down to the end of this post to find it, but it’s there.

By the way, I recommend you put Sullivan’s diary on your reading list – at least for a while. He’s a homeless guy living in Tampa, and has quite a unique perspective on things. Some of the stuff in there is just incredible.

Deb notes a study done recently on highway bottlenecks was highlighted on the Today Show this morning. According to the study, Tampa has the 16th worst highway bottleneck where I-275 and I-4 converge near downtown. I used to drive this every day, and it does slow things down considerably. However, right this moment, construction crews are out there fixing the entire intersection. Hopefully, we’ll be off the list next time.

By the way, take a look at the rank of the worst bottlenecks nationwide. I did not realize that other cities gave nicknames to their traffic problem areas. The Tampa intersection, long known as “Malfunction Junction,” is listed there, as well as some other great names, and in some cases, the nicknames bring up a quite vivid picture.

Some of my favorites: Phoenix has both the “Stack” and the “Mini-Stack.” In L.A., they drive through the “Orange Crush.” Atlanta has a “Spaghetti Junction,” while Vegas has the “Spaghetti Bowl.” Yummmm, pancakes, orange drink and pasta.

Yesterday, Joe over at First-n-Main noted several articles written by his associates in various places around the country, each pertaining to Joe’s preferred topic: urban growth and development. I am also interested in the subject, in that it offers a number of ways for one to compare cities. The last article he points to written by Heidi Stout for the Portland Business Journal/MSNBC is interesting, especially since it specifically addresses the significance (or rather, insignificance) of some national rankings, and comparing cities.

If you have read this space before, you know that I personally love these types of rankings. And I especially love mentioning them when Tampa compares favorably. And as a side note, I will also note here when any rankings are unfavorable for Tampa.

Anyway, Heidi notes that the Portland Development Commission tries to compare Portland to “similar areas, such as Minneapolis, Austin, Boise, Sacramento, Phoenix, San Jose, San Diego and Seattle.” When compared to the “clusters” mentioned last week in this entry, you may remember that Portland was said to be most similar to Denver, Orlando, Salt Lake City, and, yup, Tampa.

So, what does it all mean? Perhaps nothing, but it does show that, depending on your point of view, similar is sometimes different in some cities and may not necessarily be similar to the similarities in other cities. Or something similar to that.

Well, that and Joe’s got a great site.

OK… I’m a sports fan. More specifically, I’m a Tampa Bay sports fan. For this reason alone, I don’t like Philadelphia. Although I’ve never been there, the stories of Philly fans make them seem just ruthless. But also, their teams have traditionally beaten our teams. Until recently, anyway.

The Eagles beat the Buccaneers in the playoffs in 2000 and 2001. The Flyers beat the Lightning in the 1996 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Although the Bucs finally beat the Eagles when it counted during the 2002 playoff season, it is still nice to see this headline today: Lightning sweep the season series from the Flyers 4-0

Wow.

Not sure what else to say. Maybe “This is a clusterfuck.” The Memorial Causeway Bridge, which one day will take you from downtown Clearwater to Clearwater Beach, has run into another problem.

First of all, let me tell you, the bridge is needed. The existing drawbridge is too small and stops traffic for most boats. This new bridge is to fly higher, allowing vessels to pass underneath, without disrupting traffic.

Construction began on the new bridge in February of 2002. Later that year, inspectors found that some parts of the scaffolding had buckled, causing the bridge to sink about a foot. That couldn’t be fixed, so they had to blow up that part of the bridge in December of ’02. Then earlier this month, another part of the bridge fell approximately 7 inches – again from faulty scaffolding. The Florida Department of Transportaion (DOT) and the construction crews called a press conference for yesterday, and media members were expecting to hear about how they were going to fix this problem. After all, the grand opening (originally scheduled for December of ’03) is set for April 17.

But the DOT had a surprise announcement: Four concrete columns holding up the highest section of the state’s new Memorial Causeway Bridge are riddled with cracks. Furthermore, the problem is so serious, crews might need to tear down those supports and start over.

The seven inch buckling problem is nothing compared to this. Needless to say, they won’t be finished by April, or hell, July, even. Shit, they might not ever get this thing finished.

DOT has not finished investigating, but early reports seem to suggest the builder, Canadian based PCL Civil Constructors will take the fall. After winning the contract, they redesigned the construction and used a cheaper plan, to save the state (and themselves) money. PCL (or rather, I imagine their insurance company) will pay for any cost overruns. What a clusterfuck.

PS: PCL is also working on the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway in Tampa, and the Ringling Causeway in Sarasota

Random musings while out and about in Eastern Hillsborough County…

The expansion of the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway continues to move along. I recently had the opportunity to drive along the far eastern end, at what is called the “Brandon Parkway.” It’s a beautiful street, as yet uncluttered by retail signs, power lines, or much traffic. There’s a great pathway paved alongside for skating, rollerblading, jogging, and walking, including several places for them to sit on benches, and just relax. Sound wonderful? It is. Of course, I always have to find the ridiculous side of every issue, so here it is: There is no place for said joggers & skaters to park. That’s right, no parking lot. Mr. & Ms. Jogger are going to have to park on Lumsden Rd. at the Waffle House or something, and risk their lives to even GET TO the parkway. Listen, it really is nice – Wifey and I were driving along, talking about skating there, as if it were Bayshore Blvd. But, c’mon. I mean, if you are going to have a place for runners, etc., they will need to get there somehow. This is Tampa Bay. They are gonna have to drive. This, in turn, means that they’ll have to park too. People – you have to finish the thought.

Plant City is installing new manhole covers. Big deal, huh? Well here’s the punch line. There are no manholes (menhole?) to cover!!! They are going to be used as decoration only. HA! Well, at least these people don’t have to finish the thought, it’s obvious there was no thought to start with.

Some people in Valrico (lets call them the Valricans, k?) have been complaining that the train makes a lot of noise when making its way through their neighborhood. By law, the train has to blow its horn when nearing a street crossing. Now the neighbors want to change the law. When I was a child, I first learned to call the trains “choo-choos”. I am pretty certain that the reason we called them choo-choos was because that’s the sound their horn makes when passing through. Do ya think that maybe perhaps the Valricans should have been expecting this kind of noise when they bought their friggin’ house??! The tracks (and trains) have been there for many many years. Sheesh.

DebWire notes an excellent series running in the St. Pete Times. In a nutshell, the housing market in Tampa Bay (and nationwide, really) has been on an upswing for the past five years. In fact, the price of a home in the Tampa Bay area has soared in recent years, far outpacing inflation, the stock market and personal incomes.

No wonder then, that when beginning to look for a house 2 years ago, it seemed the amount of house we could afford kept coming down each month. Luckily, we jumped a little earlier than first anticipated, and got our current house at about 105K. Sixteen months later, similar houses in our neighborhood are selling for 130K.

Tampa Bay area rankings:
Percentage change in median home price since 1998
1. Nassau-Suffolk, NY 107%
2. San Diego, CA 97%
18. Sarasota, FL 66%
26. Tampa-St. Pete-Clearwater 55%

Price of median home in 3rd Q 2003
1. San Francisco, CA $560,200
17. Denver, CO $237,900
64. Tampa-St. Pete-Clrw $138,600