Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

A four games to none sweep. The Sunshine State over the Great White North. In hockey. It sounds crazy, but it’s true: The Lightning beat the Canadiens 3 to 1 in the 4th game of the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs last night. The Bolts are now 8-1 this postseason. Of the seven previous teams to achieve that record (none have gone 8-0), five went to (and 3 won) the Stanley Cup Finals. This is a good team. With good fans: Side Salad notes the bandwagon is starting to fill up (Hey Jeff, don’t forget the Lightning flag atop the old City Hall!!). Boltsmag is a great source for Lightning info from a fan’s perspective. Even the visitors bureau is putting it in the face of our favorite visitors. And someone keeps sending THIS to HockeyBird. Excellent job!

For some reason, the northern hockey “experts” are not saying much about our team, only that the Habs got further than expected. The Pro-Canadien (check the last sentence of this post) Hockey Pundits had no comment last night. Off Wing Opinion blasts Martin Fennelly’s column for providing “no content,” then provides none itself. The die-hard fans at “Habs Rule” are not giving Tampa Bay much respect at all, resorting to childish rants. Wacky Canadians.

I care not to go on again about this or this. But I will point out that when they visit us here in the states, they leave their WORTHLESS/USELESS Canadian coins as (meager) tips. On the plus side, one Canadian has visited Florida recently, and is sorta starting to realize that they are, indeed, bad tippers. (Alas, the Canadian response? “Yeah, but Australians are WORSE tippers!!”)

Before I get email from angry Canadians, I’d like direct your attention to Blunted on Reality. He points out that it is perfectly acceptable to pick on and even hate our neighbor to the north this time of year. And it’s fun! However, in the interest of full disclosure, I must say that my mother is a Legal Alien from Guelph, and her francophone dad and mom came to this country from Canada, and are now full-time residents of Plant City (Pepére’s voice even sounds an awful lot like Phil Esposito’s). Besides, all the disparaging remarks aboot Canada will end very shortly. Before long we’ll be too busy ridiculing Greece. HA!

Civic Strategies has added a couple of sites to their list of “urblogs.” According to CS, urban blogs are those that are focused on a metro area, provide interesting commentary about local politics, culture or urban life. If you are interested in a particular city, and what some regular folks think about (mostly local politics in) said city, CS is the place to get your list. City urblogs that they have found include ones for Cleveland, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, San Diego (two there), and St. Louis (the city, not the hockey player). I am fortunate to be listed with them as a Tampa-centric urblog. If you know of any other urblogs, pass them on to CS.

Joe, over at First-n-Main (Orlando) also has a list of city blogs that focus mainly on transportation issues. His list includes bloggers in Washington DC, Kansas City, two in London, Los Angeles, New York City, and Spokane.

This morning, you will find good ol’ Johnny G. Lyon’s smiling face on tbo.com. A great article appears in the Carrollwood edition of Tampa Bay Online, about his restaurant, Johnny G’s, along with a picture of Johnny his own self. You may recall seeing his name in the business section of the print Tribune a couple of months ago. Good for him and his restaurant.

Which reminds me: Next week, I’ll see you at the World’s Greatest Cinco De Mayo Party at Johnny G’s. The JGLB (Johnny G. Lyon Band, of course) will be playing, and the drink and food specials (Tex-Mex is always on the menu!) will be outstanding. If you haven’t seen the JGLB in a while, or you haven’t had the chance to check out the food at Johnny G’s, which is so tasty, you could lick up the spilled drippings, then go to Johnny G’s at 5915 Memorial Hwy in Town ‘n’ Country next Wednesday evening (um, that’s May 5th for you non-spanish speaking folk). I’ll be there – make sure you say hello.

Congratulations to Hillsborough High graduate Garnell Wilds, who signed with the Washington Redskins today. Go say hello and congratulations to his dad, George, who runs the Blue Shark in Ybor City.

The (mostly) annual sales tax holiday on clothes is a popular idea. Just in time for back-to-school shopping, Florida has been allowing an annual sales tax holiday. This gives consumers a break and boosts sales for retail businesses. It costs the state only about $40 million. It’s not a good idea to give a temporary reprieve on taxes, but this one has been going on for years, and it’s relatively harmless.

As I mentioned before, it’s not a good idea to extend a similar temporary tax break for gasoline. Gas prices are much more volatile, and reflect the simple economics of supply and demand. I could go on. But the Senate essentially rejected the $90 million gas tax break last week. But now the House has attached the gas tax break to the sales tax break.

So basically, if your idea sucks, and everyone knows it sucks, you simply make it a part of another idea that has more support. It’s the last week of the session, so time is running out to get laws passed. To make these bills (all bills) more complicated just bogs down the entire process.

By the way, not to play favorites, the Senate attached the budget cigarette tax to their version of the sales tax holiday bill. We’ll see how this plays out.

the unstoppable girlie~dervish shows a picture of the new $50 bill. It looks pretty cool.

Branille over at Sit Down and Relax has a coupon for you for a dozen free Krispy Kreme donuts. Go get some.

Prattler took an excursion to Tampa, and had a bad time. She had front row seats to the shooting at Lazy Days RV in Seffner, and had to contend with more crime in Ybor City.

Wanna check up on the construction crews at Malfunction Junction? See DOT’s ConstructionCam. You can check the traffic too!

USA Today recognized the Tampa Bay area as a leader in efforts to decrease smog.

Broadcasting & Cable notes that the Tampa area recently passed Miami as Florida’s largest TV market.

You know those commercials where the Sprint guy shows up at the right time with an easy-to-use camera phone, so you can quickly snap a picture of the sock-stealing midget or the monster in the closet? Well I had a moment like that on Saturday night. Some friends of mine were getting together at a nightclub in Pinellas to listen to a local band. I went early, to check the place out. Out from the back room comes the v.e.r.y. lovely Bartender X wearing a gold bikini-top, along with the v.e.r.y. skimpy bikini bottoms, accented with some kind of pants-thing with giant holes in the front and back. HOT. V.e.r.y. HOT. Apparently the previous Sunday, Bartender X had won third place in the bikini contest at Shepard’s on Clearwater Beach, and she wondered aloud what it would take to win first place. The club’s Sound Guy had the perfect idea, and brought the outfit there for her to wear for the next contest. She tried it on, and came from the back room to show Sound Guy how it fit. I just happened to be standing there. I did not know Bartender X or Sound Guy , and I had never been to that club before. Needless to say, I was surprised to see this display. Of course, I do not yet have a camera phone, so I can’t prove it. But the image shall stay with me for a while. Stuff like this just doesn’t happen to me often enough.

Congratulations to the Tampa Bay Lightning. The local NHL team beat the New York Islanders 4 games to 1 in the first round series with a 3-2 overtime win last Friday. Tonight begins the second round vs. the Canadiens de Montreal. On paper, the Lightning seem to have a slight edge, but as we all know they don’t play the game on paper. Therefore, we must look to other ways to anticipate the outcome.
On the Lightning’s side of the ledger:

1. Bolts go postal. USPS employees are allowed to wear Lightning garb for the duration of the playoffs.
2. Great photos of ThunderBug behind the scenes.
3. It takes 14 days for their website to come up.

On the Canadiens side:

1. They are Godless Canadians.
2. They don’t build bridges too well.
3. They invented the banana guard.

After weighing all of these factors, it really comes down the the Critical ‘I’: As long as Costas stays away from the Forum, and does not make any predictions, the Lightning have a shot.

Links courtesy of BoltsMag, Side Salad. And Bark Bark. Apologies to the Critical ‘I’.