Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Stuck at the airport? Dying for a cigarette? Well, if you still have a couple hours before your flight, you can go out the front door to have your smoke. But what if you are drunk off your ass? In that case, simply step out an emergency exit, to where the shuttles run back and forth between the terminal and airsides. When the shuttle inevitably shows up, just jump over the edge, fall down four stories, and break your hips.

So, the economic impact of the Lightning in the Stanley Cup Finals has struck home. The Calgary Tourism Board set up shop in Lykes Gaslight Square downtown. They were giving away free pancakes flapjacks & sausage for lunch. They’re pretty tasty, but since it’s about a thousand degrees outside, more people were clamoring for the water. Mayor Pam and a couple of the Gasparilla Pirates showed up. I don’t think she brought up the bridge-building fiascos. (By the way, these people were giving out food for free – right in front of the Mayor; I wonder if they filed the proper permits.)

So, what did I learn about Calgary? They wear white hats. They give away white hats. Apparently they like their white hats. Also, the Calgary Stampede is a big festival held every year (there don’t seem to be any pirates involved). It seems 17th Av. might be something like Ybor City. And they have pretty excitable hockey fans. That’s about it. John found that Calgary does have something in common with Tampa – they too are home to a bunch of wrestlers.

Anyway, thank you Canada for the free flapjacks; they were delish. Good luck getting some tourists from here. No disrespect to the CTB, but before visiting that great country again, I probably will wait until Canada moves to the Caribbean.

A carved wooden horse accompanies the Calgary Tourism Board (along with free flapjacks) to downtown Tampa 

Mayor Pam wants to increase city occupational license taxes, for beefed-up enforcement that could “help police shut down massage parlors and lingerie modeling shops that operate as fronts for prostitution.” But don’t forget: Iorio has already created an entire new “creative” branch of city government, and someone has got to pay for all of these new salaries, not to mention the finder’s fee for the “Director of Arts and Cultural Affairs” (the fire chief or police chief searches are apparently not as important, so she did not need a professional “finder”). Hey, I’m all for exploring ways to help this great city grow, but she has jumped on this creative trend, in the HOPES (no proof) that it will bring more business. But harassing adult businesses that pose no threat to the city (and help the economy), and raising taxes on those that are just trying to make a living is not the answer. If anything, lower taxes will attract more business. In fact, today The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) announced plans to relocate here to Tampa (bringing 500 well-paying jobs), based in part on $1.5 million in local tax breaks, and another $4.4 million in state breaks. Together, small businesses make up a bigger piece of this economic pie; don’t they deserve the tax breaks too?

Mayor Pam, follow your own lead – you are making those that want public money to come up with their part of the bargain first. Let’s see some positive financial gain from your creative moves before you start making us pay for them. You’ve spent enough money on this “creative” experiment, without any return (yet). Don’t raise the taxes on these small businesses – you will break their backs.

Recent Tampa-area blog finds:

Procrastinator’s Daily Briefing has changed names and sites to blOgax, but retains his Bolt-O-Meter and Storm-O-Meters. He found the time-consuming, but hilarious scammer comeuppance P-P-P-Powerbook story.

Take a look at Jim Studnicki’s site He writes a lot about Corvettes, computer code, and the Civil War. Recently featured high-quality color pictures of Pirate’s Cove at Raymond James Stadium from TerraServer.

Brett from My Addled Brain is skeptical about asteroid drilling robots.

Josh over at A Beautiful Accident shares his view on national and state politics. Oh, and American Idol injustices.

Heidi calls her computer (and her webpage) PissyPants. She writes a personal blog, and sometimes offers very entertaining stuff.

Patrick is Parannoying. He wonders about the American Egg Board.

And, finally in this installation, The East Coast JAP (great pic of Tampa on the entry page, btw) wants to know why the FCC allows CNN and NPR can show a beheading, but sexual talk is disallowed.

Sometimes I sure can be stupid. I tried to have an intelligent discussion about the International Peoples Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) with Norwood, but he didn’t want a dialogue. He preferred to lecture me, spout tired (and useless) rhetoric and suggest that I’m a racist. It’s my fault, of course. He baited me, and I jumped right in with both feet. And although he published my entire email, he still managed to take statements out of context. But even more frustrating, he put words in my mouth and made some ghastly assumptions about me, which led to the racist insinuations.

What’s really irritating is that this subject is so important, and I’m so damn stubborn (stupid?), that I’m actually thinking about responding to him again, knowing full well it is a futile cause. Perhaps I’ll just make my thoughts more clear right here – I feel I should at least defend myself, lest a “no response” leads some to believe his suppositions are correct (as has been the case elsewhere recently).

For the record:
I’m not convinced drug laws are racist, but I’m not certain they are not. I’d be willing to listen to any arguments on either side. I am certain that non-violent crimes such as these should not result in prison time. If I were to come to the conclusion that those laws are racist, I couldn’t (and I don’t) simply “shrug my shoulders.” The point I tried (and miserably failed) to make is that until we get those laws changed, the cops will keep arresting and imprisoning.

I accused InPDUM of being segregationist. Norwood took this to mean “anti-white.” I resent that implication, and stand by my comments that in this community in which we all share, any kind of segregation would be a step backwards. Furthermore, Norwood notes my opposition of segregation and assumed I meant integrated but with only whites in charge. As you can see for yourself, I have not written nor implied any such thing.

Listen: this country, state, region, city, neighborhood has a long way to go to achieve what many call “American equality.” I can’t stand the fact that as of 2004, we as a society have not come further along in that endeavor. But violence, whining, preaching, incorrect assumptions, and accusing people you do not know of racism certainly won’t help in the effort. Norwood, you obviously are very passionate about this subject – as well you should be. But if you want to make a difference, I suggest you try building the support you need to get the laws changed, instead of just bitching about it. And it might help if you listened once in a while. You might find that we have similar goals in mind, and because of that, I can’t understand why you would want to attack me personally – that gets you nowhere and does not promote your cause…

The Florida Legislature recently approved another dozen license plates. That brings the sum total of all different styles of Florida plates to about 1,376,982. Ridiculous. I originally thought the idea silly, but it has gone beyond that to plain stupid. The license plate collectors will never catch up. One of them, Florida Pl8s, is on the lookout for plates that have been approved, but not yet made it to the streets. There are so many plates, that it is difficult, if not impossible to determine that any particular plate is even from Florida.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh. Because of the influx of new drivers each year, American Digest suggests a “Big-Ass Vanity Plates Program”: one loooong license plate with 250 numbers/letters on each one. Now that I think about it, we should actually have MORE plates. The state can require six plates on every car, that way the state (and some of those obscure causes) will get more of our hard-earned money. Even better, forget all about those small numbers on the plate, and identify cars simply by the combination of Florida tags they have. For instance, my license plate could be: Bucs, USF, Lightning, Florida Arts, Devil Rays and, uh…, oh what the hell, Wildflower, just cuz it’s got crazy colors. And you could get a clearer picture of other drivers on the road, such as the Toyota Prius with the Conserve Wildlife, Everglades, Protect Whales, Protect Dolphins, Protect Panthers, and Protect Reefs tags. Or the Ford F-150 with the Big Tires and the Agriculture, United we Stand, US Marine Corps, Fish Florida, Sons of Confederate Veterans tags. Whatever… I would gladly give up my Buccaneers plate for a return to one identifiable Florida tag.

The Tribune/Tampa Bay Online is undertaking a project about Tampa. In a wacky play on words, they are calling it The Tampa Project. In it, they purport to take a look at Tampa, evaluate where we are – what we are doing well, what needs improvement, where we are going, etc. It sounds like a performance review. Anyway, The Tampa Project started Sunday, and most of these first articles had to do with growth, sprawl, and development. **note: Most of the rest of the links in this post are for popup pages, so may not work as intended by TBO. If it looks goofy, go to The Tampa Project and open from there.

As part of this first set of stories, they took a survey of residents here. Among the interesting things: 72% of Tampa area residents “Like it very much.” The majority (39%) chose the weather as the best thing about Tampa. Residents think the schools, government, and mass transportation here sucks compared to other cities. Asked how proud residents are of Tampa on a scale of 1-10 (10 being extremely proud, 1 not proud at all), 80% chose 7 or higher. This Tampa Survey reports some valuable insight, but pales in comparison to the survey compiled by the Houston Chronicle for their area. The Chronicle has been doing this for 22 years. Here’s a look at the Chronicle’s questions, and here’s the result over 22 years (30 pages, pdf). Highlights of the 22 year trends are on a power point presentation. Now THAT’s a project.

Anyway, back to Tampa: Also included was a set of recent rankings, and how Tampa compares to other metro areas. You know I love that stuff.

What else… Oh, there’s a very lame Tampa Quiz that suggests how well you know Tampa. Pretty stupid questions, if you ask me. I scored a seven. Did I mention the quiz is lame?

They also want you to send them a postcard (photograph) of something that captures “Tampa.” Go ahead - send them a snapshot of the spaceship on Dale Mabry, an endless set of traffic cones, or perhaps a young person, passed out in their puke in Ybor.

Perhaps most interesting are the readers comments about Tampa and the series. Most comments (so far) point to downtown’s elitist bent and (surprise!) mass transportation sucks. Others just don’t get it: One happily brags that she lives on a street with no through traffic, and then proceeds to complain about congestion on the main roads. NIMBY personified.

Upcoming articles in the series promise to look at history, power centers, leaders, sport, the waterfront, race, and arts. I’ll attempt to read all of it as it gets published, and try to share some of the interesting things here. But you should at least go take a look.