Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Creative Loafing (nee Weekly Planet) announced the winners of their annual Best of the Bay for 2006.  I’m happy to announce that once again, Sticks of Fire has won an award.

You may recall last year Sticks was chosen by the CL (nee WP) staff for Best Local Website 2005, and that we earned a runner-up slot in reader voting for best blog (behind the now-defunct Midnight Culmination and the still-defunct bayciti).  We remain quite proud of that, displaying our alien at every opportunity.

This year Sticks of Fire made it to first place in the Loaf’s (nee Planet’s) readers poll for Best Blog 2006! (I had NOTHING to do with either of the 2005 blogs in front of me just… uh… disappearing).  You can be sure to see the CL/WP time traveler showing up now and again this year.

Runners up in reader voting include a couple of very worthy sites. Congratulations go to both Seminole Heights Blog and the Tampa Book Buzz.

Of course there are some other sites that the Creative staff (nee Weekly) offered as a notch above as well. We offer a laurel and hearty congratulations to the Best New Political Blog, The State of Sunshine.  Said the Loafers (nee Planeteers):

This former USF student body president and one-time candidate has an incisive eye for the guts of political campaigning, and he brings it in every post he writes. In one, Johnson broke down the current Florida legislature races. In another, he gave a behind-the-scenes account of how John Carassas won a House seat against a better-financed opponent in 2002. This is serious inside-baseball, political junkie stuff, but even though Johnson is a Republican, he doesn’t let ideology get in the way of ’splaining some politics. Read the Times’ Buzz blog to get the breaking political news; read The State of Sunshine to figure out what it means. stateofsunshine.blogspot.com. Unfortunately, Johnson is on hiatus from the blog while working a new job, but his anonymous replacement has been pretty good, too.

Last, and certainly not least, SoHo Tampa was named Best Local Cultural Website. Inside the blurb, editors at the “multimedia company” (nee alternative weekly) also give Sticks another compliment:

SoHo Tampa, the best chronicler of nightlife in the Bay area, focuses on the stretch of bars and restaurants along S. Howard Avenue. The city taking away 100 parking spaces? SoHo Tampa covered it. The latest pub crawl? The new restaurants opening? Ditto. Sure, the site is run by a marketing company and so the message is generally chamber-of-commerce upbeat, but owner Bill Sharpe is all over the SoHo scene, including updates on bartenders’ and restaurant managers’ job moves. Sharpe’s alliance with the Sticks of Fire blog will only make this website even better. http://www.sohotampa.com/.

Thanks to Creative Loafing (nee oh you know) for running the annual show and including a spot for websites (two years running now). And tons of thanks to you who voted for Sticks of Fire as Best Blog of the Bay this year.