Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

If you go to a buffet restaurant thinking “quantity over quality”, you’re much less likely to be disappointed with the experience. Such was the case with our recent visit to Hao Wah, a Chinese restaurant with a buffet-focus on S. Dale Mabry. We were in the mood for Chinese this past Friday night, but didn’t feel like doing take-out or delivery. Instead, we were looking for more of a sit-down place. Hao Wah the closest place we knew of by our house so off we went.

Hao Wah looks like your typical Chinese buffet place from the inside - lots of seating and generic Chinese decorations. The interior appears well maintained, our table was clean, and our server was friendly, which is more than I can say for most of these places. I decided to go with the buffet, while Traci ordered off the menu. In addition to the normal Chinese fare, Hao Wah also has Vietnamese dishes (pho beef noodle soups, mi-egg noddles etc) available off the menu. Traci ordered sweet and sour chicken and chicken fried rice (there was only pork rice on the buffet).

For around ten bucks per person for dinner, it’s hard to argue with Hao Wah’s buffet. Yes, some of the items tasted a little dried out and had probably been sitting out for too long, but you get what you pay for. Like it or not, buffets generally require a “quantity over quality” mindset. Indeed, if I had paid fifteen or twenty bucks for the buffet, I probably wouldn’t have been a happy camper. I’ve been to Chinese buffets before with bigger selections (I still miss the Chinese buffet place near where I used to live in Altamonte Springs), but Hao Wah is solid. Based on my sampling of what Traci ordered, the food off the menu does appear to be a cut above the buffet, as you’d expect.

I’d put Hao Wah in the same category as I do Jimbo’s on Kennedy for barbecue - not a bad choice in a pinch, but not the best in town either. To Hao Wah’s credit, I did think their buffet was better than China Garden Super Buffet in Britton Plaza off Dale Mabry. We went there once a year ago and said never again. Local Chinese restaurants I’ve seen mentioned highly include China Yuan on Armenia and the more upscale TC Choy’s on SOHO for dim sum on Sundays.

So what’s your favorite local Chinese place? A chain everyone already knows about like PF Chang’s doesn’t count and no lectures please on how Chinese buffets are all a waste and unhealthy!

As a side note, I couldn’t locate a health inspection report on Hao Wah, which is probably just as well. Even well-regarded TC Choy’s had a whopping 14 critical violations on its last inspection!

Bottom-line: Hao Wah is certainly not gourmet, but if you’re in the mood for inexpensive Chinese food, this place isn’t a bad choice. The focus is on the buffet, but you can also order off a menu.

Traffic was snarled last night around 8:30pm (Tuesday) on Hillsborough Avenue as a westbound car careened across the median, three lanes of oncoming traffic, a light pole, a FENCE, and impacted in our apartment building and into a neighbor’s kitchen.

My building. Like right next door to my place. Eight feet further and the car would have lodged in my 18 month old son Jaxon’s crib. Needless to say, my wife, an overly nervous mommy to begin with, was not amused.

Not seen any media coverage of the crash, though there were helicopters overhead. The car mainly went through the window frame of the kitchen in the apartment adjacent to mine. SO damage to the building’s structure seems minimal. The car was crushed by the big metal streetlight pole. The driver had minor injuries.

The residents of the apartment were in their bedroom at the time of impact and also escaped injury. However, the woman who lived there had just been released from the hospital with heart problems. So they took her in as a precaution.

Crazy, man!

Editor’s note: ATTENTION ALL STICKS WRITERS! Please be ready for some disaster to your home. Joel’s next-door neighbor had a fire. Now Dave’s next-door neighbor has a drive-thru. Bad things happen in threes.

Shortly after I wrote about the found clips of early 90’s Tampa public access Superstar Sondra Prill, I got a call from Trib reporter Greg Williams. He wanted to know if I had any luck in locating the musical wonder. I had not, but being the good reporter that Greg is, he chased the story relentlessly. He dug up everything he could find about Sondra, and the article came out early this month. And Greg Williams was rewarded for his efforts.

The Cult Of Sondra made it into the top five of the Tampa Tribune’s Most Viewed stories in February 2007. Greg did so much work, TBO was compelled to create keyword Sondra with links to all her you tube videos, plus some bonus features, including Daniel Ruth’s 1992 review of Prill’s Opus Magnum, “Sultry Sondra: A Musical Fantasy,” and scan it as a pdf file. From Williams article:

On Friday, Oct. 16, 1992, Prill, then 22, took her act to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. She rented theater space for a live performance of “Sultry Sondra: A Musical Fantasy,” billed as a charity event to benefit relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Andrew.

And from Ruth’s review (pdf):

Ticket prices for her show ranged up to $50, a testimony to a rather intriguing assessment of her talents considering recent (and slightly better known) TBPAC performers such as Al Green and Patti LaBelle charged a maximum ticket price of $25.

Of course Green and LaBelle lack Sultry Sondra’s unique way of handling a melody — a cross between the dulcet sound of setting one’s hair on fire and sticking one’s hand into a garbage disposal.

The unfortunate part is that Sondra remains elusive. Googling her name shows over 10,000 hits, and yes, there is the Wikipedia entry (based soley on Greg’s column, but still) and the Official Web Shrine of the Sultry Sondra Prill. But either Sondra is internet-free, hasn’t searched her own name, disappeared, or in the worst possible case, no longer wants to be in the public eye, and hopes for the entire thing to go away.

I remember the first time I ever went red. I was 16 and obsessed with My-So Called Life, and up to that point, copying Claire Danes’ hair color was one of the first real life decisions I was able to make for myself. Even though I didn’t see the color whenever I closed my eyes, I could feel it inside - it burned through me. I was suddenly a little bolder with everything I did.

I think of this when I ‘m quick to judge people, especially other women, who want to get boob jobs and face lifts. We live in a country where despite the insane costs of health care, lots of people are putting lots of money into expensive, dangerous elective surgery just to make themselves feel more like themselves.

So what’s the difference between plain Jane becoming a bottle blonde and Steve Stanton becoming a woman? His mentality will certainly change - he’s freeing himself from a life time of living a lie. He’s becoming the person he always knew he was. He’s courageous because he knew he’d be judged. The worst he could imagine happening probably is.

An entire city “lost confidence” in him because he made one of the hardest decisions anyone has ever been faced with - his decision to allow his anatomy to match who he is inside.

Most sadly ironic picture ever.

Times photo: Jim Damaske

City commissioners ended one of the most tumultuous weeks in Largo history Tuesday night by moving to fire City Manager Steve Stanton following his disclosure that he will have a sex-change operation.

Teenagers. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t choke ‘em with an electrical cord.

Well, it ain’t easy raising a teenager. Anyone who has had one knows that those kids are simply insane.

A Tampa company sells a 70-minute video called “Help, I Have a Teenager!” Has anyone ever seen the video?

This weekend, I went to an art show at a tattoo and graphic design studio called Blackout Creations (the same one Mr. Autopsy promoted).

In a lot of ways, it was the usual ‘Burg opening. There are three things you will always, always see at a St. Pete art show. The first is a crew of grubsters from good homes justifying their misery acts by going straight for the most nihilisitic piece in the room. The second is Heinz in a distractingly hot Euro-God outfit, even though he’s so Jersey it hurts under all that tailoring, and, third is lots and lots of PBR to make the ten-dollar drinks at the Independent taste better. These three things are guaranteed and the contradictions make it fun, because every one in the room is either incredibly fake or impressively self-aware.

The art was really phenomenal, too, with lots of very vivid primary colors. I liked how the knack for tattooing was so evident in the large surface area of the shapes and the heavy outlining. My favorite was called “Tomba Del Amor” and features two skeletons in wedding gear riding a cart out of a tunnel of love. I would have called it “True Love Never Dies.”

Mark got, like, instantly excited by all the popping colors and big lines. He was adorably unaware of his options when he wanted to buy a watch, but when he likes a piece of artwork, he’ll clunk down whatever amount of cash is on the sticker for it. Artists really need a guy who will support both the practical and fantastical sides of the art game, so it’s very cool.

But, then, there was a slight letdown.

“Hey, wait a minute!” he exclaimed, pointing to the corner of the frame. “Are these - prints?”

And, indeed, almost every piece in the gallery was numbered and the show’s literature only listed a few oils. The room was mainly full of giclee.

Now, I didn’t particularly have a problem with this. I think it’s nice to have the occassional show where the artists don’t trump themselves up so much that they can’t actually provide anything anyone realistically will buy. A few original oils priced in the two thousand dollar range and a smattering of watercolors around five-hundred bucks seems perfectly respectable to me when scattered in with more attainable prints for emerging art collectors, but I can see a small problem, too, because a lot of the conversation didn’t seem to recognize that the pieces weren’t originals.

So, I have to wonder, out of the healthy amount of sales I saw at nine-thirty (good for you, guys!), how many people think they bought originals and how many people didn’t even really have the awareness that it makes a difference? Maybe not too many - even when you’re only spending a couple hundred bucks on something that does absolutely nothing besides hang on the wall, you usually know what you’re getting into - and the numbering in the corner did seem like a dead give-away, but, you know, I just hope no one ends up disappointed.

‘Cause, man, Mark seemed real ready to go for something in those first thirty seconds and the art was really, really compelling.

There’s a new poll on the sidebar. Leave your vote there.

Largo City Manager Steve Stanton is prepping for a sex change. City Council is meeting tonight to discuss possible actions. Should they fire him? Or keep him on?

Tell us why in the comment area below.

If you live in Largo, and you want them to keep Steve as City Manager, you may want to let your voice be heard.