Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

We agree to meet at MacDinton’s, since that’s pretty much THE place to watch a big-time soccer match in Tampa — and for a Chelsea-bred Brit, her soccer-loving Yank husband, and me (who dabbled in high school footy a bit) the debut of David Beckham in the United States is as big-time as it gets in a non-World Cup year. I mean, this is Becks. They made a movie with his name in it that didn’t even have anything to do with him. He’s married to that lamp pole with basketballs strapped to it.

Mac’s is sparsely populated with skinny girls in bikini tops and skirts surrounded by guys wearing very expensive sunglasses. They regard me with… they don’t really regard me at all. We settle in at the outside bar with our pints only to find the televisions all switched to boxing at 8:00. This event is precluding me from watching soccer. We inquire with the manager; he informs us they’re not showing the soccer match, because they’re showing the boxing match. On all the TVs? Is that really necessary? “They all have to be the same,” he says. Everything has to be the same, he says, and it’s South Tampa, all over again, as we gulp our pints, leave, and walk past the Taqueria (which is always, always playing music from the early 90’s, every time; tonight it’s CeCe Peniston’s “Finally”) to the Dubliner, where they’re happy to put the soccer match on, and the Devil Rays’ slaughter by the Yankees right next to it for good measure.

Friends arrive. Beer flows. A band starts playing inside the bar, but it’s not a band, really; it’s a dude with a guitar who sings and his buddy who taps a 16-key synthesizer, emulating a drumset. It’s artificial, but expensive, and it’s South Tampa all over again. I talk to a blonde woman with a ponytail, waiting in line for the bathroom, a Kate Spade bag over her shoulder. Her responses are incongruous and scattered; it is as if her brain fluid has been replaced by tonic water (with quinine). Perhaps she drives a Jetta.

The match ends. The Brit, the Yank, the other Brit, and the other Yank agree to head out to the Hard Rock for a Basic Rock Outfit show, and on the way to my car a man stops me about my “OHIO” t-shirt. “Go Buckeyes!” he says. “No, go Bobcats,” I reply. This causes a point of contention, as he was kicked out of Ohio for grades and forced to graduate from the lesser, and younger, institution in Columbus. Furthermore, the man is a big fan of OSU-founded band O.A.R. whom once played (badly) in my backyard in Athens during Palmerfest. He pronounced their name like the boating tool, and I responded back “More like ‘Oarrible.” His friend had to restrain him from punching me in the face; on south Howard, your favorite band is as sacred as your momma. And then, a phone call: the Yank’s car was towed, and they need a ride downtown to get it. It’s South Tampa all over again.

(to be continued)

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