Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Congratulations are in order for Tampa Bay Ghost Tours.

VISIT FLORIDA® announced today the final of several winners for the 2007 Flagler Awards, the organization’s statewide hospitality awards program. The program is designed to recognize the outstanding tourism marketing achievements of Florida’s innumerable travel businesses, destinations and attractions.

Best of Show in three budget categories were presented yesterday at the 2007 Florida Governor’s Conference on Tourism at the Boca Raton Resort & Club. The top winners were presented the program’s highest honor, the “Henry.”

Tampa Bay Ghost Tours in Pinellas County won a Henry in the category of “Marketing Budgets of less than $100,000″ because of their great website. And they did do a nice job on it - go check out allthebesthaunts.com.

The annual awards are open to all individuals, private businesses and not-for-profit organizations offering a tourism product or service that promote tourism to or within Florida.

Congratulations again to Pinellas’ Tampa Bay Ghost Tours and the award winning website

Is this the definitive Tampa news story of all time?

Maybe! After all, it features a former professional wrestler, a county commissioner (the same guy, actually), a chain restaurant and a lawsuit. If only there had been some of our world famous adult entertainers involved. Well, it does have a happy ending…

Commissioner Blair’s Suit Against Carrabba’s ‘Amicably Settled’

(Cross posted at Ridiculously inconsistent trickle of consciousness)

The phone rang.

“Judy, it’s Ann. There’s an iguana in your son’s back yard.”

Huh?

“An iguana.”

Ohhhh. I wanna see. I’ll be right over.

I was thinking something big. Not Monitor Lizard size, but dog-size at least - and they do get that big, according to Wikipedia. My son and his family live across the street from me and next door to Ann, so Ann’s call was not surprising.

I went into Ann’s back yard, rather than my son’s. If it was a dog-sized iguana, I wanted to look, but not touch. Lizards I can deal with. Catch them in the house and toss them outside so Lilly, the Great Hunter, won’t kill them. But not a dog-size iguana. Ann stood in her back yard with a broom in her hand. She was ready, she said, to fight off the beast.

Where is it?

She pointed to my son’s dock. “Over there.”

I looked. Where?

“OVER THERE!”

I looked again but still saw no beast. From the way she talked on the phone, I thought the iguana was at least eating the orchids or attacking the screened porch. But I still couldn’t see him - or her.

Where?

OVER THERE UNDER THE PADDLE BOAT.

Ah. There was the beast. His - or her - bright green head peeked out from underneath the overturned paddle boat. He - or she - must have sensed we were looking at her - or him. He - or she - crawled out from under the boat and trotted down the sea wall to another neighbor’s house.

The beast was hardly a creature to fear - at least individually. It was a little bigger than the one in the photo here. But not much. It will grow, however. And given that the green iguana has become an invasive species in Florida - particularly along the gulf coast including in Pinellas County - he - or she - will multiply.

Great - another destructive invasive species attacking the area. Too bad they don’t eat punk trees or Brazillian pepper.

Crossposted at Judy Hill Online.

30, of Apopka, Fla.

assigned to the 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.; died Aug. 21 near Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his unit during combat operations.

Britt graduated from Lake Mary High School in 1994. He played soccer for the school and enjoyed martial arts and surfing… “The beach was something that would relax him”

From the Brandon Community Advantage Center:

Community Input Needed for Brandon Advantage Center

A meeting is being held on Monday, September 10, 2007, to obtain public input on the planned Brandon Community Advantage Center. The community center is envisioned to meet the Brandon community’s needs for community space, educational and cultural facilities, as well as a Special Needs Hurricane shelter.

Residents of the greater Brandon Community are invited to attend the meeting on September 10th which will be held at Center Place Fine Arts & Civic Association, 619 Vonderburg Dr., Brandon, FL 33511 from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m.

At the meeting, residents will hear about initial findings related to potential uses that could occur within the facility. In order to assess the needs and wants of the community a brief questionnaire will be distributed at the meeting.

For more information regarding the project and to complete the survey on line, residents can visit the project website at www.brandoncommunityadvantagecenter.org.

Rock Report: Jason Isbell @ Crowbar, Ybor City

Designated Driver. Music to my ears when the show is across the bridge. The wife volunteered to do the driving duties, so I broke the seal on a bottle of Beam early for this show. Gone solo or not, Isbell, in my opinion, is still part of the Trucker family and half a bottle deep is the best way to start a night at the rock show. Common decency dictates the whole deal. The last time the Truckers were in town, they played to a packed Jannus Landing, and on the way to the show I wondered how that would translate for Isbell. The crowd was significantly reduced compared to the Jannus show, but it was still bigger than most for an artist touring on their debut cd.

Jason and his band took the stage with the familiar Jack Daniels bottle in hand, and in that single moment I knew everything was gonna be okay. Opening the show with “Brand New Kind of Actress”, the same track that opens the cd, gave me a moment of worry. Ever since I saw Social Distortion play their new cd track by track, in order, and then walk off stage, I have worried when a show opens with the first track from the current album. Five minutes later, though, all my worries were squashed as Jason started picking the familiar opening riffs of “Decoration Day”… and the crowd went wild. From there, the band played a good mix of songs from Sirens, spiced with DBT familiars, and a few covers to round out the set. The crowd favorites were obviously Jason’s old DBT tracks “Outfit” and “Never Gonna Change”. Walking in, I wanted to hear two songs, my very favorite Isbell song, “Goddamn Lonely Love”, and my favorite track from the new cd “Try”. He managed to get both into the set, so I went home drunk and happy.

In closing, I would like to type a few lines about the band itself. Ever since Jason went solo, I have wondered about the 400 Unit. Was it really Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, or was it Jason Isbell and a revolving cast of players that were gonna heretofore be known as the 400 Unit? While I will not pretend to actually know anything beyond what anyone can see, standing out in front of a stage and watching them play, they certainly seemed to be a band and not a front guy with some hired guns. They were tighter than I expected them to be, and guitarist Browan Lollar even got to take over lead singer duties during a rather spirited cover of The Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer”. Speaking of Lollar, whew, did Jason find himself a gem in that guy! That kid has got so much stage presence and charisma oozing out of him that I found it hard to watch the rest of the band at times. Oh yeah, and the boy can play the hell out of a guitar as well.

All in all, I was really happy with Jason’s creation. I hope he keeps this lineup for the next cd and I look forward to hearing what Jason does now that this has his undivided attention.

Jason Isbell - Brand New Kind of Actress
Jason Isbell - Try

Drive-By Truckers - Never Gonna Change
Drive-By Truckers - Goddamn Lonely Love

Pictures of the show are available here.

Tommy wrote last year about how Forbes ranked Tampa-St. Pete #35 (of 40) on their list of “best cities to be single.”

The most important factor in this list is the number of singles, or percentage of people 15 or older and never married. Only Las Vegas has fewer than us.

Forbes’ 2007 ratings are here, and there’s great news: we’ve improved to #32 (of 40)! This is despite us moving to dead last in number of singles (only 27% of us are unmarried) and 35th in cost of living. The new report is on the tails of our recent ranking as worst on their list of best cities for young professionals.

The city ranks 32nd for young professional concentration, last for its never-married population, second-to-last for big and small businesses and, to top it all off, has a high cost of living for what a recent grad can expect to earn.

Well that’s not very nice. Clearly Forbes never took my mother’s advice about keeping quiet if you don’t have any constructive criticism. The only categories where Tampa-St. Pete scored above average on the “Best for singles” rankings were “coolness” and “job growth.”

We didn’t even break the top 20 in drunkenness!

Does anyone care? Or are the residents just happy to lose our fantastic museums and theatre groups and charities, the sorts of things that are backed by young, energetic people? Is Tampa-St. Pete the next Boca Raton?

You know that Bucs wide receiver David Boston was charged with DUI.

But did you see the video of his DUI examination? I know - we are not supposed to fall asleep at a green light. But I agree with Tom Korun, who says Boston doesn’t look inebriated.

It’s a long video, but take a look, and tell me what you see there.

The Tampa Port Authority is going after a fifth cruise ship, and hopes to have one in by 2010 to sail alongside the other four.

The existing cruise ship lineup includes Carnival Cruise Lines Carnival Legend, Carnival Cruise Lines Inspiration, Royal Caribbean’s Grandeur of the Seas, and Holland America’s Veendam. Holland America brought the Veendam here in 1982, and that ship continues to call Tampa its home port.

Tampa’s very first cruise line was the Bahama Cruise Line. The Veracruz began sailing from Tampa in 1979. Check the 1982 prices for sailing to the Western Caribbean:

Bahama Cruise Line VERACRUZ Capacity 704 passengers, outdoor pool, international cuisine. Nov. 27 - Seven-night cruise from Tampa, calling at Cancun, Cozumel and Key West. (Additional departures almost every Saturday.) From $495 to $785.

From $495 for 7 nights. But in 1982, The Love Boat was free on TV.

Did any of you take the Veracruz or any other cruises out of the Port of Tampa?