Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Besides the (very) loud music, here’s your introduction to Criss Angel > The Official Website:

Don’t miss the first LIVE episode in MINDFREAK history as Criss attempts to escape from an imploding building! Watch it LIVE on Wednesday, July 30 at 10 PM EST / 7 PM PST on A&E, or watch it LIVE here on www.CrissAngel.com!

It’s always fun to watch a building implode!  The whole “escaping death” part is just a bonus.  We find out more in the news section:

… From within a 9-story former hotel outside of Clearwater, Florida, Criss will attempt to escape a building that is loaded with explosives and set to detonate.

Clearwater!?!?  Now famous for Scientology AND Death Defying Stunts!?!?

Anyway, Angel has 3 and a half minutes to get out of handcuffs attached to a balcony railing, through three or four locked doors, and up 3 flights to the roof, where a helicopter will whisk him off to safety.

Cool.

Even cooler is the building that will host the stunt, the old Spyglass Resort Motel.  You know this place - it’s 10-story building with 100 foot mural of the hot air balloon on it.  Clearwater artist Roger Bansemer painted that mural back in 1978 (Tampa Bay’s 10 has the story of the mural). 

This place became quite the dump over the past few years, but the rooms were cheap!  That, along with many of the balconies facing the beach, the Spyglass became the perfect place for partying spring breakers.

Not everyone is impressed with Angel’s plans to escape getting blowed up.  Steve Otto says the stunt is “pretty lame.”  Ernest Hooper agrees, challenging Criss Angel to attempt to find a parking spot at Clearwater Beach in 3½ minutes on a Saturday.  Eric Snider simply says Angel is repugnant, pretentious, and unimpressive.

Good grief, ya’ll.  The dude is giving Clearwater Beach some free marketing national coverage, and BLOWING UP A BUILDING!! 

Actually, Advanced Explosives Demolition is blowing up the building, and Applied Science International created a video simulation of the implosion.

Those of you interested can watch Mindfreak on A&E tonight at 10pm, or see the webcast beginning at 9pam on AETV.com, watch it live at CrissAngel.com, or watch it live from Clearwater Beach - they will have giant screens there, too.

You gonna watch/go to this?

“The Pier” has been a landmark of downtown St. Petersburg since 1899 when Peter Demens connected the Orange Belt Railroad to a half-mile wharf. D. F. Brantley started the first Pier Pavilion in 1895, and a “Municipal Pier” debuted in 1913.  But it is the 1926 “Million Dollar Pier” (postcarded here) that long-time residents remember.

The Million Dollar Pier was the place to be - whether it was for a veteran’s meeting, a high school dance or a just getting a Coke at the drive-in. In the days before air conditioning, the way to cool off was to take a drive out to this community center pier. Cruise boats docked at the pier and during World War II so did the military ships.

The city began tearing down Million Dollar Pier in 1967, and opened today’s inverted pyramid structure in 1973.  In 1978, the city installed a laser on the third floor of the inverted pyramid, sending a “beam of green” up the pier to downtown.  It never really worked great, and was removed in the mid 80s.

The Pier got a $12 million makeover in 1988, with a lovely shade of turquoise contrasting the pale yellow building.

You may have noticed that The Pier Aquarium is looking to move off The Pier, and over to Baywalk.  It seems that after 35 years, The Pier and the building at the end of it are falling apart.  So now the city is looking for ideas on what to do with The Pier.

To do it right, some have suggested we look at other piers across the nation, such as Chicago’s Navy Pier (pictures), Santa Monica Pier (pics), and San Francisco’s Pier 39 (pics).

But maybe we ought to knock it down and replace it with a bridge to Ruskin.

You got any ideas?

The Redington Long Pier extends over 1,000 feet into the gulf. Pier owner Tony Antonious charges $2 to walk out there, and $10 to fish along the pier.

In the 4th of July edition of the St. Pete Times, Outdoor editor Terry Tomalin says he was kicked off Redington Long Pier by some tarpon fishermen.

“Hi,” I said to two anglers fishing off the end of the pier. “Are you guys in the tarpon tournament?”

“What does it look like?” one of them responded.

After a moment of awkward silence, a second angler, who also refused to give his name, asked, “Do you feel welcome?”

“Not really,” I responded.

“Good …” he said. “Time for you to leave.”

With only a notebook and pen in hand, I clearly wasn’t there to fish. Instead, I began interviewing 14-year-old tournament angler Dustin Gable of St. Petersburg about a 98-pounder that he released.

That’s when another tournament angler called the pier manager. “Get the (expletive) off the pier,” the angler told me.

Tomalin was there checking it out after another fisherman complained that he was “asked” to leave the pier.

Pier owner Tony Antonious says anyone is welcome to fish from the pier but added that the West Coast Anglers have “exclusive rights” to the “T” area at the far western end of the pier. And just who are these West Coast Gangster Anglers?

Apparently, there has been a split among local tarpon fishing enthusiasts. Used to be that when you fished for tarpon, it didn’t matter if the fish died or not. But in this day of “love all, kill nothing,” all the local tournaments switched to no-kill. St. Petersburg’s 74-year-old Suncoast Tarpon Roundup was the last local contest that went to the all-release format.

That didn’t sit well with a group of mainly pier fishermen, so the West Coast Anglers Association (BEWARE: Auto-Audio!) began their own brand new Killing is OK With Us tournament. They want you to know that…

Florida’s tarpon population is not considered endangered because most anglers who target the species have been practicing catch-and-release for more than a decade. State regulations require anglers to purchase a tarpon tag to kill a tarpon. .

So the West Coast Trawl & Brawl aim to protect their turf (& surf!?!) as well as the right to murder the tarpon they catch:

“We kill tarpon,” said Paul Herrington, a member of the West Coast Anglers, the group hosting the Redington Shores tournament. “That is what we do.”

This brainiac also explains the “exclusive” rights to the pier: “It costs $150 for members to enter the tournament, and we give (Antonious) 15 percent of all the entry fees.”

So pier owner Tony Tony lets some chuckleheads police his property for a couple hundred bucks. And then he wants to pretend he’s not responsible:

“I go down there when I get a complaint, but the troublemakers are always gone. Nobody will tell me anything. It is like a mafia line.”

This is the same guy who complained that the city was out to get him AFTER he attempted to strong-arm Redington Shores into buying the pier for an inflated price.

This is nothing but a bunch of fishin’ hillbillies defending their right to kill and enforcing their turf while a greedy pier owner claims that his hands are tied. Losers all around.

Last week, Wayne Garcia found that Tampa was unflatteringly featured on the Colbert Report in a bit about that big flag at I-4 and I-275. If you haven’t seen the video, check it out.

GOOD Magazine wants you to pimp your hometown:

GOOD Magazine | Goodmagazine - Project 011

Traveling to a new city is exciting, but also daunting. Without knowing what to see, eat, and do, visitors have a decent chance of ending up at the Hard Rock Cafe, or committing some other form of vacation suicide. That’s why we’re asking you to serve as a tourist bureau for your neighborhood. What is it that would make someone want to travel to where you are? Tell us about your favorite local spot, or better yet, take us on a video tour of it. The most illuminating tour guide will be rewarded with two domestic plane tickets anywhere JetBlue flies.

That’s it! Just submit a video promoting your hometown, and you could win a trip! They also plan to show all the videos they get online. Contest ends August 11, and you better check all the rules.

If you decide to enter the contest, let us know, and we’ll let everyone know!

Wayne Garcia recently implored us to stay out of the water. In addition to his complaints of sharks, gators, red tide, and jellyfish, a new waterfront threat has emerged: Pelican Slams Into The Face Of Swimmer.

There will be a St. Petersburg Bowl game this year!! Get your tickets now for two sixth place teams to battle it out at ThunderDome.

In doing his research when the St. Petersbowl game first came up, Trib sportsguy Brett McMurphy said the game would

become the third collegiate bowl in the Tampa Bay area, joining the Outback Bowl and the defunct Cigar Bowl, held in Tampa from 1947 to 1954.

I tried to find out more about this Cigar Bowl, and came across Richard Ziegler’s Tampa Bay Football History Network. There, Richard tells us of all the precursors to Tampa’s Outback Bowl (I added all the links in the text below):

…The Outback Bowl, formerly known as the Hall of Fame Bowl, was not the first college bowl game in the Tampa Bay area. From 1947-54, the Egypt Temple Shrine sponsored the Cigar Bowl in Tampa. The game featured teams like Missouri Valley College and the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, or state teams like Rollins College and the University of Tampa. The most notable Cigar Bowl was a January 2, 1950 game where Florida State, in just the football program’s third season, played in the school’s first bowl. Wofford College was on a 23 game winning streak and favored over the Seminoles, but FSU beat the Terriers 19-6. On the other side of the Bay, St. Petersburg hosted the Holiday Bowl from 1957-60. That bowl featured small schools, such as Lenoir-Rhyne College, Hillsdale College and Humboldt State University. The last Holiday Bowl also served as the National Association of Intercollege Athletics (NAIA) national title game.

The first attempt to bring a major bowl game to Tampa took place on January 9, 1966. The newly formed West Coast Bowl Association sent a delegation to Washington D.C. to meet with an NCAA committee, however, they were unsuccessful in the attempt to land a new bowl game. Shortly after that effort, Tampa did begin hosting some college all-star games. The All-American Bowl was played in Tampa from 1969-77. That all-star game featured a north versus south configuration with the north winning seven of the nine games. The Can-Am Bowl, which matched up collegiate players from the United States against Canadian college players, was held from 1978-79. The U.S. all-stars won both of those contests…

Ziegler also has the result of a single “Phillips Field Bowl” played in December of ‘51 between UT (as in Tampa) and Brandeis, and Tom McEwen wrote about the all-star games in Tampa a couple of years ago.

Much thanks to Richard Ziegler for the information, and big-time thanks to librarian George Rubb in Special Collections (sports) department at Notre Dame (yep that Notre Dame) for scanning the covers of those old programs.

By the way, Greg Auman says organizers are optimistic the new St. PetersBowl will be approved next week.

When’s the last time you took a leisurely drive down Bayshore Boulevard and ate at the Colonnade Restaurant?

It’s been said that people often see less of the attractions in their own home town than tourists do. I know - it’s hard to think of just driving down a street with beautiful houses and stopping at an area restaurant in your own home town as an “attraction” - but try this sometime on a Saturday or Sunday evening just before sunset. When the need for a vacation crops up but isn’t possible, this will help.

Or, maybe you live on the Clearwater/St. Pete side and don’t know about this.

Head south on Bayshore starting from downtown Tampa. On your right are blocks full of spectacular, sprawling houses ranging in design from Victorian to 1960’s ranch-style homes. Drink in the rainbow range of colors, textures and landscaping (the only unfortunate thing is the skyscraping condos going up inbetween. Try to ignore them!).

To the left is one of the longest walking and jogging paths in the United States, and beyond that the gorgeous waterfront view looking back at downtown, with its pink and smoked glass buildings glistening in the late afternoon sun.

Securing the path from the waterfront is an elegant white stone architectural wall, about waist-high so as not to block the sightseeing. For Civil War tourism buffs, it’s all very reminiscent of Battery Row in Charleston, South Carolina, with its antebellum mansions strategically placed to overlook the water as the ships would come in. 

Just when it seems this mini-tour is coming to an end, you’ll spot a rustic looking restaurant on the right called The Colonnade. PULL IN! You are in for a treat. Mentioned briefly in a 2007 Sticks column by Judy Hill, the Colonnade Restaurant has been a Tampa mainstay for the last 70 years, yet seems to remain a secret from many residents who don’t live in that particular area of Tampa.

The Colonnade boasts fresh seafood daily and another unbeatable waterfront view from almost anywhere you sit, although the window tables are to die for. And if you arrive there by 5:00, it’s a good bet you’ll get one. Sitting here, you can almost imagine being on someone’s yacht 10 miles offshore in the Gulf. In fact, you may see some skimming by. When it’s a clear day, the sun shimmers on the water like diamonds.

If there’s a wait for a table, go into the long hallway leading to the seating and look at the pictures of Bayshore Boulevard’s historical past.

Be very hungry or plan on taking boxes home! A favorite special of mine, often featured on the Colonnade menu, is the unique almond and corn flake-coated grouper with outstanding coleslaw. But on a regular basis you can get fried catfish that doesn’t taste like catfish anywhere else. The batter recipe is unique to this establishment, and the fish is smooth and mouth-watering. To me, the sign of a good piece of cooked fish is whether the leftovers warm up well the next day, and this certainly does. Try the fried green tomatoes as an appetizer or side.

The best part is that many of the Colonnade’s entrees are very reasonably priced, almost at rollback prices, and still served with a salad at no extra cost – a practice many restaurants are now charging for. And the service is excellent, too.

Before leaving the parking lot, grab that camera you keep in the glove compartment for impromptu shots, and stand your party against the walkway railing with the city and the water in the background. It’s a keeper. 

Haven’t had enough? Drive back toward downtown and you are 8 minutes from Channelside Bay Plaza, one of Tampa’s latest rejuvenation projects. Have a coffee and dessert, stroll the shops and boutiques,  listen to music outdoors and scope out a restaurant for next weekend’s dinner. 

Or, head the other direction and check out coffee in the South Howard area now known as Tampa’s own “SoHo“. 

You’ll go home wanting to start a vacation scrapbook.