Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

On the afternoon of Aug. 18, Pinellas officials ordered mandatory evacuation of the county’s most flood-prone areas for 6am the next day.  Tropical Storm Fay was heading our way.

Over at the TradeWinds Island Resorts in St. Pete Beach, visitors checked out and took off.  They say they missed out on over $150,000 in canceled rooms and missed food and beverage sales.

The storm shifted and ended up making landfall south of Naples.  Pinellas canceled the evacuation order at around 5:30am.

So now, hotel managers are saying that Pinellas “overreacted.” 

“It was outrageous for the authorities to make the call prior to even being put on hurricane watch,” wrote Philippe Eversdijk, general manger of the Marriott Suites Clearwater Beach. “The decision … shows lack of respect for our area’s bread & butter: tourism.”

It sure is easy to whine about everything a month later.  Pinellas County Commission Chairman Robert Stewart wants the hotels to man up and deal with it:

“This was an unavoidable development,” Stewart said. “We’re always going to err on the side of caution.”

Pinellas is Florida’s most dense county - they have more people per square mile than anywhere else in the state.  The land is surrounded by water on three sides.  Any storm is going to cause trouble, and a big storm will nearly flood the entire county.  With that big of a responsibility, officials must act early. 

If your business loses a couple of bucks to ensure that nobody gets hurt, then you gotta tough it out.  You have another 330 days of the year to be profitable.  Or, you can move your multi-million dollar resorts somewhere else, perhaps New Orleans.

I bet these guys piss & moan about the insurance bill, too.

Yep.

Why you can even go surfing at St. Pete Beach.

Feel free to check surf conditions at Gulfster.com

Dr. Beach came out with his top beaches for this year, and the Tampa Bay area can once again claim the best beach in the United States.  Fort DeSoto was named the top beach in the US for 2005, and this year Caladesi Island ranks as America’s Best Beach.  Caladesi Island is just off the coast of Dunedin.

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Not only that, but Sarasota’s Siesta Public Beach ranked number three in the nation for 2008.  You can find that beach on Siesta Key, just an hour south of Tampa or St. Pete.

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They both look pretty good, huh?

Past Florida winners of Dr. Beach’s list include:

• 2005 Fort DeSoto Park - North Beach, St Petersburg, Florida
• 2002 St. Joseph Peninsula State Park, Florida
• 1995 St. Andrews SRA, Florida
• 1994 Grayton Beach SRA, Florida
• 1992 Bahia Honda SRA, Florida

TripAdvisor says that Fort De Soto Park’s North Beach is the top beach in the entire United States.

Dr. Beach told you that years ago. He also said that Caladesi Island is number two.

For those of you who think growth can just be completely stopped, think about this.

Imagine a January Monday “up there” somewhere - you wake up early, pile on a bunch of clothes, put a parka on over that, and go start the car. Then you grab your snow shovel, create a path for the car, and consider scraping the ice off the windshield. Deciding to let the car heater dissolve the ice instead, you head back inside for a cup of cocoa and flip on the TV, where Al Roker is telling you about the clear, bright, cool day in Tampa, with a high of 70.

And you think about BREAKING THE LAW:

(Toledo, OH)

521.01. Removal of snow and ice from walks.

(a) The occupants of each single residential, commercial or industrial property and the owner of any multiple residential, commercial or industrial property or of any unoccupied or unimproved property, abutting upon public walks shall clear the walk of snow, ice, dirt, or any other debris within twenty-four hours after such deposit.

(1952 Code § 7-4-29)

(b) Whoever violates this section is guilty of a minor misdemeanor.

You think about DEATH:

…he passed away today, suffering a critical heart attack while shoveling snow in his driveway.

The Great State of Florida is among the most wonderful locations in the world. The miles of beaches and wintertime weather here have drawn people to visit the area for over a hundred years. Along the way, hoteliers, roadside attractions, and other entrepreneurs have made the place even more enticing, giving the impression to the rest of the world that the entire state is just a big playground. How many of your out-of-state friends wonder if you just hang out at the beach on the days you don’t go to Disney World?

So when those pasty folks up north begin to contemplate a change, it should be no surprise that the SUNSHINE STATE almost always makes the short list of places to go.

Florida’s population increases by more than 1,000 people every day. Natural increase (births minus deaths) account for less than 13% of Florida’s population increase from 1970 to 2000. So net migration (people moving in minus people moving out) is about 872 each day.

But at the very least, sixty-two of those moving here find their way to Hillsborough County. The average household size is around 2.5, so those 62 people are gonna need about 25 households. EVERY DAY. That’s over 9,000 households a year. Traditionally, about half of those are gonna be single family detached homes, so we’re looking at building more than 350 houses a month in Hillsborough County.

So the question is not whether we “want” growth, the question is where do we want to direct our inevitable new neighbors?

“It’s really hard to put the genie back in the bottle, and that’s what we’re doing here.”

So said Pinellas County Commission Chairman Ronnie Duncan after the commission banned Bowser and Budweiser from Shell Key and its environs on Tuesday.

Of course in this case the genie looks more like David Hasselhoff than Barbara Eden.

The move took some spine since it will surely raise the hackles of some of the boaters who visit the key just north of Fort DeSoto. One of Shell Key’s major attractions, of course, is that, as a wildlife preserve, it is uninhabited by humans so humans want to flock there in great numbers like the birds the preserve tries to protect.

Yahoos ruined the idyllic harborage for the responsible folks.

It wasn’t just a matter of a few people having a couple of beers while the kids played in the water and the dog snoozed on the beach.

The party atmosphere at Shell Key, particularly on weekends, is all too often like a frat orgy that oozed out of the fraternity house into the streets, mucking up a pastoral neighborhood. Drunks do what drunks do: scream obscenities, pee off the side of the boat. They puke, too. They also throw bathing suits, used condoms, used feminine hygiene products, dirty diapers, fast-food wrappers, bottles, cans, cigarette butts and other detria over the side and onto the island.

And all this in a public place frequented by others who prefer a more sedate good time.

As for the dogs, when they run free they upset the birds who nest on Shell Key.

At least the dogs can’t be blamed for doing what dogs do.

What about the people?

It’s amazing how many supposedly sane human beings behave as if they were born in a barn.

And the beaches are less pasty white or lobster red.

I recently rediscovered the Courtney Campbell Causeway. You rarely hear about this bridge’s beauty these days. Normally the only mention that you hear of it is when there is a fatal crash or a well known figure is arrested there. The causeway is the northernmost bridge over Old Tampa Bay linking Pinellas and Hillsborough counties and is typical of the Floridian idea of a bridge.

Actually composed of several small islands linked by bridges, the causeway is a beautiful stretch of road for a driver. I prefer to go at night when the temperature is more reasonable and the traffic lighter. You can blast along at high speed with the windows down like Crockett and Tubbs in Miami Vice, palm trees zipping by and the night air thick in your hair. Or you can lope along at a comfortable pace enjoying the beauty of the last rays of the western sun hitting the tops of the palms trees and the hotels while down below the cars and restaurants have long since turned on their lights. You can pull off at several points where an access road and parking areas are open all night.

Fishermen launch boats off of the Causeway. Kids come out there to race and show off their modified cars. It’s a popular place to watch or set off fireworks. Couples come out do, uh, couple things. Other people come for the solitude and, I suspect, there are more than a few clandestine meetings here.

North of the causeway is a tangle of mangroves and salty marsh that hide troves of fish. South is the bay, laid out in dark blue splendor reflecting the city lights. Past the water you see the amber necklace of the Howard Frankland Bridge which is a few miles south of the causeway and far more heavily traveled. At either end of that necklace are clusters of city lights from offices, hotels, skyscrapers, malls. The other bridges, the simple two lane Gandy and the massive soaring Sunshine Skyway, are invisible at this elevation.

So the next night you have nothing to do and are thinking of going to Ybor or find a movie that you don’t really want to see anyway remember that there are a lot of fun places to go in Tampa Bay. Take a drive out to the causeway, bring a cooler and a couple of chairs and watch the sunset with somebody you care about because having fun does not always mean you have to pay a parking fee and a cover charge.