Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Amy and her family are thinking about moving to Florida. Of course, before you move, you may want to check with the locals for any surprises. Ask About Tampa and we will help provide the answers, so we got an email from Amy:

My husband, our baby, and I are thinking seriously about moving to the Tampa Bay area from Portland Oregon. We are so tired of the 8 months of nothing but rain and we both like the beach. I have a few questions that I’d appreciate any answers

• Are the bugs unbearable?
• How many months are sweltering hot?
• Can you buy a cool 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with a pool for about 300K?
• How expensive is the home owners insurance one needs (hurricane, flood, etc)?
• How bad is the traffic, for instance what are typical commute times to say St. Pete to Tampa? Could we live in Pinellas county and work in Tampa and get to work in a reasonable amount of time?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Just minutes before that, we got an email from Steve:

My wife and I are planning a move to Tampa from Portland, Oregon in February ‘08. Yes we are escaping the rain but another thing Portland is famous for is its bike paths. Is Tampa a good place for the occasional bicycle trip?

Now, I have no idea if Amy and Steve are from the same family. And it really doesn’t matter, I guess. We’ll just answer the questions from Portland together.

First off, for Steve - You will enjoy the Pinellas County Trail. It’s perfect for biking. It’s made for biking. To mix it up head to the Flatwoods or Wilderness Park in Hillsborough County. Check Alan Snel’s tampa bike blog for more. Now on to Amy’s concerns.

Eight months of rain is unbearable. Bugs are not. Plus you can just step on and squish the bugs. Doing that with rain doesn’t really help much.

For sweltering, August sorta sucks. Steve won’t be biking much. But it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. And the bugs, of course.

Traffic times vary greatly. Many folks live in Pinellas and work in Tampa. There is plenty of traffic information available online. I recommend 511 Tampa Bay or Google’s traffic maps.

Yep - you can find a cool 3/2 for 300K, but insurance is another matter. We’re in the middle of somewhat of a crisis. The most difficult part of buying your home will be locating an insurance company that will actually sell insurance. If you go with the “insurer of last resort,” you’ll spend a fortune. I purchased my home in late 2001, and insurance was $721. This year we’ll pay $2,000. Here is the St. Pete Times ongoing coverage of the Insurance Crisis, and the Tampa Tribune’s stories about Homeowners Insurance.

That’s it in a nutshell. I’m sure Sticks readers can give their thoughts as well.

It’s easy to forget you live in Florida when you’re safe beside the air conditioner, absorbed inside your day, oblivious to the humid weather & hot headed conservatism that lurks on the outside.
Last weekend was a girl friends weekend at the beach, living up the finer things about life in Florida. We went to Honeymoon Island State Park, a little over an hour from Tampa. From Honeymoon Island, we planned to take a ferry to Caladesi Island State park and kayak the trails, but a water main break closed the island. But girls know how to improvise. A cafe on Honeymoon rented us kayaks for the day and we were off. Kinda. Did I mention I’m a Sagittarius with a paralyzing fear of the water? And large sea creatures that want to ingest me. But I’m inspired by the water as much as I fear it, so I life vested up and set off.

We attempted to go over to Caladesi, supposedly just 15 minutes from the Honeymoon beach by kayak. But I had an anxiety attack or twelve and headed back inland by myself. Bonnie, the George Hamilton-tanned boathouse lady who rented us the boats talked me back to my senses and back into the water. But before I set out to meet back up with my friends, I had to get something out of my system (no, I didn’t pee in the ocean). I pushed the kayak into the water and practiced falling out and climbing back in again until the thought of falling out in deeper water seemed less frightful. I knew if I didn’t try again, I’d lay in bed awake all night wishing I hadn’t been so scared to try again.

We traced part of the coast line, seeing dolphins and yellow fish flying in pairs up out of the water. My knees got sunburned. Nothing with gills attacked me. And I didn’t drown (obviously).

When we returned to the beach for food, Bonnie told us how in the 70’s, Honeymoon Island was supposed to be a resort town full of condos, but the planner had run out of money. The beach is littered with rocks (on top of the seashells) because limestone had been brought in for extending the beaches. The land went back to the feds peice by peice and became the lovely sanctuary it is today.

When I was out in the kayak, looking around in every direction, condos littered the view southwest of Caladesi. But they were far off and in every other direction was nothing but sky, ocean and sand. You know, Floridian type things are available to us all. If we want it.

85 years ago…

August 31, 1921 – Fort Dade on Egmont Key is deactivated by the United States government. The fort, along with Fort DeSoto across the channel on the tip of the Pinellas Peninsula, was constructed during the Spanish-American War to guard the entrance to Tampa Bay. Remnants of the fort, along with the Egmont Key lighthouse built in 1848, can still be visited today.

Courtesy of the Tampa Bay History Center.

So it looks like the first big storm of the season is Florida bound, taking a path almost eerily similar to 1999’s hurricane Irene, which is featured in my book, Lauderdale (I’ve begun editing!). Hurricanes are bad things generally, and this one will no doubt wreak its share of havoc across the southern part of the state.

I invite you to please consider, however, how much worse the damage would be were the Florida Straits dotted with oil derricks. Consider how fragile the coral reef south of the Keys, and the entire Keys/Florida Bay ecosystem, is, and how much damage a single accident at a rig in the Straits could do to that ecosystem. The oil companies, some energy lobbies, and at least half of Congress wants to put oil rigs there. Think about how much worse the next Ernesto or Irene could be if they succeed.

Then, please, consider what might happen were the Straits dotted not with American oil rigs, but with those operated by a Chinese-Cuban consortium. How good do you think the safety records at American-run oil platforms are? How good, in comparison, do you think a Cuban-Chinese one would likely be? Do you know what the Chinese have done to their environment? How much less care would they be likely to take with someone else’s environment?

American policy toward Cuba makes a Cuba-China connection in the Straits quite likely; they are already sinking test wells.

Floridians: is the Cuba policy you have supported for almost fifty years worth this? Is it?

110 years ago…

August 12, 1896 – The owners of the steamer Manatee sponsored an excursion for families to travel to Egmont Key and the Manatee River. Passengers could enjoy shell collecting and sun bathing on Egmont. The round trip fare was $1.00 per person ($22.16 in today’s dollars) for people twelve and older.

Courtesy of the Tampa Bay History Center.

A while back I was asking you for beach tips, and a couple of you mentioned St. Pete Beach.  Due mostly in part to the fact that my good friend from San Francisco was vacationing there, I recently had the chance to make it over there. 

I really liked the beach, mainly because it was huge. I never really felt crowded. The sand left something to be desired, but the water more made up for it. Beach erosion is unfortunate, but humankind has yet to successfully prevent it. It’s actually quite a contentious subject among beachologists… Oh, and much less appealing was the presence of T-groins.

After baking in the sun for most of the day, we decided that it was time for a bite to eat, so we headed to Ceviche’s location on Beach Blvd.  For the record, there is nothing quite like deliriously gorging yourself on tapas after a long day on the beach.

Being new to the area, I had no idea where to park. Most of the street parking was full, so we found what looked like a free parking garage. We parked on the top floor and walked all the way down the stairs, where we learned we had used the garage reserved for members of the St. Pete Yacht Club, of which we are not members. Oops.

Once we figured it out, we realized that the door to the stairwell had locked, so we had to walk the whole way back up throughout the garage. We made it to the car and pulled a little Italian Job and gunned it over the speed bumps and past the valets before they realized what hit them.

We eventually made it to Ceviche, but there was quite the line to get in. Instead we headed over to Tastings, a newly opened wine bar. I was totally blown away once we got inside. The rep at the front showed us around - bottles are attached to electronic dispensers all around the bar. You load up a prepaid card, and go around tasting wine at will. At first glance, the one ounce portions are small and inadequate, but after tasting several different reds and whites, those one ounces quickly add up. My only advice: be very careful.

After much teetering, we finally made it to Ceviche and proceeded to stuff ourselves silly. We had chorizo, baked goat cheese, fried calamari, veal meatballs, asparagus, and a delicious artichoke and avocado salad. Absolutely everything was flavorful and sumptuous, and the hot fresh bread kept coming. Even after all the Tastings, we managed to get through some yummy sangria as well.  Needless to say, we had to call a friend to come pick us up.

Overall, the St. Pete Beach area gets DC Dave’s seal of approval.

Now that I’m done with sunny Ben T. Davis Beach, I’ve been looking around for absolute best, sparklingest beach.  To my unmitigated suprise, there doesn’t seem to be a consensus.  Owing to my fondness of superalitives and easy categories, I’m in dire need of advice.  So far I’ve ventured to the aforementioned Ben T. Davis, which was somewhat underwhelming. Which I’m told is a common sentiment.  Also relegated to notches on my belt are Clearwater Beach and Fort Desoto Park. 

While Clearwater has nice water and friendly sand, it apparently gets packed on the weekend.  I’ll have to admit that my only foray to that particular location occurred back in January, when locals were wearing sweatshirts and complaining about how freezing cold 70 degrees feels.  Coincidentally, the Clearwater Beach Chamber of Commerce advertises Clearwater Beach as being sunny too.

Fort Desoto seems like a peaceful place.  I was fortunate to see some spectacular white sand and crystal clear water back around Thanksgiving when I came down to scope out new possible digs.  I think, however, that last weekend we made it to a different side, East Beach - North Beach?  The sand was not so nice and the water was murky and dredged with seaweed. Maybe a Tampa Expert can differentiate for me.

The folks I’ve met in North Tampa swear to me by gum that Caladesi Island State Park is THE it spot, even if it’s only accessible by boat.  I’m tempted to try, regardless of the daunting prospect of hopping the ferry at Honeymoon Island. So you tell me, what beach should I really know about, where is Tampa Bay’s hidden gem?

Like, surf: The Critical ‘I’ notes that some folks (midwesterners, mostly) think that just because the address here has “FL” near the end, and beaches are just moments away that we must be a bunch of surfers. HA! Tell ‘em CT: You can’t surf here. Oh well, at least we have the beaches and the sunshine.

In another post, CT laments the pulling of The Grand Prix of St. Petersburg from this year’s schedule. A road race has been run on and off (mostly off, it seems) for a dozen or so years in and around downtown St. Pete. I’ve been to a couple of them, and it’s cool to see the cars hauling ass around the same streets I drive. I hope somebody pulls this thing together once and for all, so the area has a world-class race. Daytona and Sebring are both nice places, and easy to get to from here, but it would be nice to have one in our backyard. Oh well, at least we have a hockey team.