Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

This week’s Newsbits:

Tom Scott will be the new chairman of the Tampa City Council. Gwen Miller goes from chair to vice-chair.

Bob Henriquez got a new gig as an administrator for the state Department of Children & Families. He was the only applicant for the unadvertised position which pays $105,000 per year.

County Commission Chairman Jim Norman is gonna run for the State Senate in 2010.

New Beginnings wants $125,000 from Hillsborough County for 1,000 voice-mail accounts and 1,400 identification cards for the homeless. The County Commission seems fairly receptive.

The American Institute of Architects picked Tampa for their Center for Communities by Design Long-term Sustainability project. The idea is to create a plan for communities to meet environmental, economic and social needs of today without harming future generations.

Brandon residents have had enough with the suggestion of a bypass through their area, but it continues to come up time and time again.

Ybor City wants to completely do away with panhandling.

Muscovy Ducks are causing rifts in a Town ‘n’ Country neighborhood.

The host of NBC’s Age of Love graduated from Bloomingdale High School in Brandon in 1989, and got his degree in marketing from USF in 1994.

Sometime between those dates, Mark Consuelos worked at Stinger’s Nightclub as a dancer (remember the Suncoast Calendar Men?). He was introduced on stage as “Meaty Mark.”

He headed out west, and starred in All My Children when he had some hot scenes with Kelly Ripa. Turns out it wasn’t all acting - Ripa and Consuelos got married in 1996. Apparently Kelly has no problem with steamy scenes being taped. Consuelos would rather be at a USF football game.

Anyway, you may have heard that Kelly is on the very popular tv show, Live with Regis and Kelly. Meanwhile, Consuelos is producing an ESPN documentary on the Brandon Wrestling team’s 439+ game winning streak. To promote “The Streak,” Consuelos got Kelly to invite the Brandon High School Wrestling team on the show, and they made an appearance with Kelly last month. But Regis wasn’t there. Jimmy Kimmell was substituting for Regis that week. By the way, before he was a big star, Jimmy Kimmell was a DJ at a Tampa area radio station.

Hours ago, Sgt. Ron Harrison was simply driving his patrol car. For this, he was shot to death.

The incident began just after midnight as he was driving north from the intersection of Kings Boulevard and Lumsden Road in Brandon. Sgt. Harrison drove less than a mile before crashing the car.

Someone called in and gave the Sherriffs an address of the alleged gunman. This guy barricaded himself in there, but came out with guns blazing. The SWAT team shot him dead, too.

They are still trying to put together everything that happened.

And the Johnny G. Lyon Band will be providing the musical entertainment!!

Eastern Hillsborough residents may know that the Presidents’ Roundtable of Greater Brandon hosts an annual event to “elect” an honorary mayor. Each June, two candidates go head to head, and the winner is elected if they raise the most money for a given charity. The contest goes on the entire month of June, and the winner is announced just before the Fourth of July parade in Brandon.

Once elected, the “mayor” doesn’t really have to do anything. The whole point is to raise money for the parade and Brandon charities. So you may see some crazy events and fundraisers in order to hold the title of Honorary Mayor of Brandon.

This year, Brandonite Wayne Otto is running against Valrican George T. May IV. Wayne has some great ideas, but George is bringing out the big guns:

A toga party will [be held] at the home of Clif and Terry Curry, 2820 S. Miller Road, Valrico, at 7:30 p.m. June 16. The event will include a toga contest judged by Mayor Billie Smith and former Mayors James Young and Ryan Odiorne, as well as food, games and music by the Johnny G. Lyon Band of Tampa. Tickets are $50. Call (813) 924-8642.

Of course, the general public is invited, so if you wanna check out the Toga Version of the JGLB, get out to Valrico. Rumor has it that Otis Velt and The Old School Band may also be involved in May’s fundraising efforts (contact info here too). The Brandon News & Tribune has a lot more detailed information.

An article with the following headline from the St. Pete Times came to my attention earlier this week (thanks, Denise):

Clash ends in stabbing by sword

As if my interest wasn’t piqued sufficiently, this was the sub headline:

A man confronts his wife and her new lover - sex offenders all - and it quickly turns deadly.

Helloooo nurse!

It looks like what happened was Mr. Willie Tarpley, a one-legged, black belt martial arts expert (I know, yet another story about a one-legged, black belt martial arts expert, but bear with me) found out his estranged wife Jacqueline had begun dating Lee Alexander, a convicted sex offender who was convicted in 2000 of a lewd and lascivious act on a person under 16. Apparently Willie, a convicted sex offender himself, either unable to appreciate irony or simply a hypocrite, took umbrage and went to the home in Brandon he had formerly shared with Jacqueline (also a convicted sex offender), and got one (as in “of many”) of the swords he kept in the garage to confront Lee. Now normally I’d say that three convicted sex offenders going at each other with swords is an idea with no discernible downside, aside from there being no actual guarantee that there would be no survivors and post-event cleanup. Except in this case small children are involved.

Willie went inside, picked up his 14-month-old daughter and menaced Jacqueline with his 42-inch katana, a Japanese samurai sword. Still holding the child, he held the blade to Lee’s neck and threatened to cut off his head if he didn’t leave. He did, but in his understandable hurry to do so, backed his car into Willie’s Corvette in the driveway. That’s when Willie came out and stabbed Lee through the open window of the car. There’s some values for you: Pose a threat to the family and get your life threatened but ding the ‘Vette and you will find yourself actually dead.

Willie claims he didn’t realize he’d actually stabbed Lee, just that he’d jabbed the sword in his general direction to make a point. I’ve never seen an owner’s manual for a samurai sword, but I’ll bet there’s a chapter that covers things like this: “WARNING: When making flamboyantly threatening gestures towards your foe, be careful not to point too far. The resistance you feel against the stabby part at the end of the sword is probably that person’s skin, bone and internal organs and continued over-gesturing of this type could result in severe trauma. Unless, you know, that’s what you were going for.”

Offered as proof that Willie didn’t realize what he’d done was the fact that he laughed when Lee got out of the car and attempted to run down the street, because everybody knows that nothing is more hilarious than threatening another person’s life when your toddlers are present. Of course, when Lee collapsed in the street a few feet later, the yuks stopped.

And what was fair Lady Jacqueline doing while all this was taking place? No doubt flashing back to better, happier times. Maybe like the prison sentences she and Willie served for the 1987 kidnapping and sexual torture of a woman who had apparently stolen some of Willie’s belongings. Imagine: “Oh Willie, we had it all back then. Except for the stuff that woman stole, I mean. What went wrong?”

Gosh, you have to wonder, if they couldn’t make it work…

(crossposted at Ridiculously Inconsistent Trickle of Conscioiusness)

It was around 11am on Saturday. I was sitting in the living room, still trying to wake up after another great gig on Friday night. Wifey came running in from the garage: “I think the washer is broken.”

I got up and stumbled out to the laundry area. Wifey said she just opened the lid, and the water slowed down. “See?” she pointed. “The water is usually coming out much faster than that.” And reaching inside up through the diminished waterfall, “I can’t feel anything blocking it here. Oh, don’t tell me we need a new washing machine.”

I wasn’t gonna tell her anything of the sort. Discussions involving hundreds of dollars is nothing to be avoided, but certainly needs more planning than “Wake up! There’s a problem!”

Now, I’m not much a handyman, and I’m seriously debilitated in the mornings. So, to give me a few minutes to consider the possibilities (read: stall for time), I slowly walked over and opened the garage door. It was a beautiful, bright day with a comfortable breeze. I surveyed the neighborhood, and down the street I saw a couple hundred bucks being put back into my wallet.

About a block away, water was gushing out into the road at an incredible rate. Meanwhile, a county worker was out in front of my yard with a can of spray paint and a handful of flags. I asked him, “What are you up to?” He never broke his stride marking with paint, raising tiny flags, and moving along: “I broke the water main.”

***********

Remember when Verizon first started installing FIOS cable around here? As an introduction to each neighborhood, they would tear up sewer lines, break water mains, and all sorts of mayhem. Then the county got tired of going to fix up these screw-ups and told Verizon to knock it off.

Well, we haven’t heard much about many mishaps since then. Before Verizon even gets started now, the county makes sure everything is marked well so Verizon can steer clear of mishaps. It seems they have the installation down to a science. Sorta.

On a recent Saturday, Hillsborough County had an employee out in the neighborhood to mark the sewer and water lines. He used some kind of scanning device to find the pipes, then he paints the ground, and puts up a tiny flag. Blue flags & paint is for water, while green is used for sewer.

But apparently the guy had trouble locating the water line right next to a telephone pole. In order to properly identify the location of the line, he decided to stick a crowbar in the ground, hoping to come in contact with it. And he did.

The thirty year old water main busted, and the neighborhood now had water gushing out into a couple driveways, the street, and making an ever-wider, ever deeper hole directly next to that concrete power pole.

But it doesn’t really matter. Verizon is finally getting to the neighborhood, and there is much joy, even from the guy with a new eight foot hole in his front yard.

You remember when Brandon High student Cam White was killed because he tried to cross the street to school? The young lady who blew through the crosswalk was not charged with a criminal offense. That’s right - the child killer was issued simply a traffic citation.

This is OUTRAGEOUS! How can someone drive over our kids - kids who were in a crosswalk! - and not be charged with a crime?

The timeline afterward is fishy, too. Apparently the killer, Kami Bell was issued the ticket on December 11 - a FULL WEEK after the incident. Furthermore, the news about the ticket did not come out until December 29 - 2 and a half weeks later (and just in time for Friday’s paper, when no one pays attention).

Oh, and that news was quickly followed up by the old “We’re going to fix that crosswalk much sooner now!:

There is no doubt in my mind that Kami Bell had no intention of committing that horrible mistake. And I would guess the episode will continue to haunt her until the day she dies. But what did you learn about this? What did other cell-phone talking, make-up applying, newspaper reading, idiot drivers learn?

That there are no consequences for your deadly inattention.

You can kill a child and remain free to take more shots every day.

Thanks to persistent praise from Sticks readers, we drove over to Brandon this past Friday to check out First Choice Southern BBQ for dinner. We thought we had arrived early enough to beat the dinner crowd, but instead found the line already out the door when we walked up.

The first thing we noticed while waiting in line, besides the great smells coming out of the kitchen, was that people were being friendly to each other. One guy turned around to the lady in front of us and said First Choice was “the best bbq he’s ever had.” She agreed. Maybe great food puts everyone in a good mood. Whatever the reason, it was nice to see strangers getting along.

Listening to the chopping of the meat and the buzz of the kitchen just made me hungrier as we waited in line. The line moved quickly and after getting to the counter I ordered a pork and beef combo plate with sides of spicy macaroni salad and coleslaw. Traci ordered smoked turkey with fries and macaroni.  Service is fast and next thing we knew we were paying for our orders and grabbing an open table.  From our table we watched as the line built even further out the door.

The pork and the beef were both excellent (juicy and moist) and I loved the spicy macaroni, which was indeed spicy, but not too much bite to ruin things. I was tempted to order some macaroni to go. The smoked turkey was some of the best I’ve ever had. The coleslaw was good- not too sweet, but not bitter either. My only complaint was that the two sides of bread that come with each meal were plain. I would have preferred garlic toasted bread, but the great barbecue and macaroni more than made up for it.

We left First Choice stuffed and only a little lighter in the wallet. While I haven’t tried Big John’s yet, I’m willing to go out on a limb and say First Choice is the best barbecue in Tampa Bay. This comes after trying Jimbo’s (still good in a pinch and I like the inside dining room), Hickory Hollow (good food overshadowed by poor service), Kojak’s (food was disappointing, but cool atmosphere), Fred Fleming’s, and yes even Sonny’s a few years ago.

I know I’ve reviewed a lot of barbecue places lately and that barbecue isn’t for everyone.  So drop me a line and let me know what restaurants around the area you’d like me to check out.

Bottom-line: When I first heard about First Choice, I thought the place was over-hyped. After eating there, I actually think this place isn’t talked about enough. Simply great barbecue!

Inspection Scorecard: Last Inspection - August 2006 violations - Critical (0), Non-Critical (1).