Category: Tampa Bay

A while back Ybor City was featured in a three-page spread in Southern Living magazine. It was the kind of marketing bonanza chamber of commerce sorts salivate over. In fact, the president and CEO of the Ybor City Chamber of Commerce, Tom Keating, says he’s been told that such exposure could be worth as much as “several hundred thousand dollars.”

As good fortune would have it, Keating has reason to ponder another marketing coup. Earlier this month HGTV came into Ybor to film a segment for its “Battle on the Block” series. The formula has three neighborhood couples competing for prize money and bragging rights to see who had the best touch in redesigning their master bedrooms.

While Tony LaColla and Jose Garboza were the official winners, the big winner was Ybor. The streetcar and streetscape shots made the historic district look uber hip. The show’s hostess referenced Ybor as a “trendy hotspot for young, chic couples.”

What’s that worth?

“Well, this is national TV,” estimates Keating, “so I’d say this was certainly worth at least as much as Southern Living. And, no, this wouldn’t have been in anybody’s budget.”

Keating also saluted the recruiting hustle of LaColla, half of the winning couple. LaColla, 34, is the current president of the Historic Ybor Neighborhood Civic Association. “Tony’s always identifying opportunities and then taking advantage of them,” says Keating. “We love getting coverage of Ybor. It helps Tampa Bay.”

And there’s more.

In July look for the Travel Channel to be visiting Ybor.

The segment will feature comedian and Tampa native “Bert the Conqueror” — aka Bert Kreischer. Look for the Ybor City State Museum on 9th Avenue to be highlighted as Bert tries his hand — and all thumbs — at cigar rolling. Wally Reyes, Tampa’s Grand Master cigar-rolling icon, is the instructor in this “personality-driven” Travel Channel show.

So what about this is most troubling?

On one hand you have the disgusting John Jerome Speights Jr., 45, the father of 30 with paternity claims from more than a dozen women, who has been convicted of raping and impregnating his 13-year-old niece. He dares to call himself “Papa Love.”

Then there was the courtroom reaction of the large Speights-family contingent to his guilty verdict.

“Papa Incest” got life in prison — prefaced by Circuit Judge Chet A. Tharpe’s unprecedented character assessment: “You are devoid of any moral values.”

The family’s reaction? An outburst of anger. Wailing. Cursing. Menacing looks. Attitude. But none of it directed at the loathsome “Papa Predator.”

The visceral outrage was aimed at the system. At the sentence.

The judge left the bench for his own protection. Deputies rushed the victim’s mother to a back room. Emergency exits were opened to usher out the Speights family.

As degenerate and perverted as the crime was, it wasn’t the most repulsive — or alarming — part of the trial and sentencing. It was Speights family values. This societal cancer may not have run its course.

Tampa is entitled to some basking. Welcome, 2012 Republican National Convention.

Tampa finally landed that quadrennial political gathering that had been eluding this town for too long. You host multiple Super Bowls — and you’re the keystone of the ultimate battleground state — and the GOP chooses the Democratic stronghold of Minneapolis, Minn.? But that was then — 2008 — and this is not.

In two years Tampa will see an influx of 40,000 to 50,000 people during the visitor-challenged month of August. It will also gain international exposure and reap more than $100 million in economic impact. By some calculations, a lot more. And more to the point, the city — as well as the state — won’t be on the hook for a dime. (As part of its 2008 bid, Tampa estimated its out-of-pocket costs at more than $12 million.)

And thank you, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele — as incongruous as that sounds politically — for underscoring the reality that Tampa was not chosen by “default.” Recall that a number of pols and pundits had speculated that Phoenix was too intolerant of illegal Hispanic immigrants, and Salt Lake City was “too white” and “too Mormon.”

As Steele himself said: “It was strictly a business decision. We were well into the process with our site-selection visits even before the immigration issue. By default? Not at all. Our decision was based on the capacity and capability of cities to meet the demands of 50,000 people.”

Minimum criteria mandated a convention facility seating at least 18,000, access to at least 15,000 hotel rooms, 350,000 square feet for media and parking for up to 300 buses and 1,500 cars. Not a problem. Beyond that, Tampa has a better amenity package to offer — including hotel accommodations, museums, the Riverwalk and tourist attractions — than it did in previous bids. Channelside Bay Plaza and Ybor City should see their share of off-time visitors. This isn’t the beach crowd that is coming in to venerate Sarah Palin and nominate Mitt Romney.

Steele  emphasized that the RNC also wanted its delegates to get “the full experience of Tampa” — not just be satisfied “sitting in the convention hall.” The RNC, he said, wanted to “take the flavor of Tampa and make it part of the convention experience.”

That had to please a whole host of civic movers and shakers — from Pam Iorio to Joe Redner.

The time for basking, however, is just about up. Now comes the prep work. And then it’s gearing up for that fifth Super Bowl pitch. And some 2018 World Cup matches.

If ever there was call for unanimity, it was the County Commission vote on light rail.  They weren’t voting for or against it, but for or against letting the voters have the ultimate say. And yet the vote was 5-2?

Thanks for nothing, nay-voting Jim Norman and Al Higginbotham.

How do you not vote to let the people determine if they want to add a penny to the sales tax to pay for rail, buses and roads? Even if you think the 21st century should be repealed and that future economic viability lies in ever more sprawl, how do you not let the voters make that critical call about their future and that of their kids?

Obviously a lot of factors are weighed — from the purely political to the largely logistical — when a political party decides what city it wants to serve as host for its national convention. From whether it’s in a state colored red or blue to whether there are enough hotel rooms and sufficient space for delegates and media.

In Tampa’s case, winning the 2012 GOP convention, even after four Super Bowls, is still a coup. An influx of 40,000 to 45,000 people in the visitor-challenged summer is big. So is the international exposure and economic-impact number — by whatever formula is applied. And the city and state won’t be on the hook for a dime.

But amid all the variables, including the competition, there has been one constant in every GOP convention pitch by Tampa. The singular, host committee presence of long-time developer Al Austin, “Mr. GOP” around here — and one of the foremost fund-raising mavens in the country.

He’s been a key point man for previous attempts. He’s been bitterly disappointed, but only showed the disappointed side and always took the high road. In an atmosphere of polarizing politics, he remains a stalwart Republican without morphing into a zero-sum cartoon. He’s a gentleman in an era of rogue political cachet.

Now in his 80s, Austin didn’t have many more of these brass-ring quests left. The 2012 GOP convention is assuredly a coup for Tampa — but it’s also climactic for Al Austin, a civic  natural resource for Tampa. Well timed, well done. Thank you.

It’s an issue that continues to prey upon us.

Tampa City Council begins its meetings with a prayer. Strictly speaking, it must be non-sectarian. Good luck, as council routinely rotates priests, ministers and rabbis. But who’s parsing?

Well, the Atheists of Florida are, and they recently packed council chambers to protest. Apparently they were never really placated by that token invocation by one of their own back in 2004.

They are annoying. But they have a point. The nonsectarian approach is more than nose-thumbing at true believers. It’s also the stuff of recent court opinion. In practice, invocations are religious high-wire acts that threaten to encourage Buddhists, Hindis, Muslims, Confucians, animists, agnostics et al for their share of nominal inclusiveness. Who else might wait in the wings? Practitioners of Scientology? Santeria? 

The AF suggests a “moment of reflection” before council meetings, which makes sense. Keeping the “non-sectarian” invocation, unless it’s permanently delivered by poet laureate James Tokley, is to maintain trivializing tokenism. The Deity, let alone the legitimate, mundane business of the people, deserves better than being preceded by an appeasing gimmick.

The Pledge of (“…One nation, under God…”) Allegiance, which begins each meeting, still passes legal muster.  Thank God. But, frankly, do we really need to invoke a deity before pondering liquor licenses and sewer repairs?

Indeed, why not a post-pledge, pre-meeting moment to reflect on this city’s priorities and what it really means to take that oath of office?

The Hillsborough County School Board made the right call last week by coming down on the side of a non-sectarian calendar and keeping Good Friday, a consummate Christian holiday, a school day. But will the right call ever get the right results?

The odds, ultimately, are long.

The cost of Good Friday substitute-teachers (nearly $70,000 this year) and a throw-away, busy-work day for students have made recent Good Friday school days an educational travesty. No wonder 70 per cent of high school students were no shows this year. The only surprise would be if any didn’t hit the beaches.

The right results can only happen when all key adults — parents, teachers, bus drivers and certain politicians — get the religion of secularism in its proper context.   

It’s officially official. Bob Buckhorn is running for mayor of Tampa.

He will be formidable — whatever the ultimate mix, which formally includes City Council Chairman Tom Scott and former police captain Marion Lewis for now. It will likely expand to County Commissioner Rose Ferlita and developer/Florida Rail Enterprise consultant Ed Turanchik — and possibly former U.S. Rep. Jim Davis and conceivably former mayor Dick Greco.

Recall Buckhorn’s previous mayoral run in 2003.

Timing is everything, and no one — not Buckhorn, Frank Sanchez or Charlie Miranda — was going to defeat Pam Iorio. Also recall that no one in ’03 had a more detailed, smart-growth agenda for Tampa than Buckhorn. The former city council member can wax wonkish on details; he can also sell sizzle; and he’s on board with the light-rail nexus to economic viability.

Scott is no longer the early leader.

The only problem with zero tolerance polices is their real-world implementation.  However well-intentioned, and they all are, they can impose a zero-sum solution to issues that demand a measure of subjectivity and common sense. Case in point: the slap heard ’round Tampa Bay.

That’s what 73-year-old Theresa Collier of Largo delivered to her belligerent, profanity-spewing granddaughter. The 18-year-old then stormed out and called 911. And her grandmother was arrested for domestic violence. The slap, context notwithstanding, induced the department’s mandatory arrest policy for domestic violence. Collier spent a night in jail.

Eventually — after scrutinizing, embarrassing media attention — the domestic battery charge was dropped. Imagine needing Bubba the Love Sponge Clem to call attention to an exercise in overkill stupidity.

We all know why such a domestic violence policy was formulated in the first place. Too many psychotic boyfriends and too many battered women. Throw the book — and any number of legal haymakers — at the feral creeps.

But a back-talking teen in rebellion against homework and her overseeing grandmother is hardly the sort of “victim” that domestic violence laws and policies are out to protect.

What is obviously needed is “zero tolerance” for such common-sense-challenged scenarios. Bubba the Love Sponge won’t always be around to set things right.

Just what a society — already at fever-pitch partisanship and divisiveness — didn’t need.

This story.

Prominent, front-page coverage of an unmarried, unemployed black woman with 15 children by multiple fathers who doesn’t just need public assistance. But demands it. And doesn’t just demand it, but does so with an empathy-challenging attitude of arrogance toward a system that can’t subsidize everything.

As it turns out, no, this is not an ACORNesque put-on to ridicule the welfare state and juxtapose societal values. No, Angel Adams, 37, is the real, woeful, you-owe-me deal. An avatar of entitlement.

And a one-woman perfect storm for these turbulent times.

Not only does she help perpetuate a “post-racial” stereotype. But in this toxic political climate, she is also red meat for the “you betcha” crowd making a bogus case against “socialism” and a reasonable one in behalf of responsible behavior, self-determination, bootstraps — and probably tubal ligation.

No, we didn’t need this — any more than any of those Adams’ family kids did.