Month: August 2015

The corner of Central and 2nd Street North in St, Petersburg, 8:50 a.m. today.

Hello from St. Petersburg!

The Missus does a king-sized commute from Tampa to St. Pete every weekday, which isn’t too bad in the morning, but is rather gruesome after work, as people cram their cars onto the couple of causeways that cross Accordion Bay. To make life a little more pleasant for her and to provide me with a change of scenery, I spend one day a week working in St. Pete’s many wifi-equipped places during the day, and follow up with a date night dinner there. It’ll typically be on Wednesday, when The Iron Yard, a “coding bootcamp” school in St. Pete, has its Open Hack night (the next one’s on the 19th) — I try and catch as many of these as I can.

A scene from Iron Yard Tampa Bay.

Weird Al

I’m here today as opposed to Wednesday because Anitra and I are catching Weird Al’s show later tonight, which takes place at Ruth Eckerd Hall. Given our mutual penchant for the squeezebox, you may be surprised to read this, but this will be the first time I’ve ever seen Weird Al play live.

Here’s an interview that Florida Today did with Weird Al. See you at the concert!

Pinellas County’s “failure factories”

Pinellas County is on the west side of Accordion Bay and includes the cities of Clearwater and St. Petersburg. Having water on both its east and west sides means that it’s got a lot of pretty sights, including the place where Anitra and I got married (photos are here and here).

A screen shot of Tampa Bay Times’ presentation on Pinellas County’s schools.
Click the image to see it at full size.

Not everything is pretty here, especially if you’re young, black, and trying to get a basic education. This Tampa Bay Times presentation features 24 charts that show what happened after 2007, when so-called “school choice” overtook integration, “re-segregation” happened, and student performance in five schools plummeted. The Times published some responses to the presentation today, and they’ll published a full report tomorrow. You can follow this topic on Twitter by looking for the #FailureFactories hashtag.

FetCon!

Fetish Con (FetCon for short), one of the nation’s largest kink conventions, comes to St. Pete this weekend. Creative Loafing has the details, and they’re quick to point out that for admission, they accept only anonymity-preserving cash. For more, see the FetCon site.

Glenn Beck’s ringing anti-endorsement

Right-wing asshat Glenn Beck recently gave St. Pete a great anti-endorsement, saying that you should St. Pete and other “least religious” cities in the U.S., because they’ll be the first to go when the end times (coming soon, he swears!) happen.

Remember, this is the same assclown who said Obama’s lead in the 2012 presidential campaign was part of God’s plan to show us His power — in the end, Romney would win, and it would be an irrefutable demonstration of divine intervention. Beck was such a sore loser when his prediction didn’t turn out that he blasphemed by announcing “Man, sometimes God really sucks”.

St. Petersburg’s mayor, Rick Kriseman, isn’t too worried. He tweeted this in response:

Woke up, sun shining, & @glennbeck lumping #StPete in w/ Portland-San Fran-Seattle-Denver-Phoenix as cities to avoid. An honor! #ThanksGlenn

— Rick Kriseman (@Kriseman) August 12, 2015

Kevin Smith tonight at Tampa Improv

Good ol’ Gatorland.

Kevin Smith is already tooling around the in the vicinity of Accordion Bay! Anitra and I will be catching his live storytelling-and-Q-and-A show, An Evening with Kevin Smith, at 8:00 tonight at the Tampa Improv in Ybor. That show is sold out online, but you might be able to get a ticket or two if you call the club at (813) 864-4000. There’s also a 10:15 show, and tickets for that one are still available online.

Another funny filmmaker coming to Tampa: Mel Brooks!

Creative Loafing Tampa reports that Mel Brooks, creator of Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, and Spaceballs, will take his speaking tour, Mel Brooks…Back in the Saddle Again! to Tampa’s Straz Center on Wednesday, October 14th at 7:30 p.m.. The event will feature a screening of Blazing Saddles followed by a live conversation and Q&A with Brooks.

Regularly-priced tickets are $49-$99, and VIP tickets are available go for $300, for which you’ll get primo seats and a photo-op with Mel himself. No matter which tickets you buy, you know there’ll be additional fees. Tickets may be purchased by calling 813-229-STAR (7827) or online at strazcenter.org.

A lovely, geeky, get-together at New World Brewery

Open Hack Ybor (that’s pronounced “Eee-bor” to those of you who aren’t from Tampa) meetup took place in a great setting last night: the patio of New World Brewery, a lovely little pub located on what’s still considered the outer edge of Tampa’s club district.

Open Hack Ybor is a monthly gathering that brings together interesting and socially-inclined developers together to work on or discuss code, enjoy each other’s company, and partake in some beer and pizza. It’s organized by Tony Winn (who deserves kudos aplenty for putting it together) and is the local chapter of Open Hack, whose mantra is “code together, on anything”.

New World Brewery is a great bar with an eclectic beer selection, knowledgable staff, a great jukebox, the perfect patio for watching people come and go out of Ybor, and solid air conditioning (very important here in Accordion Bay). If you’re into beer and are every in Tampa, add this to your to-do list. Don’t take my word for it, take Beer Advocate’s: this is a fantastic beer bar.

The meetup ended about 9, which was about the same time that local alt-rock band Empire Cinema came on New World’s covered outdoor patio stage. They’re pretty good — I’ll have to keep an eye out for them.

More rain headed this way

The weather may be bright and sunny today, but the current forecast says it’s not going to last. There’s a 70% chance of on-off downpours on Thursday, and an 80% chance of the same for Friday.

Rats don’t look that cute.

While doing some maintenance on this blog, I ended up re-reading some old articles and ended up at the one about Sandy Crocker, whom you might remember as the “Lovesick Canadian Dentist”.

While on vacation in Ireland in 2011, he had a short conversation with a “striking” young woman. It was quick — barely enough time to chat about the weather and ask for directions to a local landmark — but the memory of her was so strong that he set out to find her a year later. He never got her name, so all he had to go on was the town where they met (Ennistymon) and a vague description: in her mid-twenties with freckles and reddish-brown hair. Talk about some long odds.

Here’s his segment from Good Morning America from the summer of 2012:

He never found her, but as he said after his failed search:

“You know what? You have to hold out hope in life, and it is just a situation where if you didn’t come and do it and see if you could find the girl, fifty years down the road you’d regret it. This is making sure that this isn’t something you didn’t do nothing about.”

It’s a more down-home Canadian version of those lines from Maud Muller: “For of all sad words of tongue or pen / The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

Three years have passed since that time, and I wonder what happened to him. I hope he met someone nice.

Our place, yesterday. You wouldn’t think there were floods two days ago.
Click the photo to see it at full size.

With a couple nice sunny days after three straight weeks of rain and some king-size flooding, it’s the perfect time to talk about Mr. Sun.

Photo from the St. Pete Chamber of Commerce’s Twitter account. Click to see the source.

St. Petersburg, located on the other side of Accordion Bay, is also known as “The Sunshine City” and has had a graphical mascot called “Mr. Sun” for decades. My favorite version of Mr. Sun is the 1950s one, which has recently been placed over the doorway to the Chamber of Commerce, as shown in the photo above. They should market the hell out of it — I’d buy a t-shirt, aloha shirts and loads of stickers with that design if they were available.

Here’s a montage showing various versions of Mr. Sun, taken from the Old Florida Tumblr (which is worth checking out):

Click to see the source.

I’m going to spend a day a week doing my work in various work-friendly spaces in beautiful downtown St. Pete, and I’ll even bring my bike on the rack so I can get out and about, as there’s lots to see and the streets there are very bike friendly. Expect to see lots of photos here soon!

In response to yesterday’s post on the flooding in Accordion Bay and surrounding areas, Andy Todd said that flooded roads wouldn’t be an obstacle to a motorbike rigged with special tires and skis like Robbie Maddison’s in his video, Pipe Dream, where he zips through the surf in Tahiti:

Even without flooding, there are lots of places around here to take that bike for a spin.