We’ve just come from a “hot glass date” at Susan Gott’s glass workshop, which is conveniently located in our neighborhood, Seminole Heights. We opted to make a fluted bowl together, and I’ll post pictures of the finished work once it’s cooled off in the annealer.
Named after the South Dakota rancher on whose land he was found, Big John is 8 meters (26 feet) long, 3 meters (10 feet) tall, and about the size of an RV. He’s also surprisingly intact, with 60% of his body bones and 75% of skull present.
Walter Stein poses beside one of Big John’s bones. Photo courtesy of Glazer Children’s Museum. Tap to view at fill size.
Big John is a recent find — 2014! He was found by Walter Stein, founder of PaleoAdventures, who are in the business of digging up fossils for commercial sale.
One of Big John’s horns. Photo courtesy of Glazer Children’s Museum. Tap to view at fill size.
The Italian firm Zoic srl purchased Big John, after which they removed the rocks from his skeleton and replicated the missing bones using a combination of sculpting, casting and 3-D printing.
Photo courtesy of Glazer Children’s Museum. Tap to view at fill size.
Big John then went on display in Europe and was put up for auction in 2021. He was purchased by the Pagidipati family of Tampa for almost $8 million. Rather than have it sit in a private collection which almost nobody would see, the Pagidipatis chose to find a place where everyone could see it, and that place is the Glazer Children’s Museum, located right on Tampa’s Riverwalk.
Photo courtesy of Glazer Children’s Museum. Tap to view at fill size.
“Our interest in purchasing Big John and other specimens is first and foremost to make them available to the public and for research,” said Siddhartha Pagidipati. We want to do our part to help the Tampa Bay area become the best place in our country for families to live and raise their children.”
Illustration courtesy of Glazer Children’s Museum. Tap to view at fill size.
Illustration courtesy of Glazer Children’s Museum. Tap to view at fill size.
You’d better believe there are big plans to show off Big John properly. He’s going to be the centerpiece of a brand new exhibit at the Glazer Children’s Museum, and I’ve included the exhibit designs in this article.
Illustration courtesy of Glazer Children’s Museum. Tap to view at fill size.
Illustration courtesy of Glazer Children’s Museum. Tap to view at fill size.
Illustration courtesy of Glazer Children’s Museum. Tap to view at fill size.
Illustration courtesy of Glazer Children’s Museum. Tap to view at fill size.
You won’t have to wait long to see Big John — his exhibit at the Glazer Children’s Museum will open on Memorial Day Weekend (Saturday, May 27th)!
The front of the Glazer Children’s Museum. Tap to view at full size.
The Glazer Children’s Museum is Tampa’s children’s museum, located in downtown Tampa. It’s the home of a lot of interactive exhibits, hands-on activities, and space to run around, climb, read, and make friends.
Need a kid-friendly summary of the triceratops? Click here, or click the pic!
Children’s museums are important. They provide a place to learn and explore interests through hands-on experiences and activities. When you’re young, nothing expands your mind like interactivity that engages all the senses, and that’s something that children’s museums do very, very well.
The Glazer Children’s Museum’s mission is to serve the children of Tampa Bay by providing a clean, safe, and fun outlet for imagination and discovery.
Common Dialect Beerworks,Seminole Heights’ newest brewpub, held its grand opening this past weekend. Located on Florida Avenue a few blocks south of Hillsborough, it’s the latest brewpub to appear our neighborhood over the past few years.
It’s also a hotly-anticipated arrival. The day I went, Saturday, January 14th, was its second day in operation. It wasn’t just their main parking lot that was full, but both overflow parking lots as well. It helped that it was a bright and sunny (if brisk, by Florida standards — 12° C / 54° F) day. The place was busy, but not uncomfortably so, at least in my extrovert opinion.
Tap to view at full size.
Common Dialect is owned by a couple from the neighborhood — Kendra and Mike Conze. If you’re a local dog owner, you probably know Kendra from her other business, Health Mutt, which is probably the most-loved pet food and supply store in Tampa. Health Mutt recently moved from its corner store location on Central Avenue to very spacious digs nearby on Florida Avenue. This gave them a large warehouse space next door, and that space became Common Dialect.
Here’s what I saw when I stepped inside:
Tap to view at full size.
The place was hoppin’, even though it wasn’t any time near peak beer hours — I’d arrived at about 3:00 p.m. to check out the place after getting my hair cut just up the street.
One way they’ve decided to make themselves stand out from the other pubs in the area is by being the most brightly-colored of the lot.
Tap to view at full size.
Make note of the people in the foreground if you want a sense of the wall mural’s size:
Tap to view at full size.
After admiring the mural for a moment, I decided to help the bar fulfill its business purpose and buy a drink.
Tap to view at full size.
The line moved pretty quickly, and the staff were friendly and seemed experienced. If they were having opening-weekend issues, I didn’t see them.
Tap to view at full size.
Tap to view at full size.
With my freshly-acquired beer (alas, they didn’t have any darks or stouts on hand, so I decided to go for vitamin C with a citrus wheat beer), I made my way to the patio.
Tap to view at full size.
There isn’t space for a kitchen inside the pub, but there’s a designated area for food trucks, and it appears that they plan to have a different food truck on the premises most nights. On the Saturday I went, they had two: Queen B Ice Cream and the cleverly-named A Boy Named Sous:
Tap to view at full size.
I lucked out and a seat on the patio freed up…
Tap to view at full size.
…so I set my accordion down (remember, I take it with me to pubs and bars because it’s a magical machine that often turns music into free beer)…
Tap to view at full size.
…and proceeded to enjoy my beer and some conversation with the people around me.
I struck up conversations (and played tunes for) the people at the tables around me, and they turned out to be new arrivals to the area who’d moved here for the usual selling points: classic houses, tree-lined walkable streets, nearby places to eat and drink, local quirky shops, and so on.
If anything, these new faces are a sign that we haven’t yet hit “peak brewpub” in the neighborhood and all the existing places, each with its own qualities and charms, will be around. One of the reasons we moved here was for the healthy ecosystem of “third places,” and I’m happy to see another player in the mix.
Here’s the video — you’ll need to turn up your sound:
If you’re in Tampa, you can experience the goat, along with some really good coffee in a pleasant outdoor space, at the Seminole Heights branch of Spaddy’s Coffee.
I can’t justify spending $28K on this monster analog synth setup, but maybe you can. If you’re working on a soundtrack or sound design for a movie or game, or the next big electronica/EDM/electroacoustic masterpiece, this collection of systems assembled into three racks just might be the thing you’re looking for!
The seller’s based in Clearwater, and the lucky buyer will have to pick it up there or someplace nearby, and you’ll probably need at least an SUV with the back seats folded down to drive away with three racks’ worth of gear.
Massive Eurorack setup including three Doepfer A-100 cases. Everything has black panels and has a nice aesthetic. I have extra panels for a few items that didn’t come in black. I have almost all the original manufacturer boxes.
Also will include a huge lot of organized eurorack cables, extra power cables, and misc screws and parts.
This is a truly incredible setup!
Must pickup in Clearwater or arrange for meet-up in Florida. I can drive to your or meet you – free – depending on location. Not willing to ship – way too large, heavy, and delicate.
Erica Synths DIY Polivoks VCO II – Updated design based on the original Polivoks VCO
4ms Company Ensemble Oscillator (Black Panel) – Black panel for the Ensemble Oscillator
Erica Synths Black Double Bass – Erica Synths Black Double Bass is unique module that combines two transistor suboscillators (-1 and -2 octaves) and lowpass filter.
2hp ADSR (Black Panel) – Four Stage Linear Envelope
Erica Synths Black Quad VCA2 – Four channel voltage controlled amplifier and mixer
Erica Synths Pico VCA – Dual linear VCA
Erica Synths Black Quad VCA2 – Four channel voltage controlled amplifier and mixer
Erica Synths Drum Mixer – Dedicated Drum Mixer with a compresor
CalSynth uO_C – Micro Ornament & Crime in matte black
Acid Rain Technology Navigator – Attenuator, Attenuverter and Mixer
Mordax DATA (BLACK) – Four channel oscilloscope, Spectrum analyzer, Spectrograph, Tuner, Dual waveform generator, Clock source/div/mult, and more
Tap to view at full size.
Tap to view at full size.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with synthesizers (I used to be — and still am — a synth keyboardist), this rack is a killer collection of:
Synthesizers, which make all the beep boop sounds,
Drum machines, which make all the thumpy and OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ sounds,
Sequencers, which record the order in which the beep boop, thumpy, and OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ sounds should be played,
Effects, which add dimension to all the sounds, from reverb to echo to distortion to oddball sonic effects.
Tap to view at full size.
The asking price is US$28,000. I can’t tell you if this is a good price or not; I’m more familiar with the more conventional synths you’ll find at Sam Ash or Guitar Center than with this sort of rig.
Maybe someone should contact Trent Reznor and see if he’d be interested in coming down to Clearwater, and maybe, you know, meet up with me for a beer or two?
“94% of Parisians live less than a 5-minute walk from a boulangerie.” Green dots show established shops over three years old, red are ones that opened since 2017, while blue dots indicate shops that have closed.
Paris is a very walkable city, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they coined the term flâneur for “someone who spends their leisure time going on strolls with no particular destination in mind.”
A walkable city and the presence of flâneurs is also a strong indicator that it’s a great place in which to live. This thinking has given rise to the concept of the “15-minute city,” a term coined in 2016 that refers to a place where dwellers can get to the places for their daily routine with no more than 15 minutes of walking, or at most, 15 minutes of cycling.
A 15-minute city or neighborhood should feel like the ideal presented in Jane Jacobs’ book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. In such a city or neighborhood, it’s reasonable to regularly walk or bike to places such as:
A grocery
A drug store
Other shops for regular daily or weekly needs
A “third place” — a place that isn’t work or home where you can spend with other people in the community
The idea is that communities within each arrondissement of the French capital become more ‘self-sufficient’, with grocery shops, parks, cafes, sports facilities, health centres, schools and even workplaces just a walk or bike ride away. This triennial survey of the city’s commerce shows that – in this one particular area important to French people – it already is.
Creative Commons photo by Kent Wang. Click to see the source.
In case you were wondering what a boulangerie is, it’s a kind of bakery. The French are so into baked goods that they’ve created a number of terms for different kinds of bakeries:
boulangerie: The kind of bakery that makes bread. In France, you need to bake the bread on the premises in order to be called a boulangerie. You buy “bread-y” good here.
pâtisserie: A pastry shop. France and Belgium don’t let you call your bakery a pâtisserie if you don’t have a licensed master pastry chef on staff. You buy “cake-y” good here.
viennoiserie: Between the boulangerie and the pâtisserie is the viennoiserie, or Viennese-style breakfast pastry shop. You buy brioches and croissants here.
After finding out how easily accessible boulangeries are in Paris, I decided to see if I lived within walking or cycling distance of one. If you live in Seminole Heights like I do, you probably do!
First, there’s the Seminole Heights branch of La Segunda, which used to be Faedo Family Bakery. Faedo has been making Cuban bread for over five decades, and La Segunda’s been baking for over a century. They are truly a Tampa answer to the boulangerie.
Then there’s Gulf Coast Sourdough, who not only make excellent bread on the premises, but fantastic sandwiches, and a very good cinnamon roll.
And finally, there’s Brazilian Fun Foods, who don’t just make bread, but gluten-free bread in the style of pao de quejo, a cheese bread made from corn flour and cassava starch. Their wares cover a wide range of carby goodness, from bread to pizza dough to churros.
Seminole Heights also has a grocery, a couple of pharmacies, many restaurants, cafes and bars, riverside parks, and even a Home Depot and Walmart (this is America, after all), all within walking or cycling distance. It’s a pretty nice place, and I like it here.
Small Business Saturday (which took place yesterday) is an excellent opportunity to check out local places that I don’t usually go to, or places that I’d been meaning to go to for some time. Tiger Dust, which has been in Seminole Heights for several months, falls into the latter category.
Tiger Dust calls itself a wunderkammer, a German term meaning “wonder room” or “room of wonders.” There’s a similar term, kunstkammer, which literally means “art room” but it often interpreted in English as “cabinet of curiosities.” This is from a time when “cabinet” was used more often to refer to a room than furniture for storing things (our modern usage of the word is a sort of downsizing).
If you’re looking for a gift for an unconventional friend, Tiger Dust just might fit the bill.
Need an interesting taxidermy piece? Tiger Dust has ’em in spades.
Kitschy art? Oh yeah.
Housewarming present for a friend whose wardrobe is entirely black? They’ve got ’em.
I almost bought the tiger kite pictured above. I may yet return to complete the purchase. I did buy a skull ring, because it’s a key part of the accordion rock and roll lifestyle.
Tiger Dust is located at 4222 North Florida Avenue, a couple of blocks north of M.L.K. Boulevard. Their hours are listed online as 12 noon to 7:00 p.m. daily, but the sign on their door might be a little more accurate — it says they’re open noon-ish to 7-ish.
Want to know more about Tiger Dust? Check these out:
