The rabbit is giving the traditional Lunar New Year greeting, which translates to “congratulations and good luck.”
It’s another Lunar New Year, and this one is the year of the Rabbit, which starts today (January 22nd, 2023) and end on February 9, 2024. In Chinese culture and folklore, the Rabbit astrological sign is connected with peace, prosperity, and long life, and 2023 is supposed to be a year of hope. You might want to look back at previous Rabbit years (2011 and 1999) and see how they went for you.
Here’s hoping that this Year of the Rabbit goes better than the one in this video:
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.
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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:
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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.
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Make note of the people in the foreground if you want a sense of the wall mural’s size:
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After admiring the mural for a moment, I decided to help the bar fulfill its business purpose and buy a drink.
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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.
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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.
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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:
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I lucked out and a seat on the patio freed up…
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…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)…
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…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.
