Tampa Is…?

Video:  Philly Phans Phlipped my car, please send money.

Written prior to the start of Game 5:  Beer plus local fans equal more disgrace

On [Saturday], we [Philadelphians] managed to take one of our best sports days ever and spray-paint it with obscenities.

The Flyers beat the Devils on Saturday for a home-and-home sweep of their rivals; No. 3 Penn State knocked off No. 9 Ohio State at Columbus; and the Phillies defeated the Rays in Game 3 of the World Series.

That was the good news, apparently too much good news for the charter members of the Pennsylvania chapter of IDIOTS (Insufferable Drunks Increasingly Overserved at The Stadium).

Here’s what else happened that day:

When a Flyers overtime goal was disallowed, a Wachovia Center genius heaved a stink bomb onto the ice. (Three quick questions: Who sells stink bombs? Who buys them? And who takes them to hockey games?)

In an apparently ongoing effort to change the school’s mascot to the Nitwit Lion, 4,000 people in State College celebrated Penn State’s win by rioting, tearing up street signs and light poles, damaging cars and throwing full beer cans at police.

After the resumed game 5 of the World Series was over at 9:58pm,

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

10:29 PM

Fan Watch: The city erupts

A crowd for people just took over a fire truck at Broad and Walnut. Thousands of people are massing here in Center City. Many are running down Broad Street. Meanwhile, thousands of fans are marching up Broad Street from the stadium area. Around the stadium, multiple small fires are being reported, with lots of bottle throwing and broken glass.

10:44 PM

Violence erupts outside the stadium

Fans outside Citizens Bank Park in Lot M at Pattison Avenue and Darien Street were breaking bottles on cars and attempting to light an SUV on fire 40 minutes after the final pitch in the Phillies first World Series win in 28 years. Police quickly arrived and started to disperse the crowd. The crowd started mixing it up with the police.  By then, the crowd had also completely overturned a green Ford Explorer.

11:06 PM

Fans attack Channel 3 News van

On the 1400 block of JFK Boulevard, out-of-control Phillies fans have overtaken a Channel 3 news van. They’re rocking it, trying to turn it over, according to police. The windows have been broken out of the van. There are also sporadic shots being fired throughout the city, and police are surging toward the areas of the largest crowds. Mayor Nutter, in TV interviews, urged fans to remain calm. “Enjoy it, savor it, but let’s all be respectful to eachother,” Mayor Nutter said.

Meanwhile, at Pattison Avenue and Darien Street outside Citizens Bank Park, a group of youths was fighting police. One of the youths had some blood streaming from his head.

(more…)

Philly Fans are the worst.  Everyone outside of Philadelphia knows that.  But those who live in the city don’t believe it, or won’t admit it.  Why?

Because the newspapers up there don’t ever talk about it.  Check the Notes on the Rays, where they quote Maddon about Philly fans behavior:

Maddon said he has enjoyed the interchange with Phillies fans at the game. He even gave one fan some good-natured grief over the brand of beer he was drinking.

The Rays manager is a native of Hazleton, Luzerne County, and he has family members at the World Series. Maddon had one complaint about some fans.

“Throwing mustard packs at my granddaughter is not very cool,” he said. “If you want to have arguments about [beer], I’m good with that, but leave the families alone.”

That’s the entire story as published on philly.com, Philly newspapers online home.  Uh, that’s not exactly the story, Marc.  According to John Romano of the St. Pete Times, Philly fans are big-time jerks:

Children were cursed at, and one 9-year-old boy had beer poured on him. A Rays family member stayed locked in a bathroom stall because, he said, Phillies fans were banging on the walls and threatening him.

The thing is that most places will actually do something about that boorish behavior.  On the other hand, the entire Philadelphia nation seems to enjoy this reputation.  Apparently, there were only 12 reported ejections, and Romano says they are all to blame:

… the team, the police, the mayor’s office and the citizens allow their reputation to be lowered down to the level of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals because they condone this behavior year after year after year. Condone may not even be the right word. They revel in it.

Hey John, call out the newspapers, too!  In addition to stricter rules and greater enforcement (48 arrested!) at games, when locals don’t act right, we get editorials decrying the behavior.  Up in Philadelphia, the newspapers just sorta ignore it.  Unless it happens to their fans.

Then the Philadelphia Inquirer is compelled to write about those mean, mean Dodger fans in LA:

Dodgers fans “would go get beer and stand in front of us and not move - stay there like a second too long,” [Phillies fan Rob] Palmer said. “They booed a very attractive Phillie fan and her company away…”

Seriously - they wrote that holding up opposing fans for ONE SECOND was considered offensive behavior directed at Philly fans.

We all knew they were jerks, but apparently they are sissies, too.

tbt* claims there is a terrible trend going on in local schools (you’ll have to flip to page T5, and you’ll have to do it today):

YET ANOTHER CHALLENGE FOR POOR SCHOOLS: THEY GET LION’S SHARE OF MISCREANT TEACHERS

The gist of the article is that schools with a high rate of low-income students get more bad teachers than those schools with fewer kids in poverty.  The problem is that this may or may not be true - we simply don’t know.  And they do throw a single sentence in there to cover their ass:

But Pinellas and Hillsborough teachers punished by the state for serious misconduct appear more likely to have been working in high-poverty schools, a St. Pete Times review shows.

Note the word “appear.”

However, they also encourage readers to find out more:  ”For the full story, go to education.tampabay.com.”

In the St. Pete Times online article, the headline is a bit more accurate:

Review suggests more teacher misconduct at poorer schools in Pinellas and Hillsborough

In this longer piece, they specifically admit that their review of school records is not conclusive:

The Times review has shortcomings. The volume of local teachers in the database is small, making it unreasonable to draw strong conclusions.

And although they gloss over the fact, the real paper reports that at least one school with higher income kids also has as many problem teachers as some of the poor schools.

After Dixie Hollins and Riviera, the schools that have had the most state-sanctioned teachers in Pinellas were Pinellas Park High, Northeast High and Tarpon Springs High. Pinellas Park and Northeast have also been among the district’s poorest schools.

Ignored in that second sentence (and through the rest of the bit), Tarpon Springs High is not full of low-income students.

So, should this article have been written?  Does it tell us anything?

Of course this is an important article and story.  Stuff like this is the first step to looking into an issue, and we should absolutely try to find out if poor schools somehow getting screwed.

But for tbt* to scream with an all-caps headline that it is already a foregone conclusion is misleading and irresponsible.

Tampa Bay isn’t that different from any other post-WW II collection of sunbelt suburbs in search of a city. LA, Phoenix, Albuquerque, El Paso, Houston, Orlando, Jacksonville - the built landscape is pretty much the same. 

Designed to isolate us in autos and ranchettes, these sprawls give us lawns and shopping malls and de facto segregation by class and ideology as well as ethnicity.  (Thanks, Greatest Generation.)

This isn’t good for the creative class.  And a diverse creative class is a big part of what makes cities livable and attractive to the knowledge workers who generate the dollars in the post-industrial economy.

Oh, yeah, and that includes tourist-dependant economies — Pinellas, I am looking at you.

Mayor Iorio signed on to this concept. In 2003, anyway.

The man-made environment in the bay area — sprawling, low-density, built-for-cars– doesn’t throw people together in a stimulating creative stew the way it does in high-density environments. A friend of mine, visiting St Pete a while back, summed it up for me:

“The most important art contacts you’re gonna make– they’re at the laundromat, at the coffeehouse, on the bus, on the street with a really ugly terrier on a leash. You can’t help but run into them. I mean: Run. Into. Them.”

Tampa Bay is hemorrhaging its creative class, and that is worse than you think. They are leaving for places where they can find respect, employment, amenities, and like-minded people.

Can intentional design break us out of this creativity drain?

Where do you go every day to rub elbows with creative, stimulating people?

From July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008, the Tampa Bay area lost over 23,000 jobs. As a percentage, the Bay area’s job losses are second-worst nationally:

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater lost 1.8 percent of its jobs over the year ending in June

That’s second worst for major metros (population of 1,000,000+). Smaller areas such as Fort Myers (down 5.1 percent), Naples (down 4.2 percent) and Bradenton-Sarasota (down 3.6 percent) had bigger percentage losses.

Texas cities Houston, Dallas, and Austin all had job gains.

Check out the US Dept. of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report for June.

According to a new report released by the Corporation for National and Community Service, 60.8 million Americans volunteered in their communities in 2007.  That represents an average of 26.2 percent of Americans age 16 and older.

The study also reported the percentages of individual states as well as metro areas, and those findings are highlighted on the Volunteering in America website.

The number of volunteers from the State of Florida is below the national average, and ranks only third from the bottom of the list:

• Volunteer Rate Ranking: 49th within the 50 states and Washington D.C.
• Average Volunteer Rate: 20.0%
• Volunteer Hours Ranking: 45th within the 50 states and Washington D.C.
• Average Volunteer Hours per Resident: 29.3 hours

Most of those (32.4%) volunteer with religious organizations.

Floridian cities make up the bottom of the metro rankings too:

• #50 - Miami - 14.5% volunteered.
• #46 - Orlando - 19.7% volunteered.
• #45 - Jacksonville - 20.7% volunteered.
• #40 - Tampa - 24.8% volunteered.

Sure, Tampa Bay ranks higher than the rest of the state, and is above average for Florida, but we can certainly do better.

Here are the numbers for the Tampa, FL Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) (Major cities included in this MSA include Tampa, FL; St. Petersburg, FL; and Clearwater, FL):

• Volunteer Rate Ranking: 40th within the 50 large cities
• Average Volunteer Rate: 24.8%
• Volunteer Hours Ranking: 29th within the 50 large cities
• Average Volunteer Hours per Resident: 34.8 hours

So what about you?  Do you donate your time to any worthy causes?  Fill out the poll, and tell us about some worthy causes in the comments:

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The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics released the Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment Summary this week, and several Florida metro areas are ranking high in jobs lost:

The Bradenton-Sarasota-Venice market recorded the fourth highest percentage drop in total employment nationwide for the past year.

Total employment dropped 3.7 percent in the 12 months ended in May.

Included within the top five were other areas on the west coast of Florida still feeling the hangover from the real estate and construction boom of the past five years: Cape Coral-Fort Myers at No. 2 with a 5.3 percent decline and Naples-Marco Island at No. 3 with a 4.6 percent decline in employment.

Topping the list is Flint, Mich., with a 6 percent decline — hit hard by layoffs in the automotive industry. Behind Bradenton-Sarasota-Venice was Saginaw-Saginaw Township North, Mich., with a 3.3 percent.

Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater and Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach were fourth and fifth on a list of areas losing the most jobs. The markets lost 20,300 and 16,500 jobs, respectively.

Florida Trend recently published a list of the top 150 Florida public companies ranked by total revenue in 2007.

Local companies in the top 25 include Clearwater’s Tech Data Corp. (#1), St. Pete’s Jabil Circuit Inc. (#6), Tampa’s TECO Energy, Inc. (#18), and St. Pete’s Raymond James Financial Inc. (#21).

They also list the top 200 private Florida companies ranked by 2007 revenue.

Top 25 locals there include Lakeland’s Publix Super Markets Inc. (#1), Seffner’s Rooms To Go (#12), Bradenton’s Beall’s Inc. (#19), and Clearwater’s Frank Crum (#22).