Tampa Is…?

Investigative journalism is crucial.  In addition to exposing unethical immoral and illegal behavior, sometimes those journalists find simple (but expensive) stupidity and laziness.

Back in 2004, Greg Neal of Keystone Ventures envisioned a Tampa Sports Centre near Raymond James Stadium.  A couple of months later, HCC envisioned a retail complex including a hotel, conference center, restaurant, medical complex, public pool and sports facility in their “Front Yard” facing Dale Mabry.

In early 2005, Neal approached HCC, and suggested he could build the world-class sports-medicine destination with a luxury hotel and a culinary institute.  Four hundred jobs would be created, and students could learn from sports nutrition experts and hotel management programs.  In return, HCC would guarantee low rental rates on 40+ acres to Keystone for fifty years.

HCC was rightly intrigued, and asked for a proposal with details.

After collecting proposals from them and other parties in 2006, evaluators for HCC placed Keystone fourth behind Cheeseburger in Paradise, Steak N Shake, and a hotel from a George Steinbrenner company.  Although they found problems with the Keystone proposal, those top three did not include using the facilities for education, and HCC leaders kept Keystone on the short list. 

HCC then paid $768,000 to a real estate firm to oversee the project, and that firm gave HCC more specific reasons for denying Keystone’s proposal, such as a lack of experience and unfavorable lease terms.

In an email sent in May 2007, HCC VP Ron Wolf suggested they look out for “smoke and mirrors” from Keystone at a scheduled meeting.  They met with Greg Neal again, and were again blown away by his excitement and vision.  Seems they forgot about the smoke and mirrors, and were still talking about the grandiose opportunities in March of this year.

Luckily, the St. Pete Times took an interest in the story.  Doing the job that HCC leaders, HCC evaluators, and an $768,000 hired gun should have done, SPTimes reporter Thomas Lake has found that Greg Neal is full of sh*t. 

A St. Petersburg Times investigation of Neal’s claims and credentials found nearly 20 statements that were exaggerated, misleading, disputed, or downright false. And public administrators repeated some of those claims in official documents without independently confirming them.

What an outrage!  You would think that these basic background checks would be PART OF THE PROCESS by those entrusted to evaluate the proposal, yet none of it was discovered until the paper got involved.

Of course, in an attempt to save face, HCC plans to give Greg Neal an opportunity to address these new concerns in a meeting next month.

Thanks to Thomas Lake and the St. Pete Times for uncovering this nonsense.  It’s a damn shame we must have journalists doing the job of lazy, uninspired “leadership.”

If you’re looking for something a bit different to do over the next week, I highly recommend taking in the Young Dramatists’ Project at the Gorilla Theatre. It consists of five short plays written by local teenagers and directed by some of the area’s best local theater professionals, including David O’Hara, Ami Sallee Corley and Karla Hartley.

Now in its eighth year, the project is a gift to the local artistic community from Susan Hussey and Aubrey Hampton, who own the Gorilla. The competition is open to all Bay area middle and high school students. Winners get their plays produced along with mentoring from the project’s dramaturge (and very talented playwright) James Rayfield, as well as royalties for the production and paid membership into the Dramatist Guild. It’s really a great way to discover and nurture new talent, and the talent I saw in these plays is pretty impressive.

I went Wednesday night, which was a dress rehearsal and fundraiser for another good karma and very worthy organization, Sierra Club Inner City Outings, which introduces city kids to nature through guided hikes, kayaking, camping trips and other stuff. The whole evening, including a 15-minute intermission is about an hour and a half long and costs a mere $15. For that, you will see five very different and compelling short plays.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to be impressed, or even terribly entertained. I’ve been to plenty of kid-written performances over the years and usually they fall on the pleasure scale somewhere between watching bowling on tv and mowing the lawn at noon in July.

But each one of these five plays was good. The first was Order by Sierra Almengual, a junior at Shorecrest. It’s a short, dark piece about two brothers that reminded me a little bit of Sam Shepard’s True Grit. Next was Aftershots by Blake HS sophomore Elizabeth Klette, which takes place after a Colombine-style shooting at a high school and explores the way various subcultures react. I was especially impressed with the way Ms. Klette captured the distinct voices and perspectives of a nerd, an emo girl, a black kid, an overachiever, a skater, a prep and a jock. Fable de Veras by Eric Davis (senior at Palm Harbor UHS) was an artistically ambitious look at a young girl born in the US to Mexican parents. Shorecrest junior Alexander Nunnelly’s Red Cross was a polished gem featuring a Red Cross rescue worker with a secret and the woman he is trying to save against her will.

Gabriel Neustadt’s Destruction Room ends the evening with a bang–literally. Actually several bangs. It’s a sophisticated and wry satire that takes on the power and commercialization of violence, and if you didn’t know it had been written by a junior at Shorecrest high school, you might well imagine an older, more experienced playwright had written it.

If you have ever complained that Tampa is a cultural wasteland, you owe it to yourself and to the cultural life of this area to support the Gorilla Theatre, the Young Dramatists’ Project, and these young talents (and the actors are just as impressive as the directors and playwrights, btw). It’s only fifteen bucks and less than two hours of your time. Plus, you can have a glass of wine, a beer or a brownie while you’re watching the show in a cool, dark, air conditioned place. What have you got to lose?

Gorilla Theatre is in Drew Park, and the production runs through June 8.

Friday, I was thrilled to begin day one of a four-day weekend with a seven-hour visit to my mechanic over in Drew Park to have my car’s brakes replaced (and if you know how rare it is for me to get a two-day weekend, you can imagine just how thrilled I was). Normally, brake jobs only take about a quarter of that time (not to mention a quarter of the price) but Jeeves is an extremely rare and unique model of car, commonly referred to as a “sh*tbox,” so special care and handling like this from time to time is to be expected.

Now there is only so much Tetris a person can play on their cell phone (and I play it like it’s 1986 and it just came out), so out of sheer boredom I took a nice long walk and explored the neighborhood. I can tell you that I don’t know much about Drew but I sure didn’t see a park. Unless by “park” you mean “lingerie modeling studio.” And by “lingerie modeling studio” I mean “seedy wh0rehouse.” I saw a whole bunch of those.

I also saw low-income apartments and some houses but I was struck by how there sure are an awful lot of adu!t enterta1nment establishments in a residential area. The marketing slogan for the Drew Park Convention & Visitors Bureau must be “Come for the wh0res, stay for the houses.” Drew Park might be the oddest neighborhood I’ve ever seen, as it seems to be comprised of equal parts adu!t entertainment, auto repair shops/small, nondescript manufacturing plants and people’s homes, all scattered among each other, with several of each on every street just randomly strewn about with no apparent thought given to placement. This must be the land that zoning laws forgot.

I find it interesting because as long as I’ve lived here, there has been almost constant hand wringing over the rampant pr0stitution problems on Nebraska and east Hillsborough avenues. Yet, there’s a thriving red l1ght district within walking distance of Raymond James Stadium, Legends Field and Hillsborough Community College that nobody seems to know (or is it care?) about. Maybe it’s because these are all professional, licensed businesses where nothing untoward happens (I know - are the emoticons for wink, wink but what do you use for nudge, nudge?). Or maybe since both the Tampa Police Department and Florida State Highway Patrol have substantial bases right in the heart of the neighborhood, we all rest assured knowing that no illegal activity of any kind takes place there. Or maybe we just kind of like having it tucked away there; you know, close to the airport, hotels and the, um, show bars that cater to (and collect sales tax from) a certain segment of tourists but not on the main drag where the nice people who live here would have to worry about it.

But ladies, if you come across hubby’s credit card bill and you see charges from a business located on Lois, Alva, Osborne, Hubert or Cayuga, you might want to know the going rate for a brake job before you ask him about it. Just sayin’.

(Cross posted at Ridiculously inconsistent trickle of consciousness)

The current production at Gorilla Theatre is called A Gorilla Winter.  It consists of Thornton Wilder’s The Long Christmas Dinner, Maury Yeston’s December Songs and other seasonal entertainments. It’s sophisticated, heartwarming, and perfect for adults and children aged seven or over.

About The Long Christmas Dinner:

The Long Christmas Dinner dramatizes the lives of eleven members and four generations of the Bayard family over a ninety-year span of family Christmas dinners in the Bayard house. As family life continues through the generations, Wilder shows his characters as they experience the universal family ritual of a holiday dinner. It is a simple, profound reminder of what is important and enduring. Although family members come and go over time, the family remains constant; and our own tradition of the theater keeps these truths alive.

About December Songs

In 10 songs, Tony Award-winner Maury Yeston (Nine, Titanic, Grand Hotel) “tells a story of love lost, of the struggle to move on, and of the resilience of the human spirit.”December Songs was written as a modern equivalent of Schubert’s Winterreise (”Winter Journey”), in which a young man wanders through the Austrian forest. In December Songs, it’s a young woman in Central Park. 

A Gorilla Winter closes this weekend, so it’s your last chance to see the spectacle.  You can find Gorilla Theatre behind Legends Field at 4419 N. Hubert Av.  See it tonight at 7pm, Fri and Sat at 8pm, or Sun at 3pm.  Tickets are $20 tonight, and $25 for the Fri, Sat, Sun productions.  Seniors and students are $5 less, and there are student rush (30 min before show) for $10, when available.  They also have group rates - give ‘em a call - (813) 879-2914 or gorillatheatre.com

About Gorilla Theatre:

Tampa’s most intimate, live theatre offers an eclectic season of classics, original works, theatrical dance and is host to Tampa’s Jazz Club events. Enjoy select wines, organic coffees, gourmet cookies & confections in a comfortable, black box setting. With 76 plushly-upholstered seats, there isn’t a bad seat in the house.

I have a pair of tickets to see “A Gorilla Winter” at the Gorilla Theatre on Saturday night at 8pm.

Who wants ‘em?

TheDriver is sixteen years old. Because she hasn’t had much experience behind the wheel, her mother and I are hesitant to let her just drive anywhere. I don’t think we are overprotective – she drove to Siesta Key with her friends. But then again, that was during the week over the summer – yes on I-75, but there was no rush hour traffic and it was during daylight hours.

She had gotten tickets to the Spleen Bowl (spleenapalooza?). Because the traffic would be heavy and filled with drinkers, we decided to drop TheDriver off to tailgate with her friends, then pick her up after the game. WE didn’t have tickets to the game, but just felt it would be safer for her that way. And it was. For her.

A couple blocks away from the pickup point, a nice Mercedes came into my sight on a side street to my right. He was driving north in the southbound lane, passing a bunch of cars stopped at the stop sign. Of course, he didn’t stop, blowing right through the stop sign. I slammed on the brakes & horn, but neither would alter the course of fate. At that point I just slid right into his driver side. I took my SUV and broadsided him, T-boned him, crushed the Mercedes like a tin can.

After asking the FirstGrader if she was all right (she said yes), then checking on wifey, I got outta the SUV, and ran over to the stopped vehicle that was now essentially a three-wheeler. The young guy was getting out of the Mercedes. He slightly stumbled and asked if I was OK. I told him I was, and asked him the same. He said he was, so I asked him why did he run the f*cking stop sign. I didn’t stick around for the answer. I went back to my family.

It was an ordeal for wifey to get the FirstGrader out of the middle of the road. It seems that Mercedes was not the only impatient driver on the streets. She had to dodge traffic to get across the street to a parking lot. Once safely there, I went back to move the SUV out of the road, having to deal with more impatient drivers.

We called the police, then called TheDriver and told her she may wanna walk the 3 blocks, since we would be a while.

There was one guy there who was not impatient. A man who was stopped at the stop sign saw the guy coming alongside, and waited to see what would happen. He witnessed the entire crash, and in a completely unselfish move, he waited with us for the police to show up. I offer a big bunch of THANKS! to Bill Newton, Executive Director of the Florida Consumer Action Network.  He gave the policeman another story to help put it all together. Thanks a million, Bill!

To make a long story a little bit shorter, the police did show up (after about 45 minutes), got a statement from Bill, gave Mercedes a ticket for failure to right-of-way as well as a finger-to-nose test (which he apparently passed), and we were free to leave (the SUV was drivable).

The SUV (which may come out of the shop tomorrow) got about $1,600 damage. Meanwhile, I got a pimpmobile as a rental car, and I have come to really not trust anyone driving out from the right side of the road.

Next time the teen can drive herself.