It started out as a circled date on the calendar: May 4. The occasion: the Saturday night performance of War Horse at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts. It ended with hailing a late-night cab on Tampa Street. Variations, as it turned out, on a theme. The Tony Award-winning War Horse was as promised. [...]
You go, Lynn Marvin Dingfelder. The former TV reporter is hard at work researching, interviewing, and rallying interest in the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s historic–Nov. 18, 1963–visit to Tampa. When completed, her production work will include a Tampa Bay History Center exhibit and a one-hour (WUSF-TV) documentary planned to premier at Tampa [...]
The other day, after my wife and I had checked out the Phillips’ collection of modern American and European art at the Tampa Museum of Art, we ambled out on that expansive second floor terrace to take in the picturesque panorama that is the perfect museum complement. That view from TMA is transformational: the aesthetics-enabling [...]
For a while it must have seemed that April was the cruelest political month to Mayor Bob Buckhorn. Barely past mid-term, the mayor has lost two key members of his administration. Really key. First, Santiago Corrada, his chief of staff and an invaluable City Hall troubleshooter dating back to his days with former Mayor Pam [...]
Next month several members of Tampa City Council will travel to Cuba as part of a Chamber of Commerce visit. Commendable. Yolie Capín and Harry Cohen will make their initial trips and Mary Mulhern her third. It’s first-hand fact-finding, it’s credibility, it’s positioning for the post-embargo era–and it’s Tampa-self-interest smart. The emphasis, understandably, has been [...]
A night at the Straz–whatever you’re attending–is always an occasion to wax thankful for such a world-class, multi-venue, waterfront facility. Ambience inside and out. Last weekend my wife and I were privileged to take in ‘S Wonderful!, the Gershwin musical that is part of the Straz’s Best of Broadway series. Not only was it a [...]
“How many of you walked in here this morning and looked in awe at what this building could be?” So rhetorically asked Mayor Bob Buckhorn last week at the long vacant S. H. Kress & Co. Building downtown. Mayor Bob was there because the historically artsy, erstwhile “five and dime” that closed in 1981 was [...]
Good venue choice by Mayor Bob Buckhorn for his State of the City presentation. The vacant Kress building is historic and awaits a reincarnation not unlike the ongoing conversion of the Federal Courthouse to a downtown boutique hotel. “The Kress building is next,” exhorted Buckhorn. “It’s part of Tampa’s history, but more importantly, it’s part [...]
Republican politicians, including very prominent locals, have been known to pass on the opportunity to speak to the Tiger Bay Club of Tampa. It’s too Democrat friendly. After all, what’s to be gained from unfriendly fire from those whose minds aren’t likely to be changed after a Q&A gotcha session? Well, Mark Sharpe, the three-term, [...]
No telling how the downtown Clearwater aquarium scenario will ultimately play out. November’s referendum vote, if favorable, will only fuel the speculation. But there is a critical variable in any funding proposal: Pinellas County’s 5 percent bed tax. A lot of it is generated by Clearwater–more, to be sure, than by St. Petersburg. And this [...]