Spookseses

North St. Pete

Poe Garage, downtown Tampa.

Is this where the control in controlled burns comes from? (Boyd Hill Nature Park, St. Pete)

Ybor Valet

Dual-image composite
animation of jarhead wall
figure in Ybor, watching
you park.

Tampa Urban Tour of Homes

Title card for very long blog post on last Saturday's Urban Tour of Homes in Tampa...














...poolside at Grand Central at Kennedy...



















...behind the cabanas at Grand Central...
















...inside the Box Factory Lofts in Ybor, converted from a cigar box factory. Great stained concrete floors...











...the bathroom in a $1.1 million unit at the Victory Lofts...













...and at Ventana. After the tour, a stop-off in South Tampa at Tun-Du-Ree -- no photo of the trailer with the magical Indian grill, but it's as good as they say.

Tampa Hose & Rubber Co.

Their website slogan is "An inch or a mile," plus some street art in Channelside.

Everything's Gone Green

A brown palm near an abundance of water sits at the edge of Lake Maggiore Island in the Boyd Hill Nature Preserve.

Downtown Promises

The faded sign on the side of this building along First Avenue S says:

"Downtown
It's a Whole New Ballgame
Go Devil Rays"

It can barely be seen from the street, now blocked by a building in the next lot: a new condo.
A new sign of progress overshadows the old one, but will the new one follow the old?

Salt Creek

A boat shelter on Salt Creek,
looking from Thrill Hill Bridge.

Old Southeast

Neighborhood info from the city's site:
here.

With past incidents in mind, Baywalk corporate heads are confronted with their latest challenge:
stationary gangs in lycra and spandex.

The Beacon

"St. Petersburg's Top Apartment"

(Third Street S, St. Pete)

Aloft in the Boat Yard

Near Salt Creek in St. Pete, w/ the Orton Effect.

The Dreamers, 02

Parking space No. 13, below-ground, in the Curtis Hixon Garage, Tampa.

West Tampa

West Tampa - old cigar factories and revitalization:

The Regensburg Cigar Factory at Albany and Cherry

"Coming 2007": windows, sans plywood!

Some Local Signs

Sunken Gardens, in St. Pete, a 100(+)-year-old garden and Florida roadside attraction since the 1930s...

















...at the North fishing pier on the Sunshine Skyway...


















...Centro Ybor's big cigar sign...














...and Haslam's book store, in St. Pete, home to Jack Kerouac's ghost.

Trolley Hub

In Ybor, taken a few weeks ago while residual wildfire smoke still darkened the sky.

More From Ybor

Maxwell Tops Reddit

As of 7:15 a.m., the second installment of Bill Maxwell's "I Had A Dream" series, detailing Maxwell's experiences teaching at a black college, sits atop reddit.com. Is this a big deal? It's a well-earned spot, and the comments are mainly thoughtful and haven't degenerated into individual flame wars. Consider that sites like digg.com and reddit now have to guard against people who try to game the system on these community-news sites. A lot of people are dying to see themselves on the front page to drive traffic and online ad dollars, and the folks at the St. Petersburg Times got the top spot today.

The Dreamers, 01

(View from the balcony of the Cuban Club, Ybor City)

Note to Trib, re: Falwell front page yesterday: This kind of equivocating (see "1994-1995") before Conservative political figures (yes, political), is what landed you in the position of having to eat crow the last presidential election.

Beach Drive's Changing Skyline

Beach Drive in St. Petersburg is changing (note: link is from 2005 and likely outdated, although the interactive graphic is worth a look). We begin with the completed Parkshore Plaza (photo progression here)...

...on the 400 block of Beach Drive, a new condo building takes shape behind Grayl's Hotel...

...and, the beginnings of the planned two-story $16 million north wing at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Shorty's Raucous Cuban Club Courtyard

A clip from a Trombone Shorty concert in New Orleans, one of the acts scheduled at Saturday's Tropical Heatwave. From a trombone player, the unexpected:

My windshield's usually too dirty to take pictures through:
Yesterday's wildfire smoke on U.S. 19.

Mashing Up the Old Masters

A week or so ago, there was a photo tip from Photojojo that got immediately popular on the Internets, that used artistic masterpieces as color enhancers for your photos. I took some ordinary shots from the waterfront downtown near the Pier, and mashed them up. The first try, which immediately came to mind, was the Monet owned by the Museum of Fine Arts:

Monet's blues and purples were there, but it didn't look right without that spatter, so I added some of the effect from the filter gallery.

English majors may recognize the next sample, which served as the cover of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2 for many years. The downtown waterfront and James McNeill Whistler's Nocturne: Blue and Gold - Old Battersea Bridge...

....gets the Battersea Bridge to St. Pete.

Derby Day at Derby Lane

Across-the-board betting sure saved my Kentucky Derby stake. I'm talking to you Hard Spun!

Godzilla vs. Rodan, Tampa: The Battle for Ashley Street

The Castle Door

A side door at the Castle, Ybor's Goth social hall.

You're Mired!!

All Your Asphalt Cannot Tame The Land (For Now)

Here in the middle of the state's most densely-populated county, there are still places of refuge where you won't experience the last-second highway merge in front of your car being committed by those that either bear an out-of-state license plate or display a straw hat on their back dash. One of these places, in St. Petersburg, is Sawgrass Lake Park.

At top, a view from the lookout tower on the lake, where you can also spot prehistorical descendants (below) accompanied by the constant hum of I-275 in the background.

Backlog

Gallery viewers at last month's Sensory Overload, at the Cuban Club, and a detail from a video installation at the multi-media show by Shawn Cheatham (inset).

Ybor Roofline