What interests me about Florida is actually a caricature of Florida. It's the excessive absurdity and jury-rigged kitsch -- the hand scrawled signs warning of hell fire or boiled peanuts, the bizarre museums, the residents who look lean and leathery and thoroughly salted, the overhyped billboards that inflate a tiny t-shirt outpost into a dazzling spectacle not to be missed. Without all this wax-museum oddity, most of Florida is drowsy and rural or just as sprawling and consumeristic as the rest of America. Of course, I can't speak for Miami or the Keys. I've never been there but can imagine it a more Hollywoodized, sparklier version of everywhere else. By and large, though, I try to stay as far from Florida as I can.
I'm here in Tampa (actually, in a suburb 10 minutes away) for at least a month. In that time, I'm trying to squeeze out every drop of creative, underground character I can possibly find and hopefully come to have more respect for this town.
The first thing I did when I got to my parents house, after sorting out my luggage and pointing Henry in the direction of the toys was to tune in my little clock radio in the guest room to Tampa's community radio station, WMNF. I'm used to WLUW and to a much lesser extent, WEFT in Champaign-Urbana. These stations definitely have more of a college radio, indie label thing going on. WMNF's format is seriously all over the place and, when I think about it, more of what a real community radio station should be like. Someone who's not into rock or alternative music doesn't have to wait for the weekend or odd hours to get something more to their taste.
After dinner, I printed out the program guide for the local public access channel. I dig public access but since I don't have cable at home, I don't get to watch anything. Tampa's public access channel is again an outstanding lineup. Sure, there's a shit ton of religious stuff, but I was excited to see episodes of Democracy Now! playing daily along with shows devoted to other activist organizations. And what would public access be without the personal shows run by individuals about their personal kink. I'm hoping to see as many of those as I can. Last night I started with "Chris and Todd Present...". As far as I could tell, it's two guys in their 20s fielding calls with a constant stream of in-jokes and 6th grade humor with the periodic conspiracy theory warning from Chris. Chris tells me that we landed on the moon 10 years early and that Jackie Kennedy walked in on LBJ doing indecent things to the corpse of JFK.
Amid these surprises, I had quite a disappointment in driving through one of my favorite neighborhoods in Tampa, Ybor City. When I was growing up, Ybor Square was an old cigar factory converted to small historical markers and cute little antique shops and boutiques. The place always smelled to me of black tea and tobacco and dust. We'd invariably visit on a Sunday, so there was also that sort of relaxed reverence vibe going on. When I was in college, home for summer, I'd drive down to 7th avenue in the day or late at night to visit awesome small book and record shops, improptu galleries, or fun dance clubs. I knew in the years since I moved to Illinois that Ybor had changed, gentrified but I held out hope that perhaps there might be some holdouts of the truly unique and vital. I drove down 7th this afternoon. I was deeply saddened by what I saw. Lots of tattoo parlors, sure, but even more bars or empty store fronts. I think I saw one of my all-time favorite vintage clothing shops still there, but the whole place was just a sad, yuppie shadow of what I'd once enjoyed. And Ybor Square is just business offices now.
Or did you just visit? And when was the last time you'd been back? The hokey signage is what you see driving into the state, usually way up north by the border. Not so much down south, especially not south of Orlando.
Ybor has been severly transformed for at least five years. They put a freaking mall into the middle of it, with a giant movie theater. Yeah, I too can recall the days when the place was 'edgey' and there were 'cool' places there like the Ritz or Blue Chair Records. When you were basically fucked if you walked into any of the surrounding neighborhood outside of the 7th St four block strip. Now its just another generic miasma of gross orgasmic consumerism. But hey, it was something else before I 'found' it too.