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Category Episode Great Eats Great People Location Tampa

Episode 42 – Thai Legacy with Michael and Nicole, fans of the show!

Episode 42 - Thai Legacy with Michael and Nicole, fans of the show!

Alexa,
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Show Notes

What’s it feel like to get fan mail?  A whole lot better than getting hate mail!

In Episode 42 I have lunch with my wife as well as Michael and Nicole at Thai Legacy, a Thai restaurant that’s so good you’ll be dreaming about the Mango Sticky Rice for weeks!

Take a trip back to the 50s, 60s, and 70s at Furnish Me Vintage!

Transcript at the bottom of this page!

Thais Legacy

 2140 W Doctor M.L.K. Jr Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607

What to order…

  • Mango Sticky Rice!
  • Pineapple Fried Rice w/ Tofu
  • Pad Thai Tofu
  • Tofu with Cashew Sauce
  • REd curry with coconut sauce

vegan-friendlyendly… they ask you if you want a dedicated vegan menu!

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Transcript

Categories
Category Episode Great People Great Places Location Tampa

Episode 40 – Henry Plant Museum (University of Tampa), Interview with Lindsay Huban

Episode 40 - Henry Plant Museum (University of Tampa), Interview with Lindsay Huban

Alexa,
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Show Notes

In today’s episode, you will hear about the history of the University of Tampa, the Tampa Hotel and it’s builder Henry Plant.  Lindsay Huban, the Museum Relations Manager at the Henry B Plant Museum located at the University of Tampa, takes us on a historical journey through this wonderful and iconic Tampa property!

Transcript at the bottom of this page!

Henry Plant Museum

The Henry B Plant Museum is located on the University of Tampa Campus.

Henry Plant Museum (University of Tampa)
https://www.plantmuseum.com/

 

 401 W Kennedy Blvd, Tampa, FL 33606

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Plant City Facts

Plant City is named for Henry Plant, not because they grow plants there!

 

Episode 24 – Interview with Bob McDowell, Plant City Strawberry Farmer 

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Transcript

Kyle: Hey everybody. This is Kyle Sasser here with the “Great Things Tampa Bay.” And today, I am at the lovely Henry Plant Museum located on the campus of the University of Tampa. And I’m here with a super smart museum lady, and I’ll let her introduce herself and give her credentials and all that good stuff.

Lindsay: Hi, everyone. My name is Lindsay Huban. I’m the museum relations manager here. So I’m happy to talk about the museum and all the great things we do.

Kyle: So we’re here in the office. We’re gonna do a little bit of questions back forth and then we’re gonna kind of go walk around the hotel a little bit. Let’s start off, give us the general overview of this building where we’re at, how old it is?

Lindsay: This building was originally the Tampa Bay hotel. It opened in 1891 and it was built by Henry Plant who built the railroad into Tampa. Now, to give you a little bit of context, before Henry Plant built a railroad here there really was no Tampa. There were 700 residents, it was a fishing village. Henry Plant built a railroad then decides to build a luxury hotel and the city just blossoms. There were 15,000 people just a couple of years later.

So what we have now is everything that’s left of the original artwork and furniture from the hotel. It’s really amazing that it’s all in its original location. You don’t find that anywhere else. So we are a museum of the hotel. We’re the oldest Museum in the city. We’ve been open since 1933.

Kyle: Okay. I didn’t know you all had been opened that long.

Lindsay: Yeah, we originally opened as the Tampa Municipal Museum and we had some interesting collections. There were some works progress, administration projects that were done at the building, the University of Tampa moved in, and then in 1974, we became the Henry Plant Museum.

Kyle: So we’re in this lovely room. What was this room originally and just kind of describe what we’re looking at in here?

Lindsay: Well, we are in what was a hotel room. So the nicest hotel rooms were on the first floor. The ceilings are 14 feet high on this floor so it’s a pretty nice space. We’ve got some big windows, just about every room had its own fireplace. And this room, in particular, would have been a multi-room suite.

So when you look around, you see a bunch of doors, we have our own bathroom, that’s now my co-workers office. There’s a little hallway where archives are kept leading over to our retired director’s office. So we use every space in the museum.

Kyle: And this room is absolutely gorgeous. It’s like the doors are innately curved and those are all original?

Lindsay: Yeah, actually, on the doors, there was originally silk flocked wallpaper, and in a failed attempt to preserve it, they lacquered over it so it looks kind of dark and brown and you can still see the pattern, but originally, it was yellow silk with gold threads running through it, would have just been gorgeous.

Kyle: Yeah. And I’m like, I’m looking at it right now and I thought it was like sort of like curved or burned in there, but, yeah, okay, that makes a lot more sense. All right. And then, so tell us some of the big features about this hotel, like what sets it apart from other hotels of that era and also so far as Tampa’s skyline goes.

Lindsay: Well, people ask me where I work and I say, “The Henry Plant Museum,” and they go, “Where’s that?” And I say, “Oh, it’s the University of Tampa.” “Well, where’s that?” And I say “The big red brick building with the silver domes on top,” and everybody goes, “Oh yeah, that one.”

So this is the building that we’re talking about. This was the first building in the state to be completely electrified. We have one of the early elevators in the city. Every room had its own telephone which was fantastic for calling the front desk and telling them to bring a piano to your room, but not so good for anything else because no one else had a phone.

Kyle: Was that a common request?

Lindsay: There was an orchestra that played at the hotel every evening and the advertisements state that if you don’t wanna listen to the orchestra, the porters will bring a piano to your room for you.

Kyle: Plant was a salesman, right?

Lindsay: Absolutely. This was very much a luxury hotel. You know, it took you four days to get here by train from New York City. So you weren’t coming for a weekend, you were coming for several months and so you were wealthy if you were saying here at the hotel.

Kyle: Okay, so tell us a little bit… So we talked about the domes on top. What’s the actual technical name for those? How are they made, and is the top…is that still gold?

Lindsay: So that’s an interesting question. There are 13 structures on the roof of the building. There are three domes, four finials, and six minarets. So the minarets are the ones that are the tallest, they are not actually gold. The original metal was tin that was painted over. They have all since been rebuilt and they’re currently stainless steel because it’s assumed that if Henry Plant had had access to stainless steel, that’s what he would have used for these.

Now the minarets actually were painted gold in the early ’80s for the Golden Jubilee of the University of Tampa. But that gold paint didn’t last very long. And so it didn’t look so good after about six months, so they’ve gone back to the original silver color.

Kyle: And the moons on top, were those gold at one point or?

Lindsay: They were not ever made of gold, unfortunately. We get a lot of questions about them. They’re just something to make the building look exotic.

Kyle: They lied to me. When I was here in 1995, they told me they were gold.

Lindsay: Well, I can tell you this, around the top of the baseboard in the grand salon, which is one of the giant ballrooms here, all the way around the room, this enormous room, the top of the baseboard had a layer of 23 and a half carat gold on the baseboard of a hotel. I mean, talk about conspicuous consumption.

Kyle: And that’s a big room. I’ve been in that one. That one’s big enough and amazing. Do you all still do weddings and stuff there or?

Lindsay: Yeah, absolutely. We have three ballrooms and they’re all used regularly.

Kyle: So, obviously, it’s not a hotel anymore. So like what your…did it stop, like… Bring us from luxury hotel in the early 1900s through to present day, like how did we get here?

Lindsay: So Henry Plant dies in 1899 and his heirs sort of fight over his empire, and the city of Tampa buys the hotel and 150 acres of grounds in 1904 and 1905. I should mention Henry Plant spent $2.5 million to build this building and that’s in 1891, an incredible amount of money. City of Tampa buys it for $125,000, so they got quite a steal.

So the city buys the building, they continue to run it as a hotel until the early 1930s. But by that time, we’re in the midst of the Great Depression, nobody has any money to come to Florida and stay at a luxury hotel. So the building closes. And there were a couple…there was about a year where it just sort of sat vacant, and the city wasn’t sure what to do with it.

The University of Tampa was founded in 1931. And they were operating out of a high school gymnasium, they needed a permanent home. So the city, they said, “Hey, we’ve got this great building, it’s sitting empty. University, would you like to use it?” So the university has been here with the museum ever since.

Kyle: Yeah, and I would think this is a little bit more prestigious than the gymnasium University.

Lindsay: Yeah, you know, when you’re trying to build the university and build a nice reputation to go with it, this building is gonna help with that.

Kyle: So obviously, the city bought this for $125,000 and it cost $2 million to build, but what sort of condition has this hotel been in over the years?

Lindsay: A lot of different conditions over the years. There have been some dark days and there have been some golden times. This is a historic building. It’s on the National Register so it can’t be torn down. But, you know, it’s made of brick, the cement has a lot of sand and seashells in it. So there are some problems that crop up from time to time and we’re a really old building, you know, pipes break, water gets in the walls, you know what happens next.

But the university does a great job maintaining the building and we’re very lucky to still have it. Actually, a lot of the windows when you look around still have the original glass in them.

Kyle: Okay, so that’s pretty impressive. So the bricks, are the bricks from here or were they brought in from…uh oh. I might have stumped her.

Lindsay: My understanding is that the bricks came from several different locations, but I can tell you to distract you from bricks that some of the steel cable and the steel framework for the building actually came from the Brooklyn Bridge.

Kyle: Interesting. Interesting. Well, so the reason I asked on the brick was whenever we were in Mount Dora, which was one of the first tourist destinations in…basically, the railroad came down through Jacksonville, Mount Dora was kind of the first tourist stop there. The older buildings downtown were built with mostly local brick. And the problem that they have with the local brick there is it’s very porous.

Lindsay: Very [inaudible 00:08:21].

Kyle: And so…yeah. So, if it’s on the sun side, it’s fine but if it’s on the shadow side, so if it’s on the north side of the house, the water just gets in there and basically just breaks it all apart. So, I’m sorry, that was my own personal nerd out. So the university moves in, in like what year?

Lindsay: ’33.

Kyle: Right. So 1933 the University moves in. Obviously, they have grown over the years. Do you know how many students are currently attending here, and also, kind of like what the goals are going forward for both the school and the museum?

Lindsay: Well, the school actually has a great reputation now. My understanding is that they have close to 9,000 students, which is incredible. They’re always doing construction on campus, and always really trying to better the university. They’ve got some great graduate programs. So they do a really fantastic job.

Our goals for the museum, our big one is really to raise the profile of Henry Plant. So many people in the area will hear them say, “Oh, I’ve lived here for 30 years and I’ve never come to the museum before, who’s Henry Plant?” We want to correct that. Next year will be Henry’s…would have been Henry’s 200th birthday. So it’s gonna be kind of a year of Henry Plant and we want everyone in Tampa Bay to know his name and know his importance to the city.

Kyle: So I’ve got a little quiz for you here. What town is named after Henry Plant?

Lindsay: Plant City.

Kyle: All right, that was very challenging, I know.

Lindsay: No. I actually didn’t know that myself until… I grew up in St. Pete and I thought it was named for Strawberry Plants.

Kyle: It’s a good guess, it’s a good guess. But basically anything that’s named like Flagler and Plant is obviously going to have a early railroad connotation from the 1900s. And then I actually just learned that it was Plants’ and not demons, but they built a railroad spur all the way over to St. Petersburg, because St. Petersburg was nothing for like 50 years after Tampa, and it wasn’t until the 1900s and they built that railroad spur that St. Pete actually became something, so interesting stuff. What’s one thing you wish everyone knew about Henry Plant?

Lindsay: On the spot. One thing that I wish everyone knew about Henry Plant is that the city of Tampa would not exist without him, quite literally. They had voted to unincorporate and stop being a city in the mid-1800s and it wasn’t until the area leaders were trying to woo Henry Plant and get him to build the rail line here that they reincorporated and became a city again.

And if you look at the manhole covers around the city of Tampa, there’s a ship on them. That is one of Henry Plant’s steamships. So I wish everyone knew that. Henry Plant is everywhere, you just got to look.

Kyle: Yeah, awesome, awesome. Yeah, because before the railway got here, there was probably maybe like the one trail that goes out like 301 and that’s pretty much it, otherwise you had to get here by ship. So let’s talk about Plant the man for a second here because I honestly, I don’t know much about like his history and how he was. I’ve read a…like, Rockefeller obviously, read about him. Flagler a little bit, mainly like his, you know, the Key West Bridge and all that stuff.

Lindsay: [inaudible 00:11:27] were good friends.

Kyle: Yes. So all these guys hung out during that time and they were rivals and cohorts in many ways. So, Plant, was he a robber baron, was he more like benevolent?

Lindsay: Henry Plant was definitely benevolent. He cared a lot about his employees. I can give you some great examples of that. He actually…so he was this railroad tycoon and he also had hotels and steamships, but when they were building his rail lines, he actually had a hospital car that would be at the end of the tracks so that anyone who was injured could get medical treatment right away.

He offered health insurance to his employees. This is the 1870s and 1880s and he’s offering health insurance. Henry Plant even…there’s a little town in Georgia, and I wish I could remember the name of it, that was started because his African-American employees did not have safe lodging close to the work site. And so he bought a bunch of land and founded this little town so that his employees could have a safe place to live.

Kyle: Maybe it’s called Plant City, Georgia.

Lindsay: It is not, I cannot remember the name of it, but he cared very much for his employees. And he passed that sense of generosity and responsibility and caring for others onto his son, Morton Plant, who became a great philanthropist and is well-known throughout the Northeast for that. And actually, Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater is named for Henry Plant’s son, so he was a good guy, very much so.

Kyle: That’s good. So definitely a step above Rockefeller in all that.

Lindsay: Yeah, yeah, I think we can safely say that.

Kyle: No offense to the Rockefellers out there, but yeah. All right, so we’re gonna start our, I guess we can call this the walking tour.

Lindsay: Sound good to me.

Kyle: So, if we’re still here in the office and look around here, we have the beautiful windows and the doors, but up on the wall here there’s a red lion thing in a frame. So what’s that all about?

Lindsay: Well, actually, that’s a piece of the original carpet from the Tampa Bay Hotel. Carpet was not all that common simply because there weren’t vacuum cleaners, but this carpet, Henry Plant bought something ridiculous, 4,000 yards or something like that at a British auction house.

And the story goes that Queen Victoria commissioned this carpet, beautiful red carpet with a rampant lion on it, for Buckingham Palace and then she changed her mind and said, “No, people aren’t gonna walk on this.” Went to an auction house and Henry Plant picked it up.

Kyle: So thanks for the great carpet Victoria, it’s beautiful.

Lindsay: We have a larger piece on display in one of our rooms that I can show you as well.

Kyle: Yeah, cool. Well, so let’s talk a little bit about the museum. So how many people work here, what times are ya’ll open?

Lindsay: We’re open from 10:00 to 5:00, Tuesday through Saturday and 12:00 to 5:00 on Sundays. We have 7 full-time staff and 2 part-time staff and then we have 90 volunteers. So we’re always looking for more volunteers if anyone wants to get involved with the museum.

Kyle: Wow. Okay, so what sort of skill set does a volunteer need?

Lindsay: Enthusiasm, you should like people and wanna learn more about Henry Plant and the history of this building.

Kyle: And the willingness to volunteer.

Lindsay: Yeah, willingness to volunteer is pretty important too.

Kyle: All right, cool. And so, if they wanted to volunteer, where would they go? 

Lindsay: We have three main positions for volunteers. One is a docent, so you’re actually leading guided tours of the museum, that’s a lot of fun. And the other two are at our front desk and our museum store. Those are great positions for somebody who wants a, you know, regular once-a-week position, high school students looking for those bright futures hours, anything like that.

Kyle: Is that what Al’s friendly face was doing?

Lindsay: Yes. Al Miller has been volunteering at our front desk for over 20 years.

Kyle: Whoa. All right, so I probably I might have seen him back in the ’90s when I was last year.

Lindsay: It is entirely possible. Actually, our curator has been here for 35 years so you might have gotten a tour from her.

Kyle: Yeah, might have, might have. All right, so let’s walk around, I guess?

Lindsay: All right, we are…actually, let’s come down this hallway. So we’re gonna go down this hallway. The space we’re gonna go into first, since we’re a museum of a hotel, we’re gonna go check out what a hotel suite would have looked like if you were a guest here.

Kyle: Cool. So we’re going down the hallway. So what’s this design called that we’re seeing all over the place?

Lindsay: That’s a keyhole and we have them everywhere. If we go take a look at the original elevator, there are a tiny little key holes curved into the wood of the elevator. And the doorway that we walked through, if we were to close that door and lock, it if you look down at the other end of the hall, we have our own private entrance to the hotel suite, just one of many signs that we’re in a luxury hotel.

Kyle: Yeah, that’s fancy. So all of this would have been one?

Lindsay: Yeah. So this is a three-room suite or a parlor suite. It would have cost about $5 a night. To put that into perspective, somebody working here like a groundskeeper or the head waiter would have been earning 40 or 60 cents per day. So we’re talking two weeks’ pay for one night in there.

Kyle: Yikes. Sorry, so that would be probably like $5,000, $6,000, something like that?

Lindsay: Quite a lot of money, more money than I could afford, for sure.

Kyle: Woo, a night.

Lindsay: So as we come down the hallway, the first room we’re gonna come to on the left is the music room because what hotel suite is complete without a music room?

Kyle: They had one at the Sheraton I stayed in.

Lindsay: We have a harp in here, we have a piano in here. And like I was telling you earlier, if you didn’t wanna listen to the hotel orchestra in the evenings, call the porter and they’ll bring you a piano so you can play the piano in your room. And if you don’t know how to play the piano, the porter will stay and perform for you, it’s no problem.

Kyle: Very nice, very nice. So who would be working here doing that sort of stuff?

Lindsay: Who would be working here? Actually, a lot of the staff worked at summer resorts in the north and then would come down here to the winter resorts for the winter. So they would follow sort of the tourists.

Kyle: The original snowbirds.

Lindsay: Yeah, yeah, pretty much, yeah.

Kyle: No offense, no offense to Northerners.

Lindsay: No.

Kyle: This is beautiful. So we’re looking in the room here. There’s a stand-up piano over here in the corner. It’s got a music book on there that says “Tampa’s two steps.” Have you heard this piece of music?

Lindsay: I have not heard the “Tampa two-step.” There’s another one called the “Tampa Bay hotel gallop” that I would love to hear some day too.

Kyle: Some choice pieces of music. There’s a harp and another fireplace…stop, fireplaces, it’s Florida.

Lindsay: Well, this was a winter resort that was opened December through April and it would get a little chilly. There were a couple of years that they actually had snow and it killed a lot of the exotic plants on the grounds. So if it was cold, you had your own fireplace, if it was warm in the evenings as you’ll see when we get to the bedroom, there are windows all the way around the bed so you can open them and get cross breezes at night.

Kyle: Yeah, nice, nice. And also, over there on the table, it looks like a Edison cylinder?

Lindsay: Yeah. Thomas Edison was actually one of the guests here at the Tampa Bay hotel. He stayed here with his wife, Mina, and they actually were featured in our Victorian Christmas Stroll Last year. We had a room dedicated to them.

Kyle: Very nice, very nice. And those that don’t know, Thomas Edison actually had a house and a small lab down in…

Lindsay: Fort Myers, Fort Myers area.

Kyle: Yes, it’s in Fort Myers, just before you get there. When I was there, lots and lots of angel trumpets on the property. So, you know, he might have been using some hallucinogens to spur the imagination a little bit.

Lindsay: Perfectly in keeping with the culture of the day, I’m sure.

Kyle: Yeah, you know, they had like Valium and cokes or something like that back then. Wow, okay.

Lindsay: Yeah. So we have now moved into the bedroom of the parlor suite. And if you picture the building, we have what look like the towers on the corners of the building, the bed is located directly underneath one of those minarets in the corner.

So you got the windows all the way around it. You actually have your own closet, which was a rarity, you have your own bathroom, another rarity in the 1890s. We talked about Flagler a little bit, there’s a great story that when the Tampa Bay hotel opened, Henry Plant invited Henry Flagler, sent him a telegram and said, “Come to the opening.”

Flagler replied and said, “Well, how am I supposed to know where to go? There’s nothing in Tampa.” Plant replies back and says, “Well, just follow the crowds.” So that’s Plant’s answer to the Ponce de Leon.

Kyle: A little bit of banter back and forth.

Lindsay: Yes, yes. Business rivals, but definitely good friends.

Kyle: Well, it’s not like there was anything Flagler, Flagler beach or the west coast to that point in time either, really.

Lindsay: That’s very true. A lot of that came shortly after.

Kyle: So this is beautiful. So again, we got huge 14-foot ceilings. The bed is literally like in the round turret section underneath the minaret. There’s a gorgeous Millwork… I don’t even know if that’s mill… I don’t even know what you’d call that.

Lindsay: It’s plaster. Oh…artisanship.

Kyle: Absolutely amazing. Yeah. Well, permission, I’m gonna take a picture of that and put it in the show notes? So…yeah.

Lindsay: No, of course. Yes.

Kyle: Because that’s crazy.

Lindsay: One thing, it’s kind of cloudy and it’s gonna rain outside right now so it’s getting a little dark in the museum because we have authentic lighting in here. We have chosen to recreate the original lights from the Tampa Bay Hotel.

Now, I said this building was the first in the state to be completely electrified, the newspapers describe it as being ablaze in light, read a book any time of day. It is very dim in here right now and I would not wanna try to read a book.

Kyle: Yeah, it’s very…it’s very dusky.

Lindsay: But electricity was so new. This was a way to show off the technological advancements of the building and that Henry Plant had enough money to build a building like this with electricity.

Kyle: And honestly, this would probably be like, you know, 400 candles lit in here.

Lindsay: Yeah, probably something like that. We have…let me see if I can get this name right there, replica Edison carbon filament bulbs that we have in all the light fixtures in here.

Kyle: Yeah, very cool. I noticed some when I was walking in, some of the fixtures coming in. So, yeah, this is beautiful. My wife would love this.

Lindsay: Well, you should bring her sometime. So we have one room left of our three-room suite to see. So we are now in the parlor or the sitting room. This is sometimes called the library as well. There were big public spaces of the Tampa Bay Hotel, but if you were getting a little overwhelmed, you could come sit in your own private space, maybe write a letter home. We have an antique typewriter on display that I usually call a primitive laptop because it’s in a carrying case.

So you could write a letter anywhere you needed to. And again, you can see some of the beautiful wallpaper on the doors. We have original Wedgwood vases on display. I mean, really spared no expense is the only phrase you can use to describe it.

Kyle: Yeah, this is pretty, pretty impressive.

Lindsay: Yeah. And we’re a lifestyle museum so we want you to feel like you’re stepping back in time. And I think in the parlor suite, we do a great job of that.

Kyle: Yes, indeed. And I’m a bit of the typewriter nerd too. Just trying to see if I could see like what model of this is. So it’s actually built into this case, which is pretty interesting. And it’s definitely older than like the Underwood 3s and 5s that you’d normally see in like the 1910s.

Lindsay: Oh, yeah. This dates to the late 1800s. This is an old typewriter.

Kyle: Yeah, it definitely…it looks more like a cotton gin than a typewriter really, to me, at least. Like it’s very…like cast iron parts all around it. Very cool. I like it, I like it. Book me up for a week.

Lindsay: We hear that a lot.

Kyle: All right, moving on.

Lindsay: We do have a rotating exhibit space. I don’t know if you’d wanna see that or not. It’s up through December.

Kyle: Yeah, sure.

Lindsay: So we can take a look in there. I’m trying to think, this is an interesting piece, this chair here on the right hand side. So this chair is actually called a Victorian courting chair, or a tête-à-tête so that a young man and a young lady could sit and have a conversation here without a chaperone because the chair is its own chaperone.

The young man and the young lady sit facing separate directions, facing opposite directions, and then the wooden armrest goes in between them so they can only get in so much trouble here.

Kyle: So looking at the chair, it’s basically kind of an S-shape facing opposite directions, so you can kind of lean over on your sweetie, but that’s about it.

Lindsay: Yeah, nothing too improper for the Victorians.

Kyle: Yeah, so we’re looking at this room. There’s a lot of…I mean, I would call them formal sitting chairs, but they probably just called them sitting chairs back then?

Lindsay: Yeah, something like that. We have a lot of the furniture left from the ballrooms and the grand salon was sort of like the living room of the Tampa Bay Hotel. The photos we have show it full of these gorgeous chairs that we would be afraid to sit in today, but these were just where you would go, where you would hang out in the afternoon.

Kyle: Yeah, this is definitely something that my grandmother would have shooed me off of. And then there’s like a magnifying thing here for…?

Lindsay: Yeah, that’s a stereoscope viewer. So we have the stereo cards that have two images that are just slightly different. When you look at them through the lenses, it looks like a 3D image.

Kyle: So it’s like a old-school View-Master, basically?

Lindsay: Very much so, yeah.

Kyle: Very cool, very cool. So what other… So besides Teddy Roosevelt, what other famous guests did we have here?

Lindsay: Babe Ruth was a guest at the hotel. He actually hit the longest home run of his career here. John Philip Sousa, the famous band leader, Sarah Bernhardt, the famous actress, Anna Pavlova, Russian ballerina, Booker T. Washington spoke here, pretty much anybody and everybody who was famous at the time. Nellie Melba for whom Melba Toast is named was a guest here.

Kyle: This was the place to be then?

Lindsay: Yeah, absolutely. This was the big resort on the west coast of Florida.

Kyle: So not even like Naples… Like Naples, Venice, those were probably just dreams still at that point.

Lindsay: Yeah, absolutely. Henry Plant had seven hotels throughout the State of Florida. This one was the crown jewel for sure.

Kyle: And it’s definitely gorgeous. So we’re just kind of walking down the hallway here, huge tapestries, big sculptures.

Lindsay: Yeah. Actually, the first piece of public art in the city of Tampa was here on the grounds of the hotel. When you make your way up into the museum, you see a sculpture of two dogs, first piece of public art in the City of Tampa and it was sculpted by a woman.

Kyle: Interesting, very cool, very cool.

Lindsay: This room over here is our most authentic space.

Kyle: So we’re going into the authentic space.

Lindsay: This is called the Writing and Reading room. This is probably my favorite room in the museum because it is our most authentic space in the museum. And what I mean by that is, we have a couple black and white photos on display of this room in 1890s, you really can’t tell a difference aside from ropes on the chairs to keep people from sitting on them it looks the same.

Kyle: How many people have tried to sit in these chairs?

Lindsay: More than I would like to count.

Kyle: Don’t sit in the chairs, people.

Lindsay: So when you look at the photo, there’s really no differences down to their two small portraits of dogs hanging on the wall they’re still hanging in the same place.

Kyle: I see it and it still kind of smells like pipe tobacco and cigars in here.

Lindsay: Well, actually, there’s a reason that it smells a little bit like tobacco. A couple of years ago, during our Victorian Christmas Stroll, we had a Christmas in Cuba tree and we dried real tobacco leaves to decorate the trees.

Kyle: And it still lingers.

Lindsay: Like I said, authentic.

Kyle: Yeah, very cool, very cool. So this is where people would come and gather and…

Lindsay: This was basically the business center for the hotel. So if you were coming down for the season and you were a businessman from the north, you couldn’t just abandon your business the whole time. So you might write letters home here, read the newspapers, send your telegraph’ and telegrams and keep up with everything in here. This is primarily a space for gentlemen, which is evidenced by the spittoons that are on the floor.

Kyle: And they’re still there.

Lindsay: They sure are. And actually, the doorway at the end of this room leads downstairs to the resceller [SP], which was originally a bar and a barbershop and there were billiards tables down there so kind of a man cave for the 1890s.

Kyle: Very cool. Do they still serve beer down there? 

Lindsay: Unfortunately, they do not. But they do serve coffee and sandwiches. The students are disappointed too.

Kyle: Yeah, I’m sure, I’m sure. So this is definitely, this is very cool, very cool. But yeah, with the lighting, it’s not ablaze. This would not pass code currently for ample lighting.

Lindsay: No, no, not so much.

Kyle: But absolutely beautiful.

Lindsay: Yeah. And actually, we had a paint analysis done in this room and went through, I don’t know, 14, 17 layers of paint to determine the original paint color, and it’s this kind of pale yellowish color, kind of interesting for a gentleman space.

Kyle: Yeah, amazing. It’s good stuff, it’s good stuff.

Lindsay: So we have a rotating exhibit up right now, if you’d like to see that.

Kyle: Yeah, let’s take a look.

Lindsay: It’s much more brightly lit.

Kyle: Ah yes, track… Is this the original track lighting?

Lindsay: Oh yeah, dating back to the 1990s. So we’re now standing in our rotating exhibit space. So that exhibit in here right now is called Imperial Designs: From the Habsburg’s Herend to the Romanov’s Fabergé. This is just an incredible collection of porcelain and glass and pieces from the Imperial dynasties of Europe in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

So we have things here that belong to the Habsburg’s of Austria, and the Romanovs before the Russian Revolution. So the last emperors, the last Zurs [SP], this is the things that they would be using.

Kyle: Yeah, and they are beautiful, very ornate.

Lindsay: Yeah, we have Fabergé on display in here, we have a beautiful collection of Russian eggs that were often given as Christmas presents and Easter presents. And we have this exhibit up now because people who would have been staying at the Tampa Bay hotel often would have been doing what was called the Grand Tour and going to see these Imperial courts. So this is very similar to what they would have been seeing on their travels.

Kyle: Yeah, and it’s amazing. Very nice.

Lindsay: Yeah, all alone from one collector who lives in Tampa.

Kyle: Wow. Yeah, that’s impressive.

Lindsay: Yeah, yeah. For anyone who’s looking for the perfect gift, we have a great museum store that people should come take advantage of. And we do some great programs where we’re the best placed to bring your out-of-town-guests when they’re coming to visit you.

Kyle: And yeah, it’s just a great place just to kind of walk around. So there’s the actual museum and hotel part here and then there’s like a park outside by the water side.

Lindsay: Yeah, Plant Park is actually right out in front of the building. It’s a public park, it’s a great place to walk around. There’s also a cell phone tour that you can do out in the park to get some more information and it was all part of the original grounds, so it’s been restored. There’s some trees out there that have been there well before the hotel was built and hopefully, it will be here for the next 100 years, at least.

Kyle: Yeah. So there was river rock, there was the Plant Park.

Lindsay: Exactly, before river rock, Plant Park, for sure. So actually on the grounds of the hotel, there was a racetrack, the state fairs were held here, the very first guest [inaudible 00:30:11] celebrations were here at the hotel, there was a casino that was a performing arts center. I mean, this was the center of Tampa.

Kyle: So it hasn’t always been just like the campus and then like all of the dorms and all that stuff back there?

Lindsay: Oh no, there were actually 21 buildings when the hotel was in service. It had its own power plant, there was the other casino that I mentioned that could seat 2,000 people, there was a racetrack, bicycle courses, hunting and fishing, a greenhouse, a boathouse, really…

Kyle: It was literally a resort instead of just…

Lindsay: Yeah, yeah. Think all-inclusive resort and you’ll get a little closer.

Kyle: The original Disney World.

Lindsay: We do call it the first Magic Kingdom.

Kyle: There you go. All right, so Lindsay, thank you so much.

Lindsay: My pleasure. This has been a lot of fun.

Kyle: So people that wanna come here and visit, how do you get here? Where should they park, when are you all open?

Lindsay: We are open Tuesday through Saturday 10:00 to 5:00, Sunday 12:00 to 5:00. You can get all the information at plantmuseum.com, and we have parking right out in front of the museum and a free garage as well, free parking downtown and yeah, come, check us out.

Kyle: All right. Thank you so much.

Lindsay: My pleasure.

Categories
Category Clearwater Episode Great People Location St Pete Tampa

Episode 39 – Interview with Joe Malinowski, Tampa Bay is Awesome

Episode 39 - Interview with Fred Metzler, Owner of Dog Bar

Alexa,
play Great Things Tampa Bay

Show Notes

We interview local influencer and instagram phenomenon Joe Malinowski, responsible for Tampa Bay Is Awesome!  Joe joins me for dinner at Brick and Mortar, and we talk about all things food, the current state of things in Tampa Bay, and what there is to look forward to!

Transcript at the bottom of this page!

Tampa Bay is Awesome

Joe Malinowski

Tampa Bay Is Awesome

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Kyle: And one last question, besides Brick & Mortar, what’s your other favorite restaurant here in St. Pete?
Jason: Oh, boy.
Kyle: Oh, putting you on the spot.
Jason: Oh, boy. There’s a lot of them. There’s a lot of them.
Kyle: Hey, everybody. Kyle Sasser here with Great Things Tampa Bay. And today we got a little bit of a different sort of episode. Actually, I sat down and had dinner with another local Tampa Bay, well, influencer is kind of the name that we’re all sort of getting these days but, you know, another guy that has a passion for Tampa Bay who loves all the great restaurants and things to do there. 
So I reached out to him online, his name is Joe Malinowski and he runs Tampa Bay is Awesome. You might’ve seen his stuff on Instagram and, yeah, a cool dude. So basically, I reached out to him and asked him to pick his favorite restaurant and we would go have dinner there. And I, of course, would bring along a microphone just to capture all the good stuff to do.

We went to Brick & Mortar which is located in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida and known for absolutely delicious cuisine so he definitely picked the right spot there. So, without further ado, here’s the interview with Joe Malinowski of Tampa Bay is Awesome.
Hey, everybody, this is Kyle Sasser, Great Things Tampa Bay, and I am here with…
Joe: Joe Malinowski, Tampa Bay is Awesome.
Kyle: Yep, and he is a local blogger, marketer, social media guru extraordinaire.
Joe: Man, oh, man. Yeah, thank you. I guess there’s nothing else to say but thank you.
Kyle: Yep, and we are here at Brick & Mortar just doing a little dining experience and having a chat about Tampa Bay, what each of us like. So what caused you to choose Brick & Mortar here?
Joe: It’s delicious. I’ve come here a handful of times and every time I come it’s just, you know. I was at, I forget, I think it’s ES3 or Entrepreneur Society, and we had an event here, and the chef came out to hang out with us, was describing everything. He put so much thought and care into it, there was stuff that he had that was getting served, like they’ve been preparing for like two weeks. 
It’s just incredible when you see people that are that dedicated to their craft, and it’s nice to appreciate our local guys especially with so many new places opening right now. You got to support the ones that like are your staples because there’s going to be a lot of flash in the bands that we have coming out.
Kyle: That’s true. And, relatively, I would say Brick & Mortar is one of the elder statesmen of Central Avenue at this point even though they’ve only been open for a few years.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. You know, we’ve got a lot of great places, a lot of great places that are also opening but we still got to make sure that we go to those places that we know and love.
Kyle: Yeah, and it’s hard because so my role in the podcast is that I have to eat somewhere twice and have a great experience both times before I will review it. And same thing with it bad. Like for bad experiences, I have to have two or three before I start talking shit about it. Do you have something similar?
Joe: I try to avoid the “I didn’t have that great…” Like if I didn’t have a great experience, I guess I won’t talk about the place because I was at an event once and they served us truffle mac and cheese. Now I don’t like truffle, so… It’s just so weird. Like I will eat it, it’s just not my favorite, and someone else was at the table and there is some blogger who thought they were a big deal, and they were just like, “Oh, this is terrible.”
Kyle: To be unnamed.
Joe: To be unnamed. I don’t even remember who it was but I just remember him saying how terrible it was, and I’m just like, “Why don’t you like it?” They’re like, “Oh, I don’t like truffle.” I was like, “Well, don’t be such an ass about it. You don’t like the flavor that they chose to use. Everyone else that likes truffle seems to love it.” So that’s what I was saying. Well, listen, truffle is not my favorite, I don’t have a personal experience with it, I ate it, it tasted like truffle, the people who like truffle thought it was amazing.
Kyle: Exactly. Like beer, I’m not a big beer drinker so I did go to Cycle Brewing on occasion which is across the way here, just because I like the place and the beer is okay. I couldn’t tell you anything about the beer but I do get asked a lot about breweries, I don’t know a shit about beer. I don’t really like bee,, so that’s not my wheelhouse so I’m not even going to comment on beer. Liquor though I will tell you some good liquors.
Joe: Oh, yeah. I love…we have so many new distilleries that are even opening, both on here and even in Ybor they have two new distilleries, or one new distillery over there, or rum distillery that’s dynamite. You got American Victory over here, and then the existing ones that we had. You know, Kozuba does a spectacular job, St. Pete Distillery, love Banyan Vodka.
Kyle: Which, again, they’ve only been open for a few years but they’re kind of an elder statesman at this point.
Joe: Yeah.
Kyle: Because they’re in all the publics and all the good stuff. PS, their bourbon is delicious.
Joe: Whose bourbon?
Kyle: St. Pete Distillery’s.
Joe: Oh, yeah. Big shout out to them. I mean, they’re big supporters of us. We love them regardless because they just put out such a great product and they are getting so engaged in the community. You have a bar or something that you want to get in an event, St. Pete Distillery.
Kyle: So I have actually been trying to get a hold of somebody there for like three weeks.
Joe: Tell me who and I’ll get you there, I’ll get you in front of them.
Kyle: Just somebody that’ll talk to me.
Joe: I can get you anybody there. I will get you some cool people that will get you some good exposure for stuff.
Kyle: So you actually brought a book here.
Joe: I did bring you a book.
Kyle: And actually I have to say, so in this digital age, an actual physical product is both unique and interesting as the hostess or waitress stares over here.
Joe: [inaudible 00:05:49]
Kyle: There you go, now she’s looking down the street. All right. So, yes, you brought a book, a physical product. It’s called “Tampa Bay: Do It, Live It, Love It.” Tell us about it, tell us the inspiration for it.
Joe: A buddy of mine had been doing these types of books all over the world for the last 15 years. We put out a book in early 2017 called “Best of Tampa Bay” and it’s about 340 pages, it was business, it was lifestyle, it was trying to cram a ton of stuff into one book for both sides of the Bay even into Pasco and Sarasota. So what we ended up doing a year later, knowing that we really wanted something that showcases both sides of the Bay unified. 

You know, no one…people are like, “Rah, rah, rah, St. Pete. Rah, rah, rah Tampa. Rah, rah, rah, Clearwater.” Like no one has ever done anything that’s like, “Listen, we are one huge, awesome community.” Some ridiculous number of people, 10 or 15 million people a year come here to hang out.
Kyle: So I actually looked this up, we are larger…the Tampa Bay metro area is actually larger than Denver.
Joe: Wow. And not just our population, I mean, look at our number of visitors. And the thing that I see with all of our Facebook pages, I mean, St. Pete is awesome, Florida Beach, south Tampa, downtown, all of them, is you had a lot of people that live here, are natives here, and don’t venture out of like their little three or five-mile bubble and were all so excited to go travel the world and travel all these cool places and, you know, they haven’t been to Gulfport. You know, Gulfport is flipping awesome.
Kyle: Safety Harbor.
Joe: Safety Harbor, Dunedin, like these little small communities, like if you went to, you’d be like, “Holy shit, I didn’t realize…like, wow.” You can spend a whole day here, drink, eat, have a blast. I mean, not to down the pricing of it, but it’s super cheap. Like go to Gulfport no one’s charging you more than like $4, $3 for a beer.
Kyle: So Gulfport, we like Pia’s, my wife and I.
Joe: Oh, no, great. I am not…
Kyle: Safety Harbor, have you had the pizza from the one guy there?
Joe: I haven’t.
Kyle: So his pizza is amazing, but it is true what everybody says, “Do not try to substitute or change what he’s doing.”
Joe: Oh, I want to do it. I want to go there and like video the experience.
Kyle: Not that he will tell you to go fuck yourself, but…
Joe: He’s the Nazi of Safety Harbor?
Kyle: Yeah, let’s just say they’re not open to substitutions.
Joe: I love it. I want to go to a place like that. We went to the Soup Nazi place in New York once, and we were so hungry when we got there, like no one had the balls to be like a weirdo. We were just like, “I just want to eat.” So I always wondered if he would’ve, “No soup for you.” It would’ve been awesome.
Kyle: Maybe. Maybe. All right. So the food at Brick & Mortar here has just arrived. Joe, what did you get?
Joe: I got the special which…oh, are we?
Kyle: Yeah, you’re the Doppelganger, you’re the Jason Doppelganger, I’m sorry. It’s like three times you looked at him, I’m like, “Oh, no, I’m sorry.”
Joe: So, Jason tells us this is the most amazing snapper with a bunch of…I can’t even do it justice. I mean, there’s quinoa, there’s green tomatoes.
Kyle: So looking at it, it’s got a base of quinoa. What is that? Is that a yam or something? I don’t know.
Joe: I don’t think it’s yam.
Kyle: So a beautiful base of quinoa, salmon, right?
Joe: Snapper.
Kyle: Snapper encrusted with something that looks delicious and then…
Joe: Jason is here.
Kyle: Wait, wait, wait. All right. Give us the description here.
Jason: All right, so that is our snapper feature this evening. You have five-ounce pan-seared fillet of the snapper local caught with a Marcona almond and beet green puree, smoked green tomato and a quenelle of an ancho chili roux on top. And we finished it out with a…yes, a little bit of lemon [inaudible 00:09:40] on top and that’s going to give that little kind of citrus floral flair on top.
Kyle: All right. What am I looking at on my plate here?
Jason: So yours is our scallop feature tonight. So it’s going to be four pan-seared U10 scallops over our house-made green curry with a jalapeno and cilantro vinaigrette. We have some sliced heirloom tomato, pan-roasted beech mushrooms and we finish it out with a cilantro oil on top.
Kyle: You should really like narrate stuff on Food Network. Like you’re very good at…
Jason: Thanks so much, guys. And wine and beer is all set at the moment too?
Kyle: I think we’re good. After those lovely descriptions, dig in, okay? All right. Thanks, Jason. All right, let’s see how this stuff tastes.
Joe: Oh, yeah.
Kyle: Jason is going in.
Joe: Joe is going in. Jason has left.
Kyle: Right. Joe has gone in.
Joe: Man, I got to try what this little green stuff is. I mean, everything has such a nice unique flavor to it and that’s what’s tough to find in a lot of places. Everyone is kind of doing the same thing and the chef here is just always out of the box. He’s amazing.
Kyle: I like it. I like it. And look at my scallops here. I would say those are half dollar size, like these things are huge.
Joe: I would even say it’s bigger than a half dollar.
Kyle: And I’m not a tremendous connoisseur of scallops but I thought this one sounded interestingly enough…interesting enough to try. But, yeah, it’s pretty good. The thing I’ve been noticing like the last few places I’ve eaten at that I have liked hasn’t been that they’re doing like something that blows your mind. It’s the fact that the flavor is in the sauces and on the entrée and all that stuff are very balanced so you can like see everything that’s in there.
Joe: I mean, there’s stuff on here that you’re like not thinking of at home. I hate going to…I don’t hate, I just love eating food everywhere but it’s always interesting when you go to a place and you’re kind of like at the end of the meal like, “I could make that. I could figure it out if I really wanted to.” But you come to this, I don’t even know what to pair like this…I don’t know what he called it. He didn’t call it chorizo, I feel like there’s a little bit of that flavor in it.
Kyle: [inaudible 00:12:06] wasn’t it?
Joe: There was something. But it’s amazing.
Kyle: It’s unknown but it’s delicious.
Joe: It was the funny…I don’t even remember the word he used.
Kyle: We’ll have to roll that back and give it a listen. All right, so the food is delicious. We’re going to enjoy and come to you. Oops, sorry, that was not recording actually. Shit, that happens to me all the time. All right. So I am here with…introduce yourself.
Jason: I am the chef and owner of Brick & Mortar.
Kyle: And your name is?
Jason: Jason.
Kyle: Jason. Also the name of our waiter.
Joe: Yeah.
Kyle: Which he does a very good job with descriptions and telling us about the food and that good stuff.
Jason: He’s really good with that stuff. He’s one of our best.
Kyle: So you’re kind of the elder statesman of Central Avenue now, three years established, to be honest, at least to me.
Jason: I feel like I’m definitely part of it growing so, yeah, I’d like to say that.
Kyle: Two questions. One, what’s your favorite part about being a business here on Central Avenue in St. Pete? And, two, where do you see things going in the next five years?
Jason: Oh, wow. I mean, I got in here right at the right time, I mean, when St. Pete was just growing by leaps and bounds. I mean, like every week something is happening. But I would like to feel comfortable saying that we were part of bringing St. Pete up the way it is and bringing the food scene up. There was already some awesome people here but it’s definitely nice to be a part of that. And in five years we’re going to see…I think St. Pete is going to be one of the most competitive little big cities in the country. It’s already on its way so…
Kyle: Well, we’re not so little anymore. Actually, I looked it up, so I’m not just saying Pete but the Tampa Bay metro area, we’re actually larger than Denver now.
Jason: Oh, wow.
Kyle: That’s amazing.
Jason: That’s cool.
Kyle: And there’s even more people moving here because we don’t have snow unlike Denver.
Jason: Yeah, it’s funny because there’s probably about one out of every ten tables that I talk to is somebody that lives here now that came for a vacation last year or last winter, whatever, and decided, “Oh, my God, St. Pete is amazing.” And they ended up deciding to move here or get a vacation house here. I mean, literally every week, all week long, no matter what time of year it is, there’s always a handful of people that have done that.
Kyle: Well, Jason, I do want to ask one last question. How do you come up with this delicious stuff?
Jason: Oh, man, it’s just whatever is fresh and kind of go with the seasons, and I just kind of…like I literally call my vendors up, “Hey, what kind of fish do we have in? What kind of produce do we have in?” And just play off of that. And I’ll collaborate with…we have a really awesome staff as well in the kitchen so I’m very lucky to have that.
Kyle: And one last question, besides Brick & Mortar, what’s your other favorite restaurant here in St. Pete?
Jason: Oh, boy.
Kyle: Oh, put you on the spot.
Jason: Oh, boy, there’s a lot of them. There’s a lot of them, but I would definitely have to go with IL Ritorno, Sola Bistro is on the beach but still definitely check it out.
Kyle: You know, actually, I haven’t been to IL Ritorno since they did the remodel.
Jason: Yeah, it’s amazing. Yeah, it’s just as good if not better. But just a really badass buildout that they did and they have liquor now which is awesome.
Kyle: Sweet. All right, well, Jason, thank you so much.
Jason: Yeah, yeah, thank you.
Kyle: All right. So I asked to see the dessert menu and Jason said, “Why don’t I just tell you about it?” So here we go.
Jason: So we got three desserts all house-made. The first one is the lightest out of the three, it’s a lavender panna cotta. We also infused it with a little bit of basil. Then you have on the other side, prosciutto Marcona almonds, blue cheese and a little drizzle of Brick Street Farms local honey. So you got a little bit of salty sweet in that dish. 
The next one is our chocolate espresso cake. So it’s two layers of deep chocolate cake, and then you have the cocoa crème cheese frosting in the center, a chocolate espresso ganache shell and our house-made whip cream to finish that out. And, lastly, our empress of our desserts is the glazed donut bread pudding. All solid glazed donuts, tres leche sauce, toasted coconut and house whip cream on top to finish that out.
Kyle: Well, I got to tell you, the donut thing sounds a little over the top.
Jason: It’s our popular, most popular dessert and it’s decadent and amazing.
Kyle: What are you thinking, Joe?
Joe: I say of course. Definitely, you want to split one or you want to eat…?
Kyle: Give me the brief overview again.
Jason: So solid glazed donut bread pudding, tres leche sauce, toasted coconut, and house made whip cream on top.
Kyle: Wait, wait, give me all of the desserts again.
Joe: No, all of them.
Jason: Am I getting quizzed here?
Kyle: Well, no, no. I don’t need the details, just the quick overview.
Jason: So then our chocolate espresso cake and then the lavender panna cotta as well.
Joe: Anyone will do.
Kyle: You want to get the lavender.
Joe: I’m down. It sounds amazing.
Kyle: How’s the lavender? Is the lavender good?
Jason: Like I said, it’s not going to be as big of a dessert [inaudible 00:17:16] as the other two, but it’s definitely got a nice subtle flavor, it’s very delicate and then you also have the prosciutto and everything with it too, yeah.
Kyle: I like basil in desserts for some reason, and also I usually order chocolates. So I’m trying to break out of my mold a little bit. 
Jason: I’d say you can go with either of them. 
Kyle: And donuts do not sound tremendously healthy, donut bread pudding. 
Jason: Every once in a while it’s okay in my book. 
Kyle: All right, so we’re going to do the lavender thing.
Joe: The lavender one. That was the one I was most curious about. It sounded very interesting and I, too, am a basil fan.
Kyle: I like basil sweets for some reason because it’s very unanticipated, you know.
Jason: Yeah, and like I said it’s a very small undertone of that dessert but it’s just enough to get the essence of its flavor.
Kyle: It’s that little bit of herbal…
Jason: Yeah, there’s a little smoothness there.
Kyle: I like it.
Jason: I’ll be right back with two forks and some water. Would either of you would like a refresher, a wine, a beer?
Joe: Water is good.
Jason: Just the water, okay. Be right back.
Kyle: Thanks, Jason. Hang on a second. So this dessert just showed up. Wait, is that gorgonzola? No, blue cheese, sorry.
Jason: Yeah, and then you have our lovely liquid gold honey from Brick Street Farms drizzled on top and the prosciutto and Marcona almonds. It’s very beautiful.
Kyle: Jason?
Jason: Yes?
Kyle: Besides Brick & Mortar, which you’re an exquisite waiter at, or do you refer to yourself as a waiter?
Jason: Server.
Kyle: Server. Okay. Besides Brick & Mortar, what is your other favorite place in St. Petersburg to eat at?
Jason: Well, every once in a while, some smoked fish from Ted Peters is really amazing.
Kyle: Oh, shit. Are you old…are you like a native or…?
Jason: No, I’m from Vermont but we discovered that place and we live in Gulfport so it’s really nice to go every once in a while. But just we kind of hop around here and there, around town, you know, half off bottles of wine on Sunday, and that is really fun but…
Kyle: They’re still doing that?
Jason: Yeah.
Kyle: Do they still do the half-priced appetizers on Tuesdays?
Jason: I work on Tuesdays so I never get to go there to find out.
Kyle: Well, I could tell you it’s delicious if they still do it. But the half-priced bottles of wine are also awesome.
Jason: Yeah, especially if you’re willing to learn about wine, you haven’t tried something for the first time, and you can get it half off, it’s pretty good there.
Kyle: Which most people don’t know, same owners as Mazzaro’s Italian Market.
Jason: Yeah, I love Mazzaro’s to death.
Kyle: Who doesn’t?
Jason: It’s very magical.
Kyle: All right, Jason, well, thank you so much for delivering this blue cheese, not gorgonzola, I’m sorry.
Joe: I didn’t even remember what we ordered, but it looks amazing.
Kyle: So I am not obviously a food professional by any stretch of the imagination, although this shit looks legit.
Joe: Yeah, what is this? It looks like cheesecake. So it’s not cheesecake.
Kyle: I’ll let you go first.
Joe: All right. I’ll get a little…
Kyle: So it’s basically like a flan cheesecake looking thing with like prosciutto and blue cheese.
Joe: Blue cheese, so I’ll get a little blue cheese on it.
Kyle: And some honey.
Joe: One of these nuts, this is not your traditional dessert of any sort here. All right, here we go, here we go. Leading up to it, big buildup. Wow, that is delicious.
Kyle: If it sucks tell us.
Joe: No, no, it’s different. It’s got like little floral notes to it, the prosciutto and everything balances it all out. It’s got a I’d say almost a cheesecakey consistency, but the honey, it’s awesome.
Kyle: All right. Let me dive in here. Oh, this is weird. It’s almost like a gelatin, almost.
Joe: But it doesn’t…it’s not a gelatin. It almost has cheesecakey consistency to it.
Kyle: So obviously the prosciutto is the trouble.
Joe: It’s the troublemaker.
Kyle: It’s the trouble spot.
Joe: It’s amazing too. Wherever they said the honey came from is awesome. Golden Farm whatever the hell, I mean, honey. You can tell that we’re very critical food critics because we remember all of the descriptions.
Kyle: Yeah, very classically trained. Wow, so, man, very unique.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely.
Kyle: I’m glad I ordered this besides the chocolate, like chocolate I can anticipate what I’m going to get.
Joe: Yeah, it’s going to be delicious, it’s chocolate.
Kyle: Yeah, exactly. This is like…think of like prosciutto syrup with a little bit of cheesecake on it. So this is absolutely delicious. Obviously our description is not doing it justice.
Joe: Don’t even try it. Just eat it.
Kyle: Amazing.
Joe: This is what happens in a podcast because I’m like…
Kyle: Yeah, so the professional podcaster just did about…
Joe: It’s amazing conversation you all just missed.
Kyle: Yeah, so I can’t ask the same questions because you already know.
Joe: Yeah, I did get the two out of the three right.
Kyle: Yes, so…
Joe: Not in the cup?
Kyle: So just to back up a little bit, we’ll run through. So World Cup is starting up here in less than a month.
Joe: That it is.
Kyle: And all right, so going through the questions. Is the United States qualified in the World Cup?
Joe: I guess no and they’re not.
Kyle: That’s correct. They were actually…they could’ve qualified up until the last game and they lost against Trinidad & Tobago of all people. And I actually know some folks from Trinidad so no offense to you but there’s no reason why the United States should’ve lost to Trinidad.
Joe: I’ve been to Trinidad.
Kyle: Well, there you go, give her some heads up. Second question, did Italy qualify?
Joe: I said no because I did hear that through the grapevine.
Kyle: And, no, Italy, longstanding football powerhouse did not qualify. Third question…
Joe: Ready to go, right?
Kyle: Yeah, they won just a couple cycles ago. Yeah, last cycle was Germany. So Netherlands did they qualify?
Joe: I guessed yes and they did not.
Kyle: That’s right. And I went into this very long diatribe about their color being orange and, yeah.
Joe: Their name and where orange has come from. Like it was fascinating.
Kyle: Yeah, and it was a really great explanation which I’m not going to go into again. I will leave it as a mystery for a day in the future.
Joe: Neat. I learned about oranges today, I learned about what 86 means, we all are better for that.
Kyle: Yep, so 86, that was actually something before we started recording, it’s apparently in…basically an in the industry knowledge if you work in the restaurant business, give us a brief explanation.
Joe: That means we don’t have it, that’s as bland as it comes. We don’t have it. I don’t know where it came from. You can look it up. If you look it up let us know because I think it’s stupid.
Kyle: So if somebody says 86 lobsters.
Joe: They do not have 86 lobsters.
Kyle: So for some reason instead of saying, “We don’t have lobsters,” you say, “86 lobsters.”
Joe: Apparently, yeah.
Kyle: And it sounds like this must’ve come from like sailing ships because they’re the only thing I know that has such stupid fucking jargon.
Joe: That would be interesting.
Kyle: I’m sure it’s got to go back to some colonial horseshit.
Joe: You guys got to come try whatever the hell is this lavender panna cotta with prosciutto and blue cheese and delicious honey, I forgot what kind of nuts these are but, damn, it’s delicious.
Kyle: Yeah, actually we were not recording for so long that we might’ve skipped over the whole dessert portion there. This dessert is best described as unique and I would say a little bit savory, it’s a savory sweet…
Joe: Savory.
Kyle: So it’s a combination of prosciutto, an almost flan consistency lavender cheesecake sort of thing and some delicious honey.
Joe: I’d say it’s a flanny cheesecake.
Kyle: And blue cheese.
Joe: And it’s all amazing. You got to get it.
Kyle: And we’re sitting next to some folks here who are currently checking their phones, yeah, and they were laughing at us not recording for the last five minutes. What’s your names?
Ritchie: Ritchie.
Sara: Sara Beth.
Kyle: All right, Ritchie and Sara.
Joe: You’re famous.
Kyle: Yes.
Ritchie: All right.
Kyle: What are you all looking forward to ordering here at Brick & Mortar?
Ritchie: Well, we’ve got the curry and spice rubbed smoked pulled pork poutine coming.
Kyle: All right. Good choice. Good choice.
Ritchie: That’s all we’ve picked so far.
Kyle: Still deciding on the rest?
Sara: Yeah.
Joe: We had the scallops and I had the snapper special of the day. This is…you got to get this though. This is…
Sara: What is it?
Joe: Dessert.
Sara: Oh.
Joe: And if you listen to our amazing description we just gave you, you would know that, like this is a lavender panna cotta with prosciutto and honey. It’s amazing.
Kyle: Yeah, so Jason, our server, definitely the king of descriptions, he will give you the whole rundown. But it is very unique. Like some chocolate stuff, you kind of know what you’re getting, but this is very unique to this place.
Joe: [inaudible 00:26:13] telling them all about this deliciousness here.
Jason: You didn’t have my finesse though.
Kyle: That’s true.
Joe: He didn’t have the finesse at all.
Kyle: All right. So we’re here at Mandarin Hide. Bar keep, what’s your name?
Neil: Neil. But I’m good.
Kyle: Neil, all right. So you don’t want to be on the podcast. Tell us a little about this place.
Joe: They just have crafty cocktails and I happen to have a pretty substantial gift card so I come here and drink and [inaudible 00:26:38] out.
Kyle: All right. Well, there you go. Is this related to the book that you did?
Joe: Yeah, we did a little barter deal so we’re chipping out a little bit of each…I have no one to come down here with so.
Kyle: Well, here we are. Here we are.
Jason: All right, this is Joe. Joe, we’re out of Mandarin Hide there.
Joe: Yes, sir. Headed out.
Kyle: How good was it?
Joe: It was very good. I’m more of just a plain old whiskey or scotch guy. I don’t need all of the fancy additives. So whatever I got the first one, Rob Roy was very nice so I enjoyed it. Then I just went with the Glenlivet, you know, be simple.
Kyle: So, neat or on the rocks or…?
Joe: I went neat. I usually on rocks kind of guy but, you know, switched it up.
Kyle: So do you do or do not like old fashions at all?
Joe: I sometimes like them. You know, people are always like this place has a really great old fashion and I’ll try it and sometimes I really love them and sometimes I don’t. So I usually steer…I don’t typically go for it unless I take a sip from someone else’s and like, yeah, I’ll do that.
Kyle: Well, I got to tell you, the old fashioned of Mandarin Hide had pretty good, not the best I’ve ever had but pretty good. It’s a little more on the spicier side.
Joe: I don’t mind spiciness. I think sometimes I don’t know if it’s the bitters or…they don’t put vermouth in old fashioned. Vermouth is in Manhattan, right? I forgot.
Kyle: No, it’s like the…you know, yeah, yeah. Yeah, some people go a little too hard on the sugars, but it’s a good place.
So that pretty much wraps up the night with Joe Malinowski of Tampa Bay is Awesome. And much thanks to him. I had a great time tonight, great conversations with a bunch of people around, and completely sorry that I keep forgetting to hit the record button. I promise that this recorder is much more complicated than it looks. It takes about three button presses to get to record. My apologies. Anyway, great conversations with Joe and Jason our server, and also at Mandarin Hide even though he didn’t want to be featured on the podcast you did great work and I appreciate it.
So check it out. Tampa Bay is Awesome. We got a link in the show notes here. You can check them out and Brick & Mortar, also a great place to go. I’m going to try to put together an interview with Jason the chef which you heard in this episode. And Mandarin Hide, also a great place to go over here in St. Petersburg for some drinks, some cocktails, some mixed beverages. So, anyway, thanks again, Joe, and it was an absolute pleasure.

I’d like to thank you for tuning in today to Great Things Tampa Bay. My name is Kyle Sasser and I am a 39-year Florida native, lived in the Tampa Bay region my entire life, and also a realtor so if you’d like to find your own great place in Tampa Bay, I’d love to help you out with that and we can do that in Clearwater, we can do that in Sarasota. Brandon, if you want to do Brandon, I can do Brandon. I’ve lived there, they got some nice stuff. 

Great Things Tampa Bay, we’re also doing some events out and about. We’re doing dining experiences with groups where you can come out meet and greet with some other folks and other fans of the show, some personal friends of mine and you can see my bright and shining face. I’d love to meet you. Come on out.

And you can find out about those events at the website greatthingstb.com or at our mobile app. Just go to the mobile store of your choice and type in Great Things Tampa Bay in the App Store and we should show up there. If we don’t, please send me an email. Today, we got something, a little quirky, a little fun playing us out. This is a local band. Well, actually all of these are local bands, but this is Stone Marmot and the name of the track is “My Girlfriend is a Zombie.”

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Episode 34 – Get Your Game On! Tampa Bay Club Sports [replay]

Episode 15 - Get Your Game On! Tampa Bay Club Sports

Alexa,
play Great Things Tampa Bay

Show Notes

Get our there and get active!  In Episode 15 we cover Tampa Bay Club Sports, one of the best ways to burn some calories while having some great fun playing your favorite sports (and some not sports such as Golf or Cornhole).

Transcript at the bottom of this page!

Tampa Bay Club Sport

WWW.TampaBayClubSport.Com

Sports Offered:

  • Soccer
  • Football
  • Softball
  • Volleyball
  • Kickball
  • Basketball
  • Tennis
  • Bowling, Golf, Cornhole, Bar Games

Locations all around the Tampa Bay Area!

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Welcome to Great Things Tampa Bay, the podcast about great eats, great places and great people in the greater Tampa Bay Area. I’m your host, Kyle Sasser, a Tampa Bay native and realtor. This is Episode 15, Get Your Game On!

I’d like to thank you for giving us your time. I know there’s lots of things vying for your attention and I appreciate you choosing to spend your time listening to me in this podcast. I promise I will do everything I can to bring you something awesome. Also wanna let you know that we now have express feeds. If you’re only interested in our food reviews, just do a search for “Great Bites, Tampa Bay.” If you want more of our interviews with interesting movers and shakers in the area, just look for the feed, “Great People, Tampa Bay.” And for things to do in the area, shops or other events, just do a search for “Great Places, Tampa Bay.” These feeds are listed on our website, greatthingstb.com, under the heading “Express Feeds,” up at the top there.

So, you know, one of the annoying things about getting older, growing up, and all that good stuff, is that, you know, there’s not really anyone around to play games with anymore. Yeah, I’m sure you keep track of one or two, friends over the years, but, you know, the days of going through the neighborhood and be able to throw together a pick-up football, basketball, or soccer game, are many years in the past. Everyone’s just got way too much stuff to do.

Thankfully, we got a little place here, locally, it’s called Tampa Bay Club Sport and it’s a great place for adults, young and old, to get together and play some sports. Those of you that actually know me know that I wasn’t really too big into sports in my younger days, definitely something I’ve grown into as I’ve gotten older. Honestly, I wish that I would have done it a lot sooner, it’s very rewarding and fulfilling. So, if you’re someone who’s just kind of sitting around…honestly, I spent years in front a computer and if you’re doing the same, you know, get out there. Even if you don’t really know what you’re doing, it’s worth it to get out there just to have a little fun and meet some new people.

So, Club Sport was founded in 1995, specifically as an outlet for young adults to play sports. I mean you’re pretty good up through college with being able to throw people together, but once you get past 25, it starts getting really tough, you know, jobs, sleep, kids, career, all that stuff sort of gets in the way.

Tampa Bay Club Sports has locations all around the Bay Area, from Brandon, over on the other side of Tampa, they have some in Tampa. Coquina Key, they don’t have some in the extended area, they have some affiliated clubs down in Sarasota and the like. But, yeah, they more than likely have something close to you. And they cover a wide range of skill levels from recreation, up to intermediate, to competitive. And it can get pretty competitive out there, I can tell you.

Nice thing about it, they do charge a fee, of course, for all this. They paint lines and stuff, it’s not gonna be a pro-level field or anything like that, but they do pay the referees, so you do have someone out there making calls and all that good stuff, which is awesome. They have a ton of sports available. They have soccer, which is my favorite. I currently play every Wednesday, over here in St. Petersburg, at Puryear Park, which is awesome. They also have softball, volleyball, kickball, which my wife played for a couple years there. They also have football, which I’m guessing is of the flag variety, I have not actually signed up for that yet, but I can’t imagine that they would have tackle football. Basketball, tennis, golf, cornhole, which is questionable sports, bowling, and, finally, a Bar Games League, which is Flip Cup…I don’t know if they have Flip Cup, but I know I saw pictures of beer pong. So those last few are definitely more of a game than a sport, but there you go. And, yeah, I know some of you all are probably kinda mad saying that, you know, golf’s a sport, but, yeah, let’s get real. And I say that as someone who loves golf.

So, you don’t actually need a full team to play, so you don’t need to get together, you know, 10 people to play soccer or anything like that. If you just wanna play solo, just give them a call, they will sign you up as a free agent and place you on a team. The team that I’m on, we actually all were free agents, and we started just after the last World Cup. We’re still around, which is pretty good, real good bunch of people. So those on the Moist Towelettes Soccer Team, that are giving us a listen, it’s a lot of fun playing with you guys. So, their website is www.tampabayclubsports.com, and you can go there and it’ll display all the leagues and give you all the options, and all that good stuff. Or, if you just rather just call them, their phone number is 877-820-2582.

Segment 2, “Tell ’em Twain.” Mark Twain is one of the most quoted Americans of all time. I saw this one the other day. Thought it was rather appropriate for our new modern age of yellow journalism, and it goes a little something like this, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.”

I wanna thank you for sharing Great Things Tampa Bay with your friends and family. You can share us by going to our website, greatthingstb.com. There you’ll find share buttons on nearly every page. You can share us on Twitter, Facebook, all that good stuff. If you are looking for your own great place in Tampa Bay, I’m also a licensed realtor, specializing in deep knowledge of Hillsborough/Pinellas County. So if you wanna talk real estate, you can give me a call at 727-300-2111, or you can send me an email at kyle@sassergroup.com. That’s kyle-S-A-S-S-E-R-G-R-O-U-P.com, and I’d be more than happy to help you find your next home here in Tampa Bay.

I also need your feedback. I need you to tell me where we should be going, and what we should be eating, and who we should be talking to. So, please go to our website, greatthingstb.com. Or, you can hit either the “Contact Us” link at the top or the “Get Social Links,” also at the top. If you wanna be a cool guy or a cool girl, you can call our voicemail number, which is 727-440-4455, and leave us a message. I’d love to hear from you.

So, thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time. And, oh, by the way, if you don’t want to miss the next episode, please subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play, that’ll guarantee that you get the next episode delivered straight to your mobile device of choice.

Thank you so much and I’ll talk to you next time.

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Category Clearwater Episode Great People Great Places Location St Pete Tampa

Episode 33 – Tampa Bay Club Sport Interview

Episode 33 - Piccolo Italia Bistro, Music by Stone Marmot

Alexa,
play Great Things Tampa Bay

Show Notes

Sports are a big part of the Tampa Bay area, from kids to adults!  Today I interview Ian Elston with Tampa Bay Club Sports.

No matter what sport or “sport” (looking at you,  cornhole!) you love to play, TBCS probably runs a league for it close to you no matter what part of the bay you’re on. We also chat about the Rec Dec, a local spot TBCS is working on opening on Gandy.

Music today by AEGEA!

This episode brought to you by Happiest Doulas!  Save 5% off with promo code HAPPY5 at HappiestDoulas.com!

 

Transcript at Bottom of Page!

Tampa Bay Club Sports

Tampa Bay Club Sports

  • Soccer
  • Softball
  • Volleyball
  • Kickball
  • FootBall

The Rec Dec

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The oldest tree in the world is a Bristlecone Pine in the southwest United States.

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Transcript

Ian: We have giant tricycle races with adults on ’em. The rubber ducky launch you have, it’s like a giant human slingshot that you hurl rubber duckies down a football field with, and, the last round, a player has to catch a rubber ducky with like a fishnet on a pole, which is kind of fun.

Kyle: A serious, serious competition, it sounds like…

Ian: That’s right.

Kyle: Hey, everybody. This is Kyle Sasser with the “Great Things Tampa Bay” podcast, and this is episode 33. And we’re doing another interview this time with Ian of Tampa Bay Club Sports. And they’re definitely doing some interesting things around the area. And basically, if you’re looking for any sort of adult sports league, Tampa Bay Club Sports is gonna be the place that you hear the most. I did a full episode on my experience with Tampa Bay Club Sports back in episode 15, but this episode we’re actually interviewing someone involved in the backroom of Club Sports. Yeah, so they’ve been working on a project over here in St. Pete called the Wreck Deck, and it’s located at 380 105th Terrace NE, which doesn’t mean a lot to many people, but it is basically kind of like the corner of Gandy and Fourth Street. And it’s behind like Barney’s Motorcycle and Marina and all that good stuff on Gandy, just across the bridge from the Tampa side. So, it’s yeah. What else is it across from….pretty close to Dairy lane, if that’s a better marker for you. And, yeah, they have been working on it for a while, which he does cover in the interview. And finally, it should be opening here soon. So, yes. I thought this would be a good time to release this episode. So, without further ado, here’s Ian and kind of the insight into the background workings of Tampa Bay Club Sport.

Hey, everybody. This is Kyle Sasser with the “Great Things Tampa Bay” podcast and I’m here with…

Ian: Ian Elston with Tampa Bay Club Sport.

Kyle: And Ian is director here at Tampa Bay Club Sports. Tell us a little bit about Club Sports. What’s sort of the overarching thing that you all do here?

Ian: So, Club Sport is all about being active and getting off your couch, going out and doing things. We provide adult sports leagues for about 45,000 adults per year around the Bay area, and that would include Pinellas, Hillsborough, as well as Sarasota, Bradenton, and Brandon. We have that, and then we also run children sports leagues for kids ages 3 to 17 here in Pinellas. Then we also do a lot of different weekend events, social happy hours for our players, people that I would consider to be members of the club, and then lastly, we work in running a lot of corporate events for companies and corporate partners around the area.

Kyle: What sort of sports do you all cover?

Ian: So, we have 9 to 10 different sports depending on what you determine a sport to be. One most popular is soccer. We have roughly 10,000 to 11,000 soccer players per year, which is a lot of fun. And we play year-round in everything we do, followed by volleyball and softball. Those are our next two most popular sports. Softball is a big one down here, and we probably have just as many leagues in softball as we do in soccer, and then all of that is followed by one of our most popular sports which is kickball. Kickball is growing in popularity every year.

Kyle: And the favorite?

Ian: Of course, man. Go back to your childhood again to play and…

Kyle: And I’ve heard some stories from players where it’s not just like the lackadaisical kickball, like, there are some serious contenders out there.

Ian: There are. You really get to see people’s inner competitor come out when it comes to any sport but, it’s pretty funny when you see it coming out in kickball.

Kyle: Yeah. Funny stuff.

Ian: On top of that, we also have golf, and tennis, as well as bowling, and cornhole, and bar games as well.

Kyle: Awesome, awesome. So what level of athleticism do you think the people should have before they sign up with you all to play in one of your leagues?

Ian: It really ranges, honestly, depending on what sport you wanna play. If you’re gonna play a more serious sport like soccer or perhaps flag football or softball, I would say that you wanna have a good basic concept of the game in some of those instances. We do offer recreational in every sport where you don’t really have to have experience in playing it. But in a sport like soccer or in softball, it really helps to know some of the basics just to help with your enjoyment of the game. If you’ve never played before, it’s okay, we have plenty of people that are more than willing to come out and, you know, give you some tips. We actually offer volleyball clinics for people that, you know, aren’t necessarily comfortable with playing sand volleyball right away in a group of four or six people, but for the most part, I would just say you wanna have a little bit of experience for your own comfort level with some of those more intense sports. When it comes to tennis, or cornhole, or bowling, or any of those, you don’t need any experience whatsoever.

Kyle: Just a personal story for me. So, I joined after the last World Cup, I got really fired up, I was gonna be the next Messi at 34 years of age. But, basically, my athletic level was at none. So, like I hadn’t run, I hadn’t done anything. The only time I’d played soccer was like when I was 8 years old. And there’s a lot of learning playing soccer between that age and college, which is when most of the players out there have played. But, that said, I started off in a recreational league and it was a rough couple of weeks there to get up to speed both knowing what’s going on in the game and also just my fitness level, but extremely rapidly I got up to speed, I’d say, honestly, like four weeks, I was perfectly good to go. So, if you’ve never done anything, don’t let it hold you back because everyone out there is usually pretty nice.

Ian: That’s impressive. All these leagues are about having a good time. Everyone’s gotta get up and go to work the next day, so…

Kyle: Yeah. Like, nobody is going to the U.S. national team. They might but…

Ian: Some people think they are but…

Kyle: Yeah. Like, that’s not what it’s about. It’s about having fun out there.

Ian: That’s right.

Kyle: But, there’s always fun and issues out there, but it does get competitive and a little spicy, as I like to say. So, Ian, any good stories about adults acting like children?

Ian: Oh, my goodness. We have so many, and I think if you went through our discipline database, you could probably have yourself a very good laugh. But really, you know, it boils down to people that some of them just have a very quick wit, and when it comes to talking back to a referee, sometimes that ends in a disciplinary action if you will. For the most part, it’s very light-hearted out there. People have a good time. I think just of my favorite stories, and it’s one of those ones you kinda had to be there for, but we had a player who strongly disagreed with a call with an umpire in softball, and just his go back and forth between the referee got documented and we had to read it from a written report here. Now, I wanna say the player told the guy to go home and knit a fucking sweater at the end of it, which for whatever reason just caused everyone in the office to erupt in laughter. But, we do have our fair share of stories and, you know, I think everybody gets what it’s all about, but sometimes there is a phone call or two that need to be made to just remind everybody that, “Hey, we’re all out here for fun and a good time. We can’t be cursing. There are children around occasionally.”

Kyle: Yeah. Back it up a little bit. Back off a little bit.

Ian: Yeah. Gotta remind people what it’s all about, but, fortunately, we don’t have to remove that many people from leagues. Everybody does have to have that threat just in case someone gets too out of control, but for the most part, we keep things really laid back and fun.

Kyle: Yeah. So, I actually kept in the team that I’m on, the Moist Towelettes. Shoot-out to the Moisties. I have had to deal with a few disciplinarian issues, you know, you’re all are always great to work with, and honestly, the players are usually really understanding, typically respectful of the ref after initial outburst. I mean, they’re refs, you gotta give them a little shit.

Ian: Hey, man. They’re there to keep the peace, and if there wasn’t a good rapport between them and the players, they probably shouldn’t be reffing in the first place.

Kyle: That’s true. And that actually brings me to a point, is that you all do actually lease the fields and, you know, you have paid refs out there.

Ian: Mm-hmm. That’s right.

Kyle: So there’s actually a, you know, independent third party out there watching over things and looking over things.

Ian: As part of what we do and part of the safety precautions, we always have staff onsite, coordinators to run the league, to administer the league. There’s also always an employee of the city there typically just to make sure that field lights are turned on, and if there’s an emergency, that the city has someone in the know that’s around. And then, of course, we have our umpires and our referees there to make sure it’s a quality game experience.

Kyle: Yeah. We’ve had a couple of medical things that came up, and your staff has always been really good with coming out and doing treatment and getting all that stuff sorted out.

Ian: They go through a lot of training for that, so it’s important.

Kyle: So here is my true question because it’s a little pet peeve of mine. Is golf or beer pong actually a sport, or a cornhole for that matter?

Ian: Wow. All right. I’ll take the last one that you mentioned. So, cornhole, if you would have asked me eight years ago if cornhole was a sport, I probably would have smiled at you and said, “No.” But I gotta tell you, I’ve become one competitive cornhole player. I was a soccer player for a better part of 32 years, and then, unfortunately, a bad injury forced me to sideline it, so I picked up playing cornhole. I gotta tell you, there’s nothing more fun than being in a bar with 20 or 30 teams playing, you know, that’s basically 40 or 60 people, and everybody is just having an absolute blast. And you gotta have a beer in your hand, you play, there’s all kinds of strategic moves and throws that you make. As far as golf goes, I think it’s 100% a sport because that takes a ridiculous amount of focus to get your swing down. And what was the last one…oh, bar games. You know, I guess if you’re really gonna define a sport, it’s gotta come down to, “Can you be competitive in playing it? And can it be administered as a competition?” And I gotta tell you, I have seen some bar games that have played out better than a World Cup in the long run, they’re definitely a lot of fun.

Kyle: Some oohs and aahs?

Ian: Oh, of course, man, that and people cheering, full on cheering. I’ve seen people cheer on at giant Jenga game that went on like probably four rounds further than it should have, and an entire bar got enthralled by it. It was amazing to watch.

Kyle: Yeah. You know, I’m not trying to disparage golf or the bar stuff, like, I listen to the Bill Burr podcast as well, and his thing is like, you know, “If beer is strongly associated with performance and the sport?” You know, so I was like, “You got to play golf.” Usually, there’s beer involved or some cocktails, cornhole, obviously, flip cup, etc., etc., etc.

Ian: True, very true. Have you ever watched ESPN2 before?

Kyle: Mm-mm.

Ian: It’s kind of like watching, you know, the movie, “Dodgeball,” on The Ocho. That’s a bold strategy, cut and let’s see how it plays our form. They actually do have national cornhole championships. Nobody drinks at ’em, I mean, it was on ESPN2 like probably about six months ago, and our website got killed by people that wanted to play cornhole. So, yeah. You have your competitive side, I think, in any sport.

Kyle: That’s true. It’s not flip cup, but they even have like competitive cup stacking?

Ian: Yes.

Kyle: Like I’ve seen videos of this on YouTube. It’s…

Ian: I have.

Kyle: Yeah.

Ian: I mean, we’re always on the hunt for new events, for corporate events, and you’d be amazed how many companies, actually have requested speed stacking as an event.

Kyle: And the Rubik’s Cubes. Some kid just broke that record, I saw, like, ridiculous.

Ian: Those people amaze me. There is just no way I could ever even light a candle to what they do.

Kyle: We’ll go with their sports then.

Ian: At least in my opinion.

Kyle: There we go. What one problem do you wish that you could solve right now? When I ask that, usually, most people go like world hunger or something like that. More like, is there one thing that you wish that you could do here at Club Sports?

Ian: I always joke around, you know, when you’re coming out of college and you’re looking for a career path to follow, I always like to joke around that nobody knows what they wanna be when they grow up, and part of that journey is finding something that fulfills you. I was a corporate recruiter when I came out of college, and finding people jobs was very fulfilling for me, but it got a little bit… What’s the word when, you know, it’s just the same thing over and over, it’s like “Groundhog Day?”

Kyle: Repetitive.

Ian: Repetitive. Thank you. So, one of the things that I love about Club Sport is that it does offer people the opportunity to get together to create a melting pot of different ethnicities and people to get together. I think one thing that we’re seeing in our country right now is just a real lack of unity and a lot of divisiveness, and sports has always been something that I felt has been able to bring people together. I will say that having my hand in disciplined action, there are some people that like to use whatever sport or competition they’re in as a way to blow off steam from their workday, I’d say it’s a safe bet that if some people didn’t plan our leagues, there might be a lot of domestic issues that happen because they’re not blowing off that steam, so…

Kyle: It’d be the police handing out the red cards.

Ian: Yeah, instead of our referee and me having to make a phone call at the end of the day. But I think, for the most part, one social issue that I’d love to see addressed would be that unity in America right now, and I think adult sports, as corny as it sounds, I think they’re a great way to do that.

Kyle: Yeah. And that’s true because like we were talking before we recorded that like once you cross a certain age, you know, like you get out of college, your friends start getting married, it’s really tough to like just get out and like throw a game of anything together, it’s even hard just to get like four guys together to go play golf, or girls for that matter, to go do something. So, the nice thing that you all do is you all actually provide a structure and an environment to do that, so you can go out and meet new people, and play against them, probably argue with them a little bit, but have fun while doing so.

Ian: That’s’ really the beauty of it. Whoever created the adult sport in social industry back in the day, I don’t know that they necessarily realized all of the different benefits that would come of it, but one thing that I can tell you that I’ve seen after, I’m coming up on my 10-year reunion here pretty soon, for working for the company, is just how many new people get to be introduced to a group, how easy it can be when the right people are put on the same team or the same field for that matter. And it’s definitely a big benefit, I mean, when you’re brand new to an area, you don’t know anybody, maybe you don’t know where to go live, you don’t know where the cool stuff’s happening, it’s a great way to source a new network of people and do so in a way that, you know, doesn’t really drive a lot of pressure. When you go out and you play on a sports team, you show up, you put your boots on, or whatever equipment you need, and you go out there and you try and play and have fun, and a sidebar product of that is meeting a new group of people.

Kyle: There you go. And all you guys, all you Moisties, y’all are pretty all right my book.

Ian: You found a good group there, man. That’s an awesome name.

Kyle: Yeah. We were just a bunch of sign-ups. None of us knew each beforehand, and we just called Club Sports and we’re like, “Hey, we wanna play on this field,” and y’all threw us all together and somehow we’ve made it work for almost three years now.

Ian: I like to call that the free agent sweet story, man. When you have a team full of randoms, which we call free agents, you know, they’re signing up individually, and then they get placed on the same team, it’s really powerful, it’s special to me when it works out well like that.

Kyle: Yeah. It usually works out pretty well.

Ian: We have those little half and halfs, you know, where maybe half the team really likes playing together and the other half decides to hit the reset button and come back trying something different, but for the most part, it works out typically well.

Kyle: So don’t be afraid, just call ’em up, sign up, or go to the website. Any details you would like to divulge about the next venture coming up for you all?

Ian: The next endeavor, so Club Sport turned 21 this past year.

Kyle: So they can drink? Awesome.

Ian: That’s right. we’re finally of legal age. The company, we’re in our 22nd year now, basically, and we finally found our own commercial venue to buy and have our own space in. Some of the neat attributes of that venue are that it has enough land where we can build a small 5E5 6B6 artificial turf soccer field on property, we can build out two sand volleyball courts with lighting at night to be able to play, and then we have enough room to open up our own beer and wine bar, which is called the Wreck Deck, and it’ll be an opportunity for us to completely control the social experience that we want for our players. So, we’ll be able to host indoor cornhole leagues when it’s raining outside, when your games get rained at, you have a place to go in and we can listen to music, play board games, play a number of drinking games, you know, Pop-A-Shot, skee ball, things of that nature. So that’s coming up, and, hopefully, we’ll be open in early 2018. We’ll be able to play all kinds of different sports out there as well as manage the leagues that we love to run so much.

Kyle: And location for that?

Ian: It’s right off of Gandy across the street from Derby Lane. It’s actually at 380, 105th Terrace North East 33716. I got it memorized already.

Kyle: There you go, you got it. So, those of you all that don’t know, it’s basically down like Gandy Boulevard, it’s on the Penilla side of the bridge and across from the dock truck there behind Barney’s, right?

Ian: Behind Barney’s. Yeah.

Kyle: So, the bridge is not that big of an obstacle, Tampa people just… It’s not that far, it’s only like a mile and a half, or something. So, just get on the bridge, come on over, and have a good time early 2018.

Ian: Early 2018. It should be in full swing, if not, a little bit earlier, but I like being conservative on my opening dates.

Kyle: There you go. Smart man.

Ian: The name is called The Wreck Deck, and I believe the website is recdecstpete.com or R-E-C-D-E-C stpetecom.

Kyle: So, anyone who’s interested, just open it up here and the podcast that you’re watching, or it’ll be on the show notes on our website, or YouTube, or any of that stuff. That kind of leads into the next question, where do you all see yourselves in five years from now?

Ian: Oh, man. We’ve been working on pulling all the good benefits out of the Tampa Bay area that we can for people that are participating. And also, on the event side, I’d really love to see some of our events increase in size even more. Right now, we run about 40 or so weekend events a year not counting corporate events.

Kyle: And when say events, could you give us some examples of those?

Ian: We have charity-oriented events like Field Day, where we normally have about 400 or 500 players come out to a day of wacky games that they play, but it raises money for one of the good local charities we work with, past couple of years it’s been Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Kyle: Yeah. They’re good.

Ian: Oh, they’re awesome.

Kyle: And it’s just like sort of how you’re remembering grade school, right?

Ian: Exactly.

Kyle: Like the events that you have there or so.

Ian: Yup. Lots of relay races, dizzy bat, and then some new stuff that’s a lot of fun, we have giant tricycle races with adults on ’em, the rubber ducky launch, you have…it’s like a giant human slingshot that you hurl rubber duckies down a football field with, and, the last round, a player has to catch a rubber ducky with like a fishnet on a pole, which is kind of fun.

Kyle: Serious. Serious competition sounds like.

Ian: That’s right. You got that stuff, and then you got like the cherry pie hunt, you know, where you got people shoving their face in a team full of whipped cream and trying to dig out cherries, so…

Kyle: Fun stuff, fun stuff.

Ian: Yeah. So that’s side, and then our other side are our typical sports tournaments. So, we’ve got your softball, your soccer, volleyball tournaments where you compete against people from all over the Bay area in a one or two-day format. And then we’ve got something unique in extreme mud wars, nine mud-field pits that you go head-to-head against other teams in, which is a lot of fun. It also raises money for charity. And then we have our social events. So, you have players’ parties, your championship parties where champs get to drink free.

Kyle: Yeah. We have not made it to one of those and, but soon we will get our Tervis cup.

Ian: That’s right, we’ll get you there, we’ll get you there one way or another. And then we have pop crawls and socials like that. And then we have our outdoor events. I think you and I were talking about this before we started recording, but we pulled out just under two tons of trash from Weedon Island in one of our cleanup events that we had, and that involved a big sand bar party with Tampa Bay Fun Boat and Miller Lite and Leinenkugel’s who were a part of it. So, it was fun. We got to clean up nature around St. Pete and then go out on a party barge and go hit the sandbar and have a good day with fun and games.

Kyle: Always good times with that. So, the next five years you’re looking to maybe do a few more of those special event sort of things.

Ian: Definitely to build them up. We have a great following for social events, we have done New Year’s Eve parties for the last several years, but I love to get those events bigger and larger and offer more opportunities for our participants to have fun. Additionally, we’d love to get into, you know, possibly doing food festivals and things of that nature just to kinda round out our portfolio on events.

Kyle: There’s a ton of stuff that goes on around here.

Kyle: Oh, yes. Tampa, St. Pete, there’s something to do every weekend, I swear.

Ian: It really is. And that’s kind of the beauty of the area, though. I mean, St. Pete and Hillsborough, Tampa Bay, in general, has been blowing up for the past 10 to 12 years. It didn’t always used to be like that.

Kyle: Oh, no, no. I remember I used to be real sleepy, especially over in St. Petersburg.

Ian: That’s right. It used to be referred to as “God’s Waiting Room” back in the day.

Kyle: Yeah. I used to work over here just over Roosevelt like ’99 to 2000 and there is not much.

Ian: Now, I mean, downtown is just blowing up, and you’ve got the EDGE District and you’ve got what I refer to as West Central that’s doing really well.

Kyle: Yeah. Like I knew a lot of you Tampa people don’t make it over here that often. St. Petersburg is basically built with like restaurants, shops, and other cool stuff like that all way from the downtown waterfront three or four miles down Central Avenue like all the way down to 19 basically. So it’s like you could spend a whole day just going in and out of those shops. It’s really impressive.

Ian: Have you done the artwork tour to look at all the murals down there and?

Kyle: Does PedalPub count?

Ian: That’s right. PedalPub totally counts. I actually get to do one of those next Sunday, I can’t wait.

Ian: Sweet. Yeah, that guy is killing it too. He’s on my radar, he’s gonna be on our future interview. He’s doing crazy good. I interviewed The Dog Bar owner a few weeks ago. He said they have 12 to 14 peddle pups through there every weekend, like every Saturday.

Ian: They’re insanely busy. I mean, we did one for someone’s birthday that’s a long-time player for us, and we had an absolute blast balancing between breweries and we did end up at The Dog Bar, that was one of our last spots to go and…

Kyle: It’s a good spot.

Ian: Yeah. It’s a really, really, cool location. I mean, they have that and they have Salty’s out in Gulfport. It was actually Dog Bar and Charlotte too, so he’s got both of those locations.

Kyle: There are some things rocking and rolling down there.

Ian: Yeah. St. Pete’s blowing up, it’s turned into a really cool town.

Kyle: And Ian is a native, so he would definitely know.

Ian: I was born and raised here so it’s been interesting to see it go through its growth phases.

Kyle: What success do you feel, personally, is your favorite or has had the most impacts on your life?

Ian: You know, with Club Sport, it’s kinda hard. I can’t claim any of Club Sport’s success as my own, but we have had some really cool partnerships that have come about that have enabled us to do some neat things. We’re a part of a national industry association, and with that comes collaboration with over 70 different sports and social clubs throughout the United States. It’s called the SSIA or the Sport and Social Industry Association, and I’m most proud of getting to work with those fine people in the other clubs around the United States. And we kind of look out for each other, when there’s opportunities we make each other aware. It’s just a really great way to leverage our teamwork concept but around good knowledge sharing and good collaboration to do things better, and, hopefully, bring more value to your end participant in the long run. So, our participation in that is something that I’m most proud of, I would say.

Kyle: Any particular failures that you’re proud of that might have led to success down the road or something that blew up so spectacularly that is just a great story?

Ian: So, I will say, another one of our cool partnerships that kind of led to… And I’ll only speak of our personal failures because I can’t really speak to the rest of our employees here in the company, but we ran Corporate SportsFest for a good 9 to 10 years. And when I say we ran it, Dave Bollmann who owns that event, he subcontracted us to run tug of war, cornhole, and volleyball. And it’s a really, really cool event out on St. Pete beach where they get 5,000+ corporate people. And Dave said, “Hey, you guys do such a great job of running this, how would you feel about, you know, franchising it and taking it to another market?” And we, of course, you know, jumped on that opportunity, but I was mainly in charge of it and it was pretty spectacular failure on my part, unfortunately. It just had to do with coming in and setting a date at the wrong time. When you work with corporations, you know, they have a certain budget period in order to earmark dollars for an event or for participation in an event, and the timing just wasn’t right. We ended up not being able to run the events in the market that we were going to, and so I ended up being on the hook for a decent chunk of change, I wanna say it was something around $20,000 for a partnership that we established down there, but it was really funny. The partner actually ended up letting us come down there and applying those dollars to another event that we ended up running. And so it was a failure on my part, we learned a lot from it, but at the same time, those dollars didn’t go to waste, which was a good thing.

Kyle: Yeah. Organizational logistics and like project management are things that a lot of people think are ridiculously easy or should be but get really complicated really quickly.

Ian: They definitely can. That was an oversight on our part, but being eternally optimistic can sometimes work against you.

Kyle: Yeah. We’ll figure it out, we’ll get it done.

Ian: That’s right, exactly. And it did in that case, but honestly, the gods smiled upon me for that one. It didn’t work out to be too much of a crusher in the long run.

Kyle: And very generous of the partner to…

Ian: I’ll tell you what. You know, there’s one thing that doesn’t change no matter what business you’re in and that’s keeping good relationships really helps you out in a lot of different ways and that partner was really awesome in trying to maintain that relationship, and we’ve ended up doing stuff with him in the future, so it actually worked out pretty well.

Kyle: Yeah, just be friendly, be civil, and be understanding. You know, like stuff happens, things go wrong, people are people, we’ll make mistakes, so, you know, just kinda work through it. I’m also an eternal optimist, so…

Ian: Amen, they’re good. It’s better than being the opposite in my opinion.

Kyle: Yeah. We get annoying on occasion, but it’s good. What’s the one thing that you wished that I would have asked you today?

Ian: Oh, man.

Kyle: Yeah, that one’s tricky.

Ian: That one’s real tricky. You know what? The one thing I wish you would have asked me about was how the company started. Chris and Tracey Giebner, who own the company, actually are the second owners. The first owner, a gentleman by the name of Harold, started this sport and social league based off of what he saw in Atlanta, and so he came down to the Tampa area and started it in 1995. After a while, Harold and his wife, I believe we’re about to have their first child, and I think his wife kind of nudged him a little bit and said, “Hey, you’re about to have your first kid, it’s time to grow up and get a real job.” And at that point in time, Chris and Tracey had actually been placed on the same soccer team. She came over from Texas and Chris moved back down from Ohio. And so here this couple was placed on the same soccer team, didn’t know anybody, they’re brand new to the area, they ended dating…

Kyle: The leagues are actually coed, so there’s all men, and all women, and then there’s coed leagues as well.

Ian: There’s men’s and then there’s coed. We do have occasionally, you know, women’s leagues, but for the most part, coed tends to be the most popular, and I think it’s just because it’s easier to fill the teams out when you have the ability to add both sexes. So, Chris and Tracey got placed on a coed team, and they ended up dating, and getting married, and having kids, and they were huge believers in the company because, I mean, that’s how they met. And so, Harold approached them first when he was getting ready to get out and Chris and Tracey ended up buying the company, I believe, in late 2001, early 2002, and from that point, you know, it went from being run out of a home office to, I think, now we’re on our sixth location once we move into this new building.

Kyle: There’s quite a few people in here and quite a bit of hustle and bustle.

Ian: Oh, yeah. We’ve got 10 full-time employees now. Some of them are focused on social media, some are focused on being league directors and actually running particular sports, and then we have people that are in charge of our corporate’s events as well as our youth leagues, and we all kind of work together as a big, happy family to make sure that the company keeps growing.

Kyle: And then you also have the reps that go out to the fields and just kinda monitor the things that are going on.

Ian: Yeah. You mentioned logistics, you didn’t mention staffing. That’s always a tough one to keep up with. At any given day I think we have about 60 or 70 part-time employees that actually work and they’re out there in the field running leagues.

Kyle: Yeah. And your leagues vary from day to day, some are all times during the week. I know, personally, we play on Wednesdays. Basically, any day of the week there’s going to be something in Tampa Bay to do. So, if somebody is interested in signing up for Club Sports, how would you tell them to do it?

Ian: The easiest thing is just to go to tampabayclubsport.com, or if you’re down in the Sarasota, Bradenton area, it would be sococlubsport.com. Check the leagues out. If you have trouble finding a league that’s a good fit for you, then just call the office. We’re pretty good at being able to direct people and we kinda have a list of questions we’ll go down through, you know, “Which night’s available? What times can you play between? What sports are you most interested in? Are you interested in men’s or coed, in being a free agent or do you have a full team?” And they’ll kinda guide you as appropriate. There are nuances to everything because the sports and social industry is in a perfect one-size-fits-all model, everybody has different preferences, and in order to fill a team out, you need a specific number of people. So, logistically, we just work on perfecting those numbers by adding people in where we can and doing our best to accommodate everybody.

Kyle: Us, personally, we don’t play a full pitch, we play half-fields, the goals are small, and it’s seven versus seven. And then there’s requirements for having girls out there so you’re not running…you’re still running, trust me, but it’s not full pitch, you know, it’s not that crazy. Although, personally, I think that I would run less on a full pitch because I could play position more than having the hustle to try to get somewhere, but, yeah, that’s neither here and over there.

Ian: Those short sprints will you get you, man. I know. The 66, 77 is tough for us tall guys. I mean, you gotta… those short bursts of sprinting can really wear you out.

Kyle: Yeah. So, check it out all the details will be in our show notes. Come out and play and come out to the Rec Dec.

Ian: Awesome. Thanks for having me, Kyle.

Kyle: All right. and I would like to thank Ian for taking the time to do that interview with me. We actually did it quite a while back, but just with hiccups in scheduling. There’s a lot of stuff that happens in the Tampa Bay area between like February and April. It might have something to do with how good the weather is, but that seems to be when a lot of events and other sorts of things go on. So, yeah. So, this episode just getting moved back, moved back, moved back. So, Ian, sorry for the delay, but here we go. You’ve finally been released to the world. Coming up next, we got Segment 2, “Your Facts.”

The oldest living tree ever found was 5,067 years old, and that was according to measurements by Tom Harlan. Unfortunately, we know it’s the oldest tree because he cut it down and then he counted the rings and was tremendously heartbroken to learn that he had chopped down the oldest tree known. There are other similar bristlecone pine trees nearby that might be as old, maybe older, but let’s just say that after this little mix-up, that people aren’t really too eager to start pulling rings or chopping these things down to find out exactly how old they are. All right. don’t you feel like that is totally useful information for you, like, that’s something that you’re definitely gonna use every day in your day to day life? I think so.

So, anyway, my name is Kyle Sasser. This is “Great Things Tampa Bay.” I would love to thank you for tuning in. I’m also a realtor, and if you’re looking to find your own great place in Tampa Bay, I’d love to help you find it. You can reach out to me at the website greatthingstb.com., that’s G-R-E-A-T T-H-I-N-G-S tb.com, and there’ll be a link up there at the top where you can reach me for real estate related matters. Also, if you just wanna share your preferences or experiences, if you wanna argue about something, if you disagree with something I said, just go to the website, greatthingstb.com, and there’s plenty of contact forms, links to social media where we can interact. And I’d love to hear from you, I promise. Plan is out today. We got Christopher Coleman, Bastard Son, and it’s pretty rock and tune, I definitely liked it when it popped up on the radio and that’s why…Not on the radio but on my, you know, phone tied to Bluetooth, to my car, which it doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well as radio, but there you go. So, this is Christopher Coleman, “Bastard Son.” And here you go, thanks for tuning in and be sure to share us with your friends. Thank you. Bye.

But before we get to that, I do have a little bit of paid advertising today. So, kind of our first for “Greats Things Tampa Bay,” but hopefully, the first of many. So, here we go.

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So, funny enough, my wife and I, we were recently talking about, you know, doulas and stuff like that, so it is kind of a, you know, a little bit of an interesting coincidence that the advertisement is for The Happiest Doulas this week. We are gonna have links to their website as well as the promo code in our show notes. So, if you weren’t sure on the spelling on some of that, just go to the show notes and the links will be there. And, again, thanks to The Happiest Doulas for trusting “Great Things Tampa Bay” with your advertising. So, if you know somebody that’s in the process of birthing a human being, check ’em out.

Bastard son
Pull me down and I keep rising
You can’t, don’t, was born to shine

Bastard son
You can’t, don’t, was born to shine
Pull me down and I keep rising

Spinning jaws, you’re going nowhere
Digging my grave warmed you down there
Feeling like I just don’t give a shit
Remembering dreams of once lived nightmares
Walking in my sleep is my fare
To keep on hearing with a grip to go dance

Calling me Bastard son
Pull me down and I keep rising
You can’t, don’t, was born to shine

Oh, Bastard Son
You can’t, don’t, was born to shine
Pull me down and I keep rising
Pull me down and I keep rising

Every word, your souls do [inaudible 00:36:20]
The [inaudible 00:36:20] pressed our bases
It drives me harder when I hear them say

Calling me Bastard Son
Pull me down and I keep rising
You can’t, don’t, was born to shine

Oh, Bastard son
You can’t, don’t, was born to shine
Pull me down and I keep rising

Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah

Pull me down and I keep rising
Pull me down and I keep rising
Pull me down and I keep rising
Pull me down and I keep rising

Bastard son
Pull me down and I keep rising
You cant, don’t, was born to shine

Oh, Bastard son
You can’t, don’t, was born to shine
Pull me down and I keep rising
Pull me down and I keep rising

Categories
Category Clearwater Episode Great Eats Great Places Location St Pete Tampa

Episode 32 – Where to Watch The World Cup in Tampa Bay

Episode 32 - Where To Watch The World Cup In Tampa Bay.

Alexa,
play Great Things Tampa Bay

Show Notes

Want to know where to watch the world cup in Tampa Bay? I give you a ton of suggestions in episode 32!

Transcript at the bottom of the page!

Where to watch the World Cup

Tampa

London Heights Pub
Dubliner
MacDinton’s
Glory Days
Dunderbaks

Brandon

O’Brians
Glory Days

St Pete

The Galley
Macdinton’s
Horse & Jockey
Old Northeast Tavern
Gloriy Days
Jack’s London Grill

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