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Thieves steal $6,800 worth of artwork from Florida Craftsmen

ST. PETERSBURG — Sometime between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, the two men broke into the gallery at 501 Central Ave. through a never-used outside door to executive director Maria Emilia’s office and made a beeline for two glass sculptures — a Duncan McClellan vessel worth $5,200 (pictured) and a $1,600 Chuck Boux vase.

First off - this sucks. Second - I predict these stupid assholes put those things on eBay or somewhere that is easily tracked, because, you know, Florida criminals are super smart. Third - fuck you tampabay.com and your stupid broken video embed code.

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Looks like the Vegas Showgirls got into some trouble over the weekend, which is too bad for the official “best strip club in St. Petersburg” (official for two reasons: 1) the internet says so, 2) there are only 4 strip clubs total in the ‘burg, and I’m scared of all the others). Seriously, though, what’s up with Tina’s Angels? A hotel attached to it? And THEY never get busted? They must have discounts for the 5-0.

Anywho, there are a handful of things that will get your strip club shut down in a damn hurry and here are two.

1. If you sell booze, keep the junk in your drawers
2. Offering to have sex with someone in exchange for money remains, shockingly, illegal

A group of total buzz kill deputies arrested 8 girls on Friday night, resulting in over 62 sets of blue balls. Bummer. Below is a look at the innocent young ladies.

Most of the charges were “nudity in an establishment that serves alcohol” for removing bikini bottoms, although a few of these gals added on the offer to have sex for $150 (one particularly entrepreneurial young lady specified $150 would get you only 15 minutes, a half hour will run you $250). Here’s what I find sort of intriguing, though:

Amanda Roberts, 18, was charged with exposure of sexual organs after she also pulled down her bikini bottoms while dancing onstage.

Amanda is the last young lady in the image above. You think she has a johnson? I mean, why were all the other girls just charged with nudity while the police report specified that Amanda exposed her “sexual organs”? Hmm. Interesting.

Anywho, you might want to steer clear of Vegas Showgirls for awhile, maybe try out Mermaids or Secrets Cabaret until the heat dies down a bit. Oh, and don’t forget the internet, you can stay home and take care of a lot of urges on the good ol’ information superhighway.

P.S. The girl right next to Amanda Roberts is Deanna Firlik. Yes, Fir-lick. Nice.

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This is the piece that Pale Horse’s Chris Parks did for the I <3 St. Pete show a few weeks back. Love it.

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Hey there, get out of your house. Tonight. Go to an art show.

Click the image, which was so kindly provided (without him knowing) by Joel over at REAX, to go to someone or another’s MySpace that may or may not have more information which is readable by a human. Sheesh.

Also, I’m cranky, so WTF Nova? You have a badass space, but way to not provide any helpful information on upcoming Events on your site. When I click EVENTS CALENDAR it would be helpful to get a LIST OF EVENTS instead of a picture of FOUR SOUTH TAMPA HOOCHIES. Three clicks in and I get to know what DJ will be there and nothing else? Tsk tsk. If you want a better website, just let us know.

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NONE! It actually just takes said GOP official forwarding racist, idiotic e-mails and those going public. For your enjoyment I present the comedic stylings of Hillsborough state committeewoman Carol Carter.

From: Carol Carter
Friday, January 30, 9:30 AM
Subject: FW: Amazing!

I’m confused

How can 2,000,000 blacks get into Washington, DC in 1 day in sub zero temps when 200,000 couldn’t get out of New Orleans in 85 degree temps with four days notice?

Carol Carter

Good one, Carol! HAWE HAWE HAWE. What an asshat. I find it worse that in the e-mail she sent to apologize for the first e-mail she said the following:

I am also sorry to learn that some of these persons are not real team players. There really was no reason for this to go beyond those that I e-mailed (8 people). This was not an e-mail blast as I do not have that capability.

Yeah dudes, that means what you think it means: team player in the GOP = keeping those racist jokes going and definitely not sharing them with those close minded people out there in the world that don’t find humor in racist jokes about national tragedies. Duh!

I am pleased to announce that Carol has resigned from her position as Hillsborough GOP Comedienne Laureate effective today. I’m also please to announce that the HCRP site is TEH SHIT!

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Um, what? Like, for serious? This can’t be right. Can it? No, not possible.

The Pew Research Center (who normally is pretty f’n accurate with their surveys), ran a survey with the aim of answering the question “Where would Americans most like to live—and how do they feel about the place they currently call home?” And there was some shocking, and frankly head scratching results. Check out the top 4 most popular cities (based on the percentage of respondents who said they wanted to live there):

1. Denver
2. San Diego
3. Seattle
4. Orlando (tie)
5. Tampa (tie)
6. San Francisco (tie)

Um, huh?! Tampa AND Orlando tied with San Francisco? Something smells fishy… HAHA, GET IT!? FISHY! PEW RESEARCH! HAWE HAWE HAWE. Ahem, anyway, this is some strange news. One thing worth mentioning is that while 34% of the respondents said they would like to live in Tampa, 64% said they would not. So, while it ended up high on the list I’d still call that a fail.

Check out this totally official graph provided by PEW:

Some other noteworthy items from the report:

• People with family incomes over $100K placed Tampa 8th, while people with sub $30K incomes placed it 10th.
• Men placed Tampa 7th, while women placed it 6th. International Plaza, ladies!
• College grads placed Tampa 9th, while high school or less placed it 3rd. Come on down, uneducated masses, you’ll fit right in*!
• Folks 18-34 placed Tampa 9th, while those 60+ placed it 6th.
• Tampa had a pretty significant difference between Democrats and Republicans, with 38% of donkeys diggin’ it and only 28% of elephants. Yay asses!

Interesting stuff. If you want to scope out the full report, by all means do.

* To be fair, the assumption is that old people, who simply didn’t look at college the way people do today, are more likely to not have a degree and also more likely to dig the shit out of Florida.

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It is time to celebrate another miracle in the ‘burg - an old building that has managed not to be knocked down. This go ’round we’re talking about the Detroit Hotel. For those of you who may not be familiar with the Detroit, that’s the one just above/behind that ghetto liquor store you usually hit up before going to a show at Jannus.

The Detroit was built in 1888, named after John Williams’ (the dude the park is named after, not the awesome composer) hometown of Des Moines - wait, no, that doesn’t sound right. Anywho, Peter Demens (who brought the first railroad here) named the city after his birthplace of Dzerzhinsk, Russia - wait… The romantic story that we tend to believe today, but probably isn’t true, is that John Williams and Peter Demens stood on the corner of Central and Second Street and flipped a coin for naming rights. Peter won, thus naming the city after his hometown, and runner up John named the hotel after his.

While the building still exists, it is no longer a hotel, instead housing what I can only assume are the world’s most annoying condos (how does one sleep when Insane Clown Posse is playing at Jannus?) What is really pretty awesome, though, is that the majority of the architectural stylings of the original hotel remain thanks to a 2002 renovation that saved the building from the wrecking ball. Let’s take a look at a few pictures, shall we?

Above is the oldest picture I know of the hotel, boy was St. Pete bustling back in those days. Take note of the tower and the dormer windows, references to that original architecture still exist today.

The above photo isn’t dated, but was probably taken sometime after the first round of renovations in 1914. Of particular interest to me is the minaret added to enhance the entrance, which is reminiscent of Henry Plant’s Tampa Hotel (now UT), built in 1891 in the then popular Moorish style. (If you’re interested, there’s a pretty awesome history of that hotel here.)

Someone call the cops, the tower has been stolen! However, in this undated photo we see the brick buildings added on either side that are still recognizable today, as are the balconies.

My guess on the above photo is somewhere in the 30’s/40’s. The Vinoy was completed in 1925, and the Detroit probably went with the pink paint job in the hopes it would add some class to the joint. Thank goodness it didn’t last. The minaret has been axed, the dormers and chimneys knocked down and the sign that is still there today (see below) has been added.

Marty McFly it about 60 years forward and we’ve got the best current photo I could find, which is pretty shitty. You can, however, see the referential architecture which returned in 2002 with the tower and dormers.

Here’s a bonus combo of an old newspaper ad for the Detroit Restaurant and a current image of the sign that still pokes out of the side of the building (although in a slightly different configuration than the original.)

Whew, that’s a lot to digest. If you’re interested in which hotel has existed longest in St. Pete and is still running, that would be the Pier Hotel on 2nd Ave N, built in 1921 and still operating daily as a hotel.

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On February 2nd, 1892, citizens in St. Petersburg voted 15-11 to seek incorporation. So, like, yeah, awesome. It wouldn’t be until February 29 that the actual incorporation would be approved, but today is the day that started it all. Or something.

Yes, misspelling incorporation was intentional, so suck it.

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