Creative Loafing Tampa — February 17, 2022

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PUBLISHER James Howard EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Ray Roa DIGITAL EDITOR Colin Wolf STAFF WRITER Justin Garcia

CITYOFSTPETE/FLICKR

FOOD and THEATER CRITIC Jon Palmer Claridge FILM & TV CRITIC John Allman IN-HOUSE WITCH Caroline DeBruhl CONTRIBUTORS Josh Bradley, Gabe Echazabal, Kyla Fields, Dan Savage, Arielle Stevenson, Chelsea Zukowski

ory

PHOTOGRAPHERS Adam Cole Boehm, Kimberly DeFalco

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EDITORIAL INTERNS Brandalynn Nuñez

García Vargas SeaWorld in Cepeda, February,Sofia animal rights Apply for summer via rroa@cltampa.com claiming the practice of keeping wild CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jack Spatafora d dangerous.

But even though public atmany SeaWorld animal rights don’t in seeFebruary, a parallel kind ILLUSTRATORS Joebetween Newton,the Dan Perkins, claiming the practice of keeping wild k, and the practice ofCory displaying animals Robinson nd dangerous.

But even though public asking for too much? Or is it time for a SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES d, many don’t see a parallel between the kind t” animals?Anthony Carbone, Scott Zepeda

stion ................. 5

ck and the practice of displaying animals s asking for too much? OrPROMOTIONS is it time for a AND MARKETING, ent” animals?

EVENTS DIRECTOR

If this isn’t a housing emergency, I don’t know what to call it.

Rent control off the table for now in St. Pete, p. 17.

Alexis Quinn Chamberlain

MARKETING, PROMOTIONS AND EVENTS COORDINATOR Lauren Caplinger Music Week ................................................... 42 EUCLID MEDIA GROUP Music: Tampa Fest ...........................

Concert review:Bay ArticBlues Monkeys ..........................40 42 CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Andrew Zelman Music ...................................................

The ListWeek ..........................................................

46 CHIEF OPERATING OFFICERS42 Concert review: Artic Monkeys ..........................

Chris Keating, Michael Wagner42 Movie reviews .....................................................

63 VP OF DIGITAL SERVICES Stacy Volhein The List ..........................................................

Free Will Astrology .........................................46 64 DIGITAL OPERATIONS COORDINATOR Movie ........................................................... reviews..................................................... 63 Puzzler 66 Jaime Monzon Music: Tampa Bay Blues Fest ........................... 40

cltv

euclidmediagroup.com cltampa.com Savage Love ...................................................... 69 cldeals.com clspace.com Puzzler ........................................................... 66

EDITORIAL POLICY — Creative Loafing Tampa is a publication covering public issues, the arts and entertainment. In our pages appear views from across the political and social spectrum.

They do not necessarily represent the views of the publisher.

Creative Loafing Tampa is published by Tampa Weekly, LLC, 204 E. Henderson Ave., Tampa, FL, 33602.

FOOD+DRINK ���������������������������35 A&E ���������������������������������������� 45 MUSIC ������������������������������������ 53 SAVAGE LOVE ��������������������������61 CROSSWORD �������������������������� 63

The physical edition is available free of charge at locations throughout Tampa Bay and online at cltampa.com. Copyright 2021, Tampa Weekly, LLC.

Reading those texts at a young age really opened my mind to self-reliance, living off the land.

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ON THE COVER: Photograph by Adam Cole Boehm. Design by Jack Spatafora.

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itors ors

Meacham Urban Farm celebrates first anniversary, p. 35.

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Free Will Astrology......................................... 64 Savage Love ...................................................... 69

NEWS+VIEWS ��������������������������13

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Taste the Adventure!

Read out

Gulfport’s lesbian literature festival is back.

By Kyla Fields

N

MICHELEALEXANDR/TWITTER

ot even a full calendar year after 2021’s Brunched 2022 ReadOut Festival, the annual celebra- The best reason to drink in the morning is back— tion of all-things literature and lesbian and it’s headed across the bridge to downtown returns next month, running from Feb. 18-20 St.Pete’s Mahaffey Theater in 2022. Creative on Zoom. This year’s ReadOut will be a hybrid Loafing Tampa Bay’s Brunched takes place on between livestream panels and workshops and Saturday, complete with unlimited food sampre-recorded content from featured authors and ples, a bloody mary competition and a beautiful speakers. Although this Zoom event is free to waterfront view. Brunched lets breakfast-lovers attend, it requires registration. Despite atten- sample unlimited small bites from some of the dance being free, donations for this annual best restaurants in Tampa Bay. And although nonprofit event are always welcome. there’s no official lineup yet, there’s a good chance The ReadOut Festival used to take over that 2022’s event will feature some of the conthe Gulfport Public Library for days at a time, cepts that served previous Brunched parties, but since last year has like Anchor and Brine, opted for the virtual Bulla, American Social, route. In 2019, founder Luv Child, Maple Street of ReadOut Alison Biscuit Company, Park Solomon told Creative & Rec , Shuffle, 7th + Loafing Tampa Bay Grove and many more.

Saturday, Feb. 19, 1 that “if it eventually outgrows the library, so p.m.-3 p.m. Mahaffey much the better”—and Theater, 400 1st Ave, this year’s installation S, St. Petersburg. has the range to conbrunchedtampabay. nect with literature c o m— S t e p h a n i e lovers from around the Powers globe.

The keynote Florida Audio Expo speaker for 2022 is If you’re still wonderGET LIT: Michèle Alexandre, keynote ing what to do with that Michèle Alexandre, Dean of the College speaker for Gulfport’s ReadOut Festival 2022. stimulus check, the Florida Audio Expo has of Law at DeLand’s Stetson University. She is the author of two a few ideas. Starting Friday, dozens of stereo, books, 2019’s “The New Frontiers of Civil Rights headphone, loudspeaker and amplifier compaLitigation” and 2014’s “Sexploitation: Sexual nies take over the newly renovated Embassy Profiling and the Illusion of Gender,” and will Suites Tampa Airport Westshore for a weekend speak on strengthening lesbian voices through- of exhibitions. Friday-Sunday, Feb. 18-20, 10 out the spheres of literature and law. a.m. $10 & up. 555 N Westshore Blvd., Tampa.

Notably, Alexandre is Stetson's first Black floridaaudioexpo.com—Ray Roa and first queer Dean, and has devoted much of her career to efforts like sustainability, economic Rally against high rents independence and gender equity—topics that The People’s Safety Coalition, alongside other may make their way into her opening speech local activist groups, will host “The Rent Is Too on Feb. 18. She leaves for Loyola in Chicago Damn High!,” a community call-to-action and this summer. discussion about rent control in the Tampa Bay Last year, ReadOut reached virtual capacity, area to “get organized and demand changes in hosting 900 participants and over 80 authors, our City.” The Safety Coalition joins forces with spoken word artists, and comics who all dem- the Restorative Justice Coalition, Tampa Bay onstrated “how Lesbian Voices Persist and branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Prevail in these transformative times.” Festival Tampa Tenants Union, Tampa Dream Defenders, organizers had to expand Zoom capabilities to Florida Change and For Our Future FL to bring accommodate everyone, so this year’s celebra- this event. Saturday, Feb. 19. noon-2 p.m., Waters tion should be a breeze. Friday-Sunday, Feb. Ave. Church, 609 W Waters Ave., Tampa. bit.ly/ 18-20. @readoutfestival on Facebook tamparenttoohigh—Sofía García Vargas

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Bark jam

Photos by Kimberly DeFalco

T

he bark was back in action last weekend when Humane Society of Tampa Bay took to Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park for the return of its “Bark In the Park” fundraiser. Celebrating its 35th year, the fundraiser helps the nonprofit find money for “shelter, food, spay/neuter services, and medical care for thousands of animals” that are given up to the organization every year. See more photos via cltampa.com/slideshows—Ray Roa

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cltampa.com | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | 11

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POLITICS

ISSUES

OPINION

ROSE COLORED GLASSES: Chini of Chini’s Art is quite concerned about losing her only source of income.

Spirit of the Skyway

Vendors scramble after closure of St. Pete shopping center.

By Kyla Fields

J

ust a few weeks ago, there were seemingly endless rows of vendors at St. Petersburg’s Skyway Marina Mall, including stained glass artists, vintage ware dealers, seamstresses and tattoo artists. These folks—whose ages range from 20s to 70s—don’t have much in common besides the fact that their businesses and livelihoods were displaced on Sunday when the indoor flea market closed.

Only a handful of vendors remained ahead of the Feb. 13 closure, but others have been scrambling to pack up and move as soon as possible, while some toughed it out until the bitter end. On Wed., Feb. 2, multiple vendors rushed to pack their stalls up as fast as possible, to avoid paying a prorated rent for the remaining two weeks—news that was delivered to them just that morning.

Skyway Marina’s vendors aren’t sure where the root of miscommunication lies, but it is an inconvenience, and more importantly, jeopardized their businesses and livelihoods.

Sixty-eight year-old Martha Johnson, who sells ceramics and other collectibles at

her business Martha’s Vineyard, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that she walked into Skyway Marina on Feb. 2 and was told by management that she had to pay a prorated amount of rent if she wanted to stay until the mall’s last day.

She says the remaining vendors were told that if they paid rent through the end of January, that the last two weeks would be rentfree time to pack their stalls up.

Johnson, who’s been vending at Skyway Marina Mall since it opened in 2017, says there’s been miscommunication since the beginning, but stresses that it’s been especially bad since last summer when Marina Beach—an eight-story mixed-use development with 400 residential units, a LifeStorage facility, and a yet-to-bedetermined fast food joint—was approved by St. Pete’s Development Review Commission to replace the existing mall.

A 70-something year-old vendor named Richard shared a large stall with Johnson vending oriental collectibles. He refused to pay the prorated rent, and opted to leave the mall as soon as possible instead. “If they try to come into my

LOCAL NEWS

ADAM COLE BOEHM

stall and take my things, I’m calling the police,” Richard—who did not want his last name mentioned—said as his voice cracked through tears.

Both Richard and Johnson are looking for another place to peddle their vintage wares, but every option they’ve looked into is just too expensive. They both live off of social security, as do most of the other vendors at Skyway Marina Mall.

“The owners of the building could care less about the business honestly,” Martha tells CL. “All of us were just used to paying rent and taxes until the owners found a good price for the building.”

In August 2021, in a meeting with the building’s owner— Baron Haghnazarzadeh of Maximo Plaza Inc.—and manager Michael Bonaddio, all of the vendors said they found out that the mall’s property was being sold, and that brand new mixed-use development was to replace it. The Skyway Marina Mall and the rest of the property at 4301 34th St. S will soon become brand new, multi-million dollar developments.

Both Bonaddio and multiple vendors state that they were clearly told that construction wouldn’t begin for some time, and that they had two years left at Skyway Marina Mall. At that time, several tenants had just moved in and were

planning their grand openings, reassured by Maximo Plaza Inc. that their immediate business would not be in jeopardy.

The vendors also said that Haghnazarzadeh and his son told them that Maximo Plaza Inc. would try to find them another space to continue the indoor flea market, after increasing everyone’s rent by 5%.

Shortly after that meeting, both the vendors and management say they started to notice small changes that indicated that the two-year promise they were given was in fact not the truth.

Mary Williams of Paradise Made Simple, knew that it sounded too good to be true.”

“When the Wagon Wheel flea market closed (in the summer of 2020), we were only given two weeks to pack up and leave. Nothing can be worse than that,” Williams says, with her chihuahua on her lap. “This experience has been incredibly disappointing, but I never had high hopes in the first place.”

Her suspicions reigned true.

Throughout the fall of 2021, multiple vendors told CL that the lights were randomly ripped out of the Skyway Marina Mall parking lot, leaving dangerous debris scattered around. Vendors also began to notice surveyors and their little flags everywhere. continued on page 14

“I never had high hopes in the first place.”

cltampa.com | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | 13

continued from page 13

Nowhere to go Other former Skyway vendors are on J + L Resale Oasis’s waiting list, but have no idea when or if they’ll even be accepted. Some are choosing to retire, while others are focusing on e-commerce sales. What they can’t sell will either end up in storage, in their houses, or in the trash.

A majority of Skyway’s tenants don’t know where to turn next, as vendor prices throughout St. Petersburg have skyrocketed, similar to the rent and the cost of living. A large chunk of its current vendors came directly from the 49er Flea Market, which closed in Clearwater months before Skyway Marina Mall opened.

If there were more flea market-like options in St. Petersburg— let alone the greater Tampa Bay area—the sudden closure of Skyway Marina Mall would not be so devastating for the 30-plus

14 | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | cltampa.com

vendors there. Although markets and pop-ups are popular in The ‘Burg, many of the vendor fees are simply inaccessible for low-income folks.

“A lot of these people have nowhere to go. The rent here is $1.25 per square foot with everything included, and there’s nothing in this city that’s even remotely close to that figure”, Bonaddio says.

“This entire process has been horrible for everyone—myself included.”

In comparison to Skyway’s affordable monthto-month rent, the smallest stall at the St. Pete Pier costs $515 a month, while the one-time vendor fee at the wildly popular Indie Flea ranges from $100-$300 per market. Mary Johnson of

other new developments in the Skyway Marina District, will be the new owner of the entire property at 4301 34th St. S. Dougherty, who recently built the Marina Walk apartments where the gay club Flamingo’s used to be, purchased the other half of the Skyway Marina Mall plaza in 2020. The self-storage facility and Ace Hardware that are currently there will soon become The Manhattan—a nine-story, high end senior living community that will be neighbors with Marina Beach.

According to the Pinellas County Property Appraiser, Skyway Marina Mall and its surrounding property are still technically owned

LOCAL NEWS

ADAM COLE BOEHM

By the time the small business owners found out that the mall would close in February of 2022, it was just a few weeks before Christmas— and they still weren’t given an exact date.

“Both Maximo Plaza Inc. and Allied Group Holdings have known for all those months, and to keep telling me two years is extremely unfair,” Skyway’s manager Bonaddio says. “This all could have ended so differently if they were honest to me and the tenants. We’ve had to find out the facts ourselves through every step of this process.”

It wasn’t until Jan. 14 that Maximo Plaza Inc. officially informed the tenants of the Feb. 13 closure. “We do sincerely apologize for this disruption, but as our costs increase and our rental income decreases, this decision is necessary,” a letter from the owners to the vendors states.

Chini of Chini’s Art is quite concerned about losing her only source of income afer Skyway closes. She’s a stained glass artist who uses her small stall as a studio as well as a retail space.

In the far right corner of the 80,000-squarefoot indoor flea market, she was completely surrounded by barren stalls, secured off with a yellow rope.

“I don’t get a lot of social security every month,” the artist, who immigrated to the United States from Korea 43 years ago, tells CL. “The money I make here helps me buy groceries and other things I need.”

When she started encountering problems with her mental health, Chini says that her stained glass art helped her get out of a dark place. She’s one of the few vendors that is lucky to have a plan for the future, as Chini and her neighbor Mary of P.M.S. will be able to sell their art at J + L Resale Oasis, a collaborative second hand warehouse based in Seminole. The stained glass artist is still looking for another studio where she can create and teach her workshops, but is temporarily setting up a makeshift studio in her home.

INTERNATIONAL ACCLAIM: Gwendolyn S. Fields was a librarian at the Library of Congress in D.C. for over 30 years.

Martha’s Vineyard only paid about $300 a month for her shared stall at Skyway Marina.

With the number of condos and apartments in St. Petersburg rapidly increasing, the number of flea markets and swap meets throughout Tampa Bay have been closing at a similar pace.

Tampa’s Big Top shuttered in late 2019, both Pinellas Park’s Wagon Wheel and Pasco’s Gunn Highway Flea Market closed during the height of the pandemic in 2020, while the drive-in movie theater swap meet hybrid Fun-Lan was sold mere months ago.

Jack Dougherty of Allied Group Holdings, the man behind Marina Beach and many of the

by Maximo Plaza Inc., with a 2021 market value of about $3.8 million.

“I’ve been on a lot of the boards in the Marina District during my time here, and it had been voted on a long time ago in agreement with the city that no more storage facilities, no banks, and no fast food places would be built here,” Bonaddio says. “When the planning for Marina Beach was proposed, there was no pushback against it—no one said anything.”

Besides The Manhattan, there are many other high-rise apartments beginning to take over the Skyway Marina District—which

“It’s the same story as Wagon Wheel and other flea markets that have closed.”

stretches from 30th Ave. S to 54th Ave. S along 34th St. S. These recent Allied Group developments join Sur Club and The Addison Skyway Marina—two luxury residential complexes that together offer 604 units.

The cheapest apartment at The Addison is 619-square-feet and runs for $1,727-$2,000, while units at the resort-style Sur Club start at $1,875 a month for a 740-square-foot space.

Skyway Marina District, which opens today, is an affordable housing development with a majority of units starting at $762 for a onebedroom apartment.

At a whopping 80,000-square feet, the 34th St. S shopping plaza began as a commercial mall and movie theater when it was built in the 1970’s.

After that closed, it was revived as an outdoor flea market known as Maximo Flea. After some renovations, the Skyway Marina Mall debuted in 2017, with current manager Bonaddio as one of its very first vendors.

Although many tenants direct their frustrations at him, Bonaddio tells CL that there’s been a whirlwind of miscommunication between the current owners and future owners of the property—and that he’s been stuck in the middle.

The manager of Skyway Marina Mall says that he’s unsure if their neighbors at Maximo Storage—who have about 600 tenants— have even gotten a move-out notice. When asked by CL when they planned to relocate, Maximo Storage declined to comment.

“In my opinion, they kept us here so that full rent would keep coming in, just to sweep the rug out from under our feet when it was convenient,” Bonaddio says frustratingly. “It’s the same story as Wagon Wheel and other flea markets that have closed.”

Bonaddio was told that demolition at 4401 34th St. S could begin as early as March; the Tampa Bay Times estimates that Dougherty will break ground in August 2022.

What some described as an “underutilized shopping center,” generated vital income for a wide variety of people who depended on it— lower-income people who are elderly, retired, or disabled. Not a single small business owner who remained at Skyway Marina Mall through its final weeks felt like they were treated with respect.

Gwendolyn S. Fields, who was a librarian at the Library of Congress in D.C. for over 30 years, summarizes the closure of Skyway Marina as “just really disappointing.”

More than half of what she sells at her business Vitu International comes straight from Africa, from countries like Zimbabwe and Senegal that she’s visited over the years. “I haven’t been treated fairly, and the new vendors have been treated even worse,” Fields, who’s been a tenant at Skyway since it opened, tells CL. “February is Black History Month, and it’s always been my biggest-selling month, and to be going through this now is very sad.”

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Outnumbered

St. Pete City Council skirts rent control.

By Arielle Stevenson

C

ouncil chambers were near capacity for last Thursday morning’s Housing, Land Use, and Transportation committee. The committee voted against a motion by council member Richie Floyd, for a resolution declaring a housing state of emergency to go before full council for a vote. Only Floyd voted in favor. Council members Brandi Gabbard, Gina Driscoll, and Ed Montanari opposed. A second motion to reevaluate housing dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act passed unanimously.

“If this isn’t a housing emergency, I don’t know what to call it,” Karla Correa with the St. Pete Tenants Union said. “People are going homeless.”

The vote comes weeks after over 150 residents packed into council chambers demanding a housing state of emergency and rent control. Amid 30-40 % rent hikes, then-council passed a motion to explore a state of emergency declaration and rent control, pending a presentation from legal.

As legal outlined last Thursday, it’s not an easy process under a preemptive state statute passed in 1977.

“I think a lot of people in the community would say that the risk is worth it,” council member Richie Floyd said. “Us not moving forward is denying them an opportunity to say that.”

Enacted after Miami Beach tried to enforce rent control starting in 1969, no other city has been successful in implementing rent control since. Even declaring a state of emergency comes with a heavy burden of proof. That’s after the Florida Supreme Court struck down the Miami Beach rent control ordinance, aimed at curbing rising costs for low-income retirees.

“In the case of ‘City of Miami Beach v. Forte Towers,’ they discussed that an inflationary

spiral, in and of itself, is not an emergency,” city attorney Joseph Patner said. “So there would need to be findings that there is an emergency consistent with the limited direction we have.”

In that case, war was the most common reason given by the legislature to justify a state of emergency calling for rent control.

In addition, luxury apartment rentals are excluded from rent control under the state law. And the definition of luxury apartment hasn’t been updated since 1977, when luxury meant $250 a month.

“If this were passed, our office would vigorously defend this to the best of our ability,” Patner said. “The reality is we’d be at a very high risk of being able to defend it...And the damages could run into the millions or tens of millions.”

Floyd said a lot of alternatives to rent control were discussed during the committee’s meeting.

He expects new business items on those alternatives “very soon.”

“I was just trying to get us to indicate support without taking legal action today,” Floyd said. “It’s disheartening, but this is by no means the end of trying to fight for the people in St. Petersburg who are being pinched.”

Last month, the People’s Council of St. Pete voted to escalate if the city failed to declare a housing state of emergency. A mass demonstration is planned for city council’s Feb. 17 meeting at 5 p.m. outside city hall.

“The idea of emergency rent control is really only necessary, because we’ve gone decades without making a real investment in affordable housing,” Aaron Dietrich with the People’s Council of St. Pete said. “Rent control is not the dream. The vision of our city is not rent control.

It’s this idea of guaranteed housing.”

HOUSING

“People are going homeless.”

CITYOFSTPETE/FLICKR

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Make it stop

Officials and critics call for a halt on Tampa’s I-275 expansion.

By Justin Garcia “When we next talk about demolishing walls, let it be in furthering a project like Boulevard Tampa that actually sees the future,” said Fernandez about the proposed I-barrier wall expansion. “I may not live to see Boulevard Tampa. But we can begin that journey together.

And now our future is in your hands.”

Hillsborough County Commissioner Pat Kemp said that a community meeting should be held to help rectify some of the problems with the project. “It’s important, I think, to the community,” Kemp said. “We need to have a conversation about where the wall is going in and what can be done.”

FDOT Secretary for District 7 David Gwynn said that there may have been communication issues between FDOT and the community.

“We thought we were clear. Could we have been clearer? Perhaps. But we will continue to try,” Gwynn said. “But I can honestly tell you that I have never come here and I’ve never witnessed my staff come here to lie or to misrepresent anything for any purpose.”

LOCAL NEWS

FDOT’s communication director said that has conducted significant engagement within the local community using traditional and nontraditional methods, including a direct mailing list that includes over 9.000 people and a constant contact email list including 4,500 people.

FDOT claimed that they’ve held 125 presentations regarding the I-275 expansion and 52 community events, as well as two workshops and one public hearing.

After the calls for the community meeting, Commissioner Kemp said that what’s more immediate is the nighttime construction on the interstate to expand the interstate wall, and that the night work will only further disturb residents in the area.

Jessica Vaughn, Hillsborough School Board Member for District 3, asked if the TPO could hold a vote could be held to put a moratorium on the construction, but the TPO’s attorney pointed out that because TPO is planning organization this is not within its power.

City Councilman Guido Maniscalco came to the meeting to say that Tampa is still dealing with the problems borne by the original interstate construction in the 1950s. “I think what people are asking from you is, ‘please don’t hurt us anymore’,” he said.

“I too would stand with them and say try to preserve what’s left.”

JUSTIN GARCIA

A

t Hillsborough’s Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) Board Meeting on Feb. 9, several community members showed up with concerns about the ongoing I-275 expansion, and called for a moratorium on the construction project. Hillsborough’s Commissioners and a Tampa City Council person also voiced concerns about the project, which is currently underway with pile-driving construction so loud in Tampa Heights that it’s shaking people’s houses.

“There’s already some issues that we’ve experienced from the highway. The dust and air pollution from the highway already quite literally stain our house,” said Nicole Perry, a Tampa Heights resident. “We worry about our children breathing the air outside while they play. We also worry about the impacts of further expansion in the long term as well as the short term from construction, and what that’s going to do for our family.”

Dayna Lazarus lives in North Ybor and pointed out that the county has already acknowledged racial impacts of I-275 construction. “Two summers ago, you passed an equity resolution that explicitly named the racist impact of I-275,” Lazarus said. “Then you proceeded to have myself and others write and participate in an equity planning process, which resulted in recommendations, which you unanimously adopted.”

Lazarus asked the county commissioners present at the meeting to declare a moratorium on this current construction so the community can, “have a proper public engagement process and really consider what we’re spending our tax money on for transportation.”

During the meeting, after other community members spoke against the expansion, seven people yielded their time to Rick Fernandez.

Fernandez has been one of the most vocal opponents of the construction, and he presented a full blown presentation highlighting the problems with the project. Fernandez used Florida Department of Transportation’s (FDOT) own powerpoint slides to support his claim that FDOT had not properly communicated the I-275 construction to the community, especially the interstate wall expansion and the right of way impacts that would be felt in the city.

“We’re talking about no right of way impacts are anticipated in Tampa heights,” Fernandez said, referencing FDOT’s slide. “They kept saying that over and over again. And they kept putting it to us in writing in their PowerPoint slides.”

He pointed out what he said were several other acts of non-transparency by FDOT, calling them “inconvenient truths” many of which were highlighted by the FDOT’s own documents and actions from past meetings.

Gwynn, multiple times, admitted that the FDOT could have been clearer in its communication with the community, but also stated that the organization had made several efforts to explain the project.

“I understand how confusing sometimes our projects can be and I understand sometimes we speak a language that other folks don’t necessarily understand the same as we understand it,” Gwynn said. “I truly believed it when we were saying and our folks were saying that we were not going to have any additional impacts... I’m sorry that some folks didn’t understand and I am sympathetic that they didn’t.”

But opponents and local officials said that the problem isn’t that FDOT speaks a different language, it’s that FDOT didn’t communicate the interstate expansion properly. Commissioner Kimberly Overman said the community needs clarity before the project moves forward. She said that it was “clearly unclear” for the commissioners and everyone else what the impacts of the construction project would be.

“What we’ve heard this morning, is what we’ve heard has been different than what the community has heard, in some cases,” Overman said. “I don’t think it was obvious that the [barrier] wall would move. I think we need transparency all around, you know, to rebuild the trust.”

WHAT’S SHAKIN’? A pile driver used on the I-275 expansion that is so loud it’s shaking the neighborhood.

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Trucked up

I-4, I-275 interchange ranked among worst in the country.

By Sofía García Vargas

I

n its List of Top 100 Truck Bottlenecks, the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) ranked Tampa’s “malfunction junction,” also known as the I-4/I-274 interchange, the 69th worst freight bottleneck in the U.S. The study, released on Feb. 9, uses GPS data from over one million freight trucks to “convert its truck GPS dataset into an ongoing truck bottleneck analysis that is used to quantify the impact of traffic congestion on truck-borne freight at over 300 specific locations.” The study used data from peak and off peak traffic hours, as well as the speed of trucks moving through the interchange.

ATRI is a nonprofit research organization in the trucking industry that analyzes the role of freight transportation in maintaining a safe, secure and efficient system.

The report says trucks moving through Tampa’s troubled interchange averaged a speed of 41.6 mph, a peak speed of 33.9 mph and a non-peak speed of 45.2 mph.

The study also analyzed the effects of the pandemic on traffic congestion, and I-4 at I-275 experienced a change of peak average speed of 21.1% from 2019 to 2021.

By comparison, the study named I-95 at SR-4 in Fort Lee, New Jersey the worst truck bottleneck in America. ATRI found that the average speed in this location was 30.1 mph, a peak average speed of 22.4 mph, a non-peak average speed of 33.4 mph and a change of peak average speed of 0.1% in the last three years.

Following Fort Lee was Cincinnati’s I-71 at I-75 and Houston’s I-45 at I-69/US 59.

According to Chris Spear, president and CEO of the American Trucking Associations the goal of the list is to create a “roadmap for federal and state administrators responsible for prioritizing infrastructure investments throughout the country. Every year, ATRI’s list highlights the dire needs for modernizing and improving our roads and bridges.”

But upgrades in infrastructure don’t always bring benefits to the community, and there is no better example than Tampa’s own I-275 expansion.

At last Tuesday’s Hillsborough’s Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) Board Meeting, community members and officials expressed concerns about the construction and called for a moratorium on the project. Residents say construction is so loud in some locations that it’s shaking people’s houses.

At the meeting, some said air pollution is affecting home infrastructures and the giant physical separations are creating racial inequity.

Nonetheless, ATRI states that its efforts aim to “empower decision-making in both the private and public sectors by helping stakeholders better understand the severity of congestion and mobility constraints on the U.S. highway transportation system.”

“We have seen, most recently in Pittsburgh, that the cost of doing nothing could also cost lives.

It’s time to fund these projects and get our supply chains moving again,” Spear said.

LOCAL NEWS

“But upgrades in infrastructure don’t always bring benefits to the community.”

BEN OSTROWSKY, CC BY 2.0

DRIVE ME CRAZY: Surprising no one, Malfunction Junction landed on another ‘worst of’ list.

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Quite contrary

Tampa’s new police chief needs council approval, so far it’s not a lock.

By Ray Roa

L

ast Tuesday, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told the city and fellow police officers that she’d like to see Mary O’Connor become the next chief of police. At a press conference, Castor lauded O’Connor’s 22-year career at the Tampa Police Department (TPD), plus her five years working as a consultant and U.S. Department of Justice expert charged with helping other police departments reduce crime. Castor also said she did not expect any pushback from city council, which will have to approve the pick. But O’Connor’s confirmation isn’t a lock, according to city councilmen who spoke to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay the day after Castor’s announcement.

“There is a process,” Tampa City Councilchair Orlando Gudes told CL. Gudes’ Council could make their decision on Feb. 17, the day this issue hits newsstands.

Section 6.03 of the Tampa City Charter says that after a police chief vacates the position, the mayor has 90 days to submit a candidate for confirmation. Council then has 15 days after that submission to confirm or disapprove such appointments by no fewer than four votes of the entire council. If council fails to act on the appointment within 15 days, the new chief would be confirmed. If city council disapproves the submission, the mayor must submit or resubmit the name of the appointee within the next 90 days.

“This is a bigger position than the mayor.

This is the go-to person when it comes to keeping the city safe,” Gudes, a 25-year TPD veteran, added. Gudes told CL that he met with O’Connor—who retired in 2016 as assistant police chief—on Feb. 9 to have a candid conversation and voice concerns from his constituents and the community. He did not share the specifics of those concerns—and did not say how he would vote on the confirmation—but in1995, a year after joining TPD, O’Connor was arrested for battery on a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Officer, a felony, along with obstruction and disorderly intoxication, both misdemeanors. A Tampa Tribune article referred to the arrest as a “drunken brawl”.

Last Tuesday, O’Connor told reporters she believed wholeheartedly in second chances, but community members were quick to point out the double standard.

“I think it’s very clear that a Black civilian would have received harsher punishment for battery on a LEO,” said Bernice Lauredan of the Dream Defenders, a group that organizes against governmental corruption in Florida. She added that discipline for officers like O’Connor is different than the way others are treated.

City Councilman Luis Viera met O’Connor on Feb. 11 and added that he’s been doing his due diligence. Councilman John Dingfelder would not elaborate further on his feelings about the vote. CL also emailed City Councilman Charlie Miranda to get his feedback on Castor’s pick, but has yet to hear back. Miranda represents District 2, which includes West Tampa where many constituents probably wanted to see Butch Delegado be named chief.

Delgado is a 24-year TPD vet and Tampa native who was acting as interim chief and has spent the last five months not only meeting with community members but guiding TPD through the fallout of a recent “Renting While Black” investigation. The investigation found that efforts from TPD and landlords sometimes led to evictions of entire families over things as petty as shoplifting.

Over the last 30 years, four of six Tampa police chiefs, including Brian Dugan who retired in September, were promoted from within. Many in the city saw Delgado—who’s never been the subject of an internal affairs investigation—as a lock for chief. Delgado even had vocal supporters on council itself.

“I was a big fan of Butch Delgado. He brought a collaborative mindset, a fresh perspective and professionalism to the position,” Councilman Bill Carlson told CL. “I’m sure there will be a robust discussion and community input when we vote.”

City Councilman Joseph Citro did not return a text message from CL. On Feb. 9, he told Bay News 9’s Josh Rojas, “I don’t think I can confirm her… Butch has a better record… He would’ve been my pick.”

Carlson and Citro are not alone; the Tampa Police Benevolent Association released a statement that said the police union was disappointed in the pick, adding that “ “We want to congratulate Chief O’Connor and welcome her aboard.

We are very much looking forward to working with her and her administration.”

Former Councilchair Guido Maniscalco, who now represents District 6, did not return a text from CL, but had a meeting with O’Connor after the mayor’s announcement. “We’ll see where the conversation goes,” he told the Tampa Bay Times.

In the days leading up to the vote, CL again called around city council and city hall to find out when confirmation of Castor's submission for chief would happen. We could not get a clear answer as of press time, so visit cltampa.com/ news to get the most updated version of the developments surrounding the process.

LOCAL NEWS

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Feeling blue

Tallahassee’s union busting bill excludes cops.

By News Service of Florida

A

mid opposition from teachers and other government workers, a House panel last Tuesday approved a measure that would make a series of changes for public-employee unions, including preventing workers from having dues deducted from their paychecks.

The Republican-controlled House State Administration & Technology Appropriations Subcommittee voted 9-6 to support the bill (HB 1197), filed by Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, and Rep. Cord Byrd, R-Neptune Beach.

The vote was along almost straight party lines, with Rep. Toby Overdorf, R-Palm City, joining Democrats in opposing the bill, which also includes changes such as requiring unions to petition for recertification if their membership drops below 50% of the eligible employees. Numerous teachers and other union members urged lawmakers to reject the bill, saying it would not help teacher shortages and is unfair because it would exempt unions that represent law-enforcement officers and firefighters.

“There is simply no reason for this legislation,” said Stephanie Kunkel, a lobbyist for the Florida Education Association teachers union. “Florida is already facing a massive shortage of our teachers and our support professionals.”

But Plakon said lawmakers often have treated first responders differently than other public-sector workers. “The idea that we somehow treat people that run into fires and buildings differently than the rest of state employees is long established in Florida law,” he said.

Business groups, including the Florida Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business, support the bill. But it has touched off a sometimes-emotional debate.

“When I think about it, I say it’s hypocritical, disrespectful, and because I am a Christian, it’s evil,” Rep. Felicia Robinson, D-Miami Gardens said. “Those are the words I use to describe this proposed legislation. I actually compare it to slavery and the Jim Crow era.”

The bill needs approval from the House State Affairs Committee before it could go to the full House. A Senate version (SB 1458) has not been heard in committees.

‘Take that to the bank’: DeSantis threatens to veto Florida congressional map With the state House and Senate needing to reach agreement on a congressional redistricting plan, Gov. Ron DeSantis made clear to lawmakers last Friday that he isn’t backing down on a sprawling North Florida district.

DeSantis, appearing in Jackson County, said his position on the constitutionality of the minority-access Congressional District 5 held

by Democrat Al Lawson didn’t change when the Florida Supreme Court rejected his request for an advisory opinion about revamping the district. “The court declined to take that up but acknowledged that these are, you know, really live issues and are unsettled,” DeSantis said. “We will not be signing any congressional map that has an unconstitutional gerrymander in it,” DeSantis continued. “And that is going to be the position that we stick to. So, just take that to the bank.”

The Senate has already approved a map that keeps District 5 close to its current configuration, which runs about 200 miles from Jacksonville. But DeSantis’ administration released a proposed map that would revamp the district, putting it only in Northeast Florida.

FLORIDA NEWS

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Preserverance

USF environmentalists score win, underscore need for more protections.

By Justin Garcia made by the North Fletcher Property Advisory Committee,” Mounger said. “I think the committee squandered an important opportunity to call for permanent legal protections for the land, which is why I countered those recommendations with a letter of dissent addressed to Interim President Rhea Law.” Her dissent letter highlighted the weaknesses in USF’s recommendations, including the lack of long-term protection.

Assistant Director of Media Relations Althea Johnson sent CL a response to Mounger’s dissent letter.

“As identified in the consultant’s ecological assessment report and consistent with the committee’s recommendations, the university could still consider pursuing measures such as a wetland mitigation bank or land conservation easement on certain sections of the property,” Johnson wrote in an email.

USF did not clarify whether or not the university has plans to pursue such measures.

Mounger said that she was heartened to hear that the university has acknowledged they can pursue an easement on the property.

ENVIRONMENT

violation of Florida’s Unmarked burial law (FSS 872.05).

“We hope that the cooperation offered by the USF Police continues as we move from working to prevent development of the sites to a process of ensuring protection for the Indigenous cemetery contained within those properties,” Murphy added.

USF’s recommendations for the property do allude to protecting the sites, saying improvements were needed, including, “appropriately designed research and teaching facilities and those that result in heightened security and controlled access to natural and cultural resources.”

USFPD said that it continues to take steps to help protect the burial site. “This includes routine patrols and other enhanced proactive measures,” USFPD wrote in an email. “USFPD has not received any reports regarding damage or disturbance to the area since you last inquired in June 2021.”

But FIA says there are not yet warning signs in the area, and that they want some kind of signage installed.

While the Indigenous and environmentalist communities celebrate the university’s halt to development exploration, Mounger also celebrated, but with the future in mind.

“While the Forest Preserve is safe for now, without strong protections like a conservation easement, there is little doubt in my mind that interest in destroying the preserve for short-term profit will rise again, just as it has in the past,” she said.

“The fight is not over.”

PHOTO VIA LUKE MYERS/YOUTUBE

A

fter a 10-month effort to save University of South Florida’s Forest Preserve, activists celebrated a major win last week when the school dropped plans to develop the area. After a request for information (RFI) for development on the property was sent out to developers last year, environmentalists, students, Indigenous people and political groups rose up in opposition. Steve Currall, USF’s former president who oversaw the RFI, resigned in July of 2021 amid the uproar.

Now, USF has dropped their current development exploration, but activists and Indigenous people say more needs to be done.

Rhea Law, Interim President of USF, announced the end to the RFI last Tuesday.

“We will not be pursuing any of the responses to the original Request for Information (RFI) posted in April 2021 and we have ended the RFI process,” Law wrote.

In response to Law, Dr. Jeannie Mounger, biologist and environmental activist, sent a letter on behalf of the Friends of University Natural areas, the nonprofit that formed out of the “Save the USF Forest Preserve” movement. In the letter, she thanked Law for her “willingness to address this community matter with great consideration and for her decision to withdraw pursuit of development of the Forest Preserve.”

Mounger went on to thank several groups that helped protect the preserve, including the Florida Indigenous Alliance (FIA), Hillsborough County Commissioners and local journalism outlets that covered the story.

But Mounger’s letter ended by highlighting the need for more protections for the preserve, despite the fact that USF has backed off for now.

“While the end of the RFI process signals an important win for those of us committed to protecting the USF Forest Preserve, the fight is not over,” Mounger wrote.

She pointed out that in order for the USF Forest Preserve to remain protected in perpetuity, strong legal protections in the form of a conservation easement must be adopted by the State of Florida.

“We look forward to working with State and University officials to ensure that the Forest Preserve remains an undisturbed and beloved natural area for future Floridians,” Mounger added.

Mounger told CL that she’s “happy to see USF right a wrong” by withdrawing the RFI. “I do count it as a win for those of us working to prevent the destruction of the land. However, I was disappointed by the final recommendations

“I personally hope they do not pursue mitigation banking as an option given that this measure can lead to net losses of conservation lands in the state, but it could be an avenue through which we can pursue stronger protection,” Mounger explained.

Beyond the issue of long-lasting legal protections being demanded for the area, a sacred Native American burial site within the preserve also needs more attention from USF, said a local Indigenous group.

In June of last year, CL reported that grave sites were being looted by grave robbers who flip Indigenous artifacts for profit. The site was inspected by members of the FIA, Mounger, and a USFPD officer, in order to figure out the best way to protect the sites. But as of now, the group says that not much has been done by USF, and FIA may have to take matters into their own hands.

“The FIA applauds the decision by the University of South Florida to rescind the RFI for the USF Forest Preserve and other adjacent properties. However, the Indigenous cemetery or burial site remains vulnerable to grave robbers who desecrated the cemetery shortly after the RFI was announced,” Sheridan Murphy of FIA wrote in an email.

Murphy said that the FIA will monitor the site and continue to demand that USF place appropriate signs around the preserve indicating desecration of an Indigenous cemetery is a

POINT TAKEN: A scene from ‘Choke Point,' a documentary about the USF Forest Preserve.

cltampa.com | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | 27

First, do harm

In which Marco Rubio and Joe Manchin team up to kill people and score points. Hooray, bipartisanship!

By Jeffrey Billman

I

take one week away from the internet, and suddenly Russia is on the verge of invading Ukraine, Donald Trump has hauled top-secret materials to Mar-a-Lago with him, Canadian truck drivers are mad about vaccines, and New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., have decided the pandemic is over (at least until the next variant starts overfilling emergency rooms).

But let’s talk instead about bipartisanship, that elusive Beltway media fetish. Last week, Sens.

Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Marco Rubio, R-Fl., introduced the Preventing Illicit Paraphernalia for Exchange Systems (PIPES) Act, which will “prohibit federal funding from being used to purchase illegal drug paraphernalia, such as needles or crack pipes.” Sounds reasonable, right?

Well, no, not at all, actually. And people will die so they can score political points. But we’ll circle back to that.

The catalyst for this misadventure in legislating was several days of Fox News outrage orgy over a story in the right-wing Washington Free Beacon, which reported that the Biden administration would “provide pipes for users to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and ‘any illicit substance.’”

Rubio, always eager to hop aboard a moral panic, quickly sponsored the Cutting off Rampant Access to Crack Kits (CRACK) Act— get it?—before teaming up with Manchin, whose state has been an epicenter of the opioid crisis.

The White House says the furor was based on shoddy reporting—which is true, in that the Free Beacon made unsupported assumptions, which then gave the Biden administration room to say that of course it never planned to buy crack pipes.

The story concerned a $30 million harm reduction grant program included in the American Rescue Plan Act, whose applicants can propose purchasing equipment and supplies such as safe sex kits, substance tests kits, infectious diseases testing kits, overdose reversal medication, syringes, and “safe smoking kits/supplies.”

The guidelines specify that all proposals must be evidence-based and “programs that use federal funding must adhere to federal, state, and local laws, regulations, and other requirements”—which, curiously, didn’t find its way into the Free Beacon story.

What did, however, was the fact that some safe smoking kits include glass stems along with things like rubber mouthpieces and disinfectant wipes. While the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration hadn’t specified what could go into the kits, and the Free

Beacon never asked, “crack pipes” became the outrage du jour.

The White House—doing what Democrats always do in the face of cynical morality plays— folded like a cheap suit, quickly announcing that “no federal funding will be used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in safe smoking kits.”

The Drug Policy Alliance condemned the administration’s quasi-reversal.

INFORMED DISSENT

28 | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | cltampa.com

Black and Indigenous people being disproportionately hard hit.”

In 2019, 68,710 people died of drug overdoses in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last year, 101,260 did. The acute problem is the proliferation of fentanyl, combined with the pandemic-related closures of treatment centers and other services. (Stimulants, including cocaine and meth, are making comebacks, too.) But underlying it is the fact that for a half-century, we’ve treated substance abuse as a moral fail-

and, importantly, less risk of overdose. Safer smoking kits can help users transition from injection to inhalation and help keep existing smokers from harming themselves unnecessarily: Alcohol wipes let them clean their hands and pipes. Lip balm prevents cracking, which reduces the risk of infectious disease. Personal glass stems prevent them from needing to share pipes, which also contains outbreaks.

What they don’t do: Give your 15-year-old daughter a gram of heroin and tell her to have a good time.

PIPES DREAM: What happens when Marco Rubio and Joe Manchin team up?

“Backtracking on providing critical evidencebased resources that could greatly improve the health of people who consume drugs through smoking is a huge missed opportunity that will disproportionately be felt in Black and Indigenous communities, especially as these communities have experienced some of the sharpest increases in overdose deaths involving fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine,” executive director Kassandra Frederique said in a statement.

“Health policy must be driven by evidence, not by clickbait. We are in the midst of a serious public health crisis that claimed over 100,000 lives in the first year of the pandemic—with

ing that deserves punishment, an attitude that not only justified the racist drug war but led to a dangerously inadequate treatment system.

The CRACK and PIPES bills—and the White House’s chickenshit response—play into that mentality to get Fox News kudos under the guise of “common sense.” That kind of sense might be common, but that doesn’t make it right.

You don’t have to like hard drugs to know that a) people use them, b) helping them not die isn’t the same as supporting their addiction. Smoking is safer than injection. It carries less risk of HIV and hepatitis C transmission,

From a public policy perspective, safer smoking kits—like needle-exchange programs— aren’t a close call. We know they work. We know they save lives. We know they don’t lead to additional substance abusers. And we know that, even after the White House backed down, Manchin and Rubio pressed forward with their charade, arguing, “While this is a heartbreaking issue that must be fully addressed by the federal government, using taxpayer funds to buy drug paraphernalia is not the solution.”

Their preferred solution? Crickets.

If you’d like to know why the drug war is a colossal, hopeless failure, look no further.

Shit Happened THURSDAY 10

TUESDAY 15 CL spends half the day calling around Tampa City Council and the office of City Attorney Gina Grimes trying to get a straight answer about when council is supposed to confirm Castor’s submission for police chief. Just a few days away from the end of a 15-day period before the submission is automatically confirmed per the city charter, no one can give us a straight answer. This Feb. 17 council meeting is gonna be a circus.

HB 6031 would repeal state laws that ban wine sales in containers larger than a gallon. The House passed the measure nearly unanimously with a 117-1 vote. The bill would allow wine bottles of all sizes, including the “Nebuchadnezzar,” which holds 15 liters, or the volume of 20 standard wine bottles. Who said this legislative session was a waste of time?

ADAM SCHULTZ

WFLA says a St. Pete handyman is accused of stealing over $18K from customer. At least he didn’t take anything out of the fridge.

MONDAY 14

ST. PETERSBURG POLICE

SPOT—a robotic dog that will assist in highrisk and life threatening situations—was gifted to St. Pete Police by the same people behind Home Shopping Network (HSN), an organization known for peddling household wares and trinkets using high-pressure sales tactics.

That Super Bowl commercial just got weird, huh?

First Lady Jill Biden announced plans to visit Moffitt Cancer Center on Friday. That sound is a bunch of right wing nutjobs firing up their washing machines to make sure their “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts are clean and ready for the “protest.”

More shit, without all the social media comments, is available directly from cltampa.com/ news.

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“We hope to just keep building on what we have, to keep providing good food for our community.”

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Farm system

Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

“Reading those texts at a young age really opened my mind to self-reliance, living off the land,” he said.

He also had digestive issues growing up, and had to cook healthy meals for himself. “So things about the soil: it drains well, so it doesn’t it was all these things happening at once, that get flooded easily, and it wasn’t contaminated changed the trajectory of my life and what I with lead or any other toxic substances. “It’s hard wanted to do, “ he said. work. But it’s rewarding that people care about Their personal journeys led them to today, it,” Malloy told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. where they help feed thousands of members of They’re all smiles now, after they’ve over- the downtown community. Before Meacham, come both the debris and that community was a federthe tricky soil to cultivate ally declared food desert, the the thriving urban farm.

Tampa Bay Times reported.

Growing local food has been Right across the street from an important part of Malloy’s the farm is Encore Apartment Meacham Urban Farm life for nearly a decade. After Complex, which has capac1108 E Scott St., Tampa working for 20 years as an ity for over 1,000 residents, Saturday (9 a.m.) and Sunday (10 a.m.) electrical technician, Malloy and accepts people who use until 1 p.m. meachamfarm.com felt compelled to farm for his housing assistance vouchers. community and founded TrailBale Farm in A large sign at the farm says it accepts SNAP Temple Terrace in 2013. From him, growing local and EBT government food assistance purchases. food is, “one of those things that doesn’t have Malloy says that residents from Encore visit any downsides,” despite the challenges faced. them regularly and that they’ve been able to

A year after opening, Meacham is thriving in downtown Tampa.

By Justin Garcia

A

FOOD NEWS

JUSTIN GARCIA

fter a year of being open to the public, Meacham Urban Farm in Downtown Tampa now crawls with customers, volunteers and staff farmers on the weekends. Two Saturdays ago, Erin Feather pulled weeds between rows of tomato plants during her first volunteer shift at the farm. She brought her friends visiting from out of town to pitch in. They drove up from Feather’s house in South Tampa because over the past year, she had heard good things and wanted to pitch in.

“Having local food like this is so important for the community,” she said as she filled her bucket with weeds.

Feather and her friends were just three of eight volunteers at the two-acre farm that day, doing jobs ranging from harvesting to mulching as staff advised and worked with them. Meanwhile, the line grew at the checkout counter.

They sold an array of organic vegetables from the farm, including several varieties of tomatoes, kale, cabbage, carrots, herbs and pickled goods from the farm’s storefront to the 25 plus customers at the farm that morning.

Partnerships with other farms allow them to offer an array of choices, including meats and other types of vegetables and fruits, some of which they don’t have on the farm. Across the farm on the north side, children fed the farm’s 100 chickens, which lay around 360 eggs a week.

From its opening in February of last year to December, the farm had 2,500 sales. And from the opening until now, they’ve grown more than 60,000 pounds of produce.

The activity at the farm is a scene that appears as natural as the food that’s grown there, but the journey to this point was full of hard work under the hot Florida sun.

Partners Travis Malloy and Joe Dalessio, along with three full-time staff, run the day to day operations at the farm. They’ve worked backbreaking hours unearthing concrete chunks from a previous demolition on the property. At times, they worked from sunup to sundown underneath the blazing Summer heat, clearing the land for tilling and planting. Once they removed the concrete chunks, they still had to reckon with the sandy soil that makes it hard to grow anything. But there were two positive

MEACH ME AT THE CROSSROADS: Volunteers, along with a staffer, in the midst of work at Meacham Urban Farm.

His partner Dalessio, started working with the soil from the age of 14. He says he is largely self-taught in farming, but also graduated with a degree in environmental microbiology from the University of South Florida. What really inspired him was reading the works of Ralph

help get fresh vegetables into the neighborhood.

This is why the Tampa Bay Housing Authority, along with Hillsborough County Schools, which owns the property, partnered with the farmers to get the place going. In 2018, the farmers received $345,000 of a $725,000

Federal Choice Neighborhood Initiative grant to get started. The remaining money from the grant went to curriculum development at Hillsborough County Schools. The farm was named Meacham in honor of Christina Meacham, the first Black school principal in Tampa.

Meacham Elementary, named after Christina, once stood near to where the farm now exists, but was demolished in 2007 when the city removed Tampa’s historic Central Park Village to build the Encore development. The farmers originally planned on hosting a student education program for local schoolchildren, but COVID-19 put a roadblock in front of them.

They hope to get the program going soon and Malloy says they’re trying to work with the closest schools to get kids out there when it’s safe.

Leroy Moore, Chief Operating Officer at the Tampa Housing Authority said he is exceedingly thrilled with how the farm has stabilized operations, built a solid following and introduced nutritious healthy organic and locally grown vegetables and fruits to Tampa’s urban core. “We always wanted to demonstrate that farming can not only coexist in downtowns but can thrive as a business and provide evidence that downtown central business districts can be considered sustainable livable neighborhoods,” he said.

For all that Meacham has accomplished in the past year, it’s a project that’s still in the making. They’re planting fruit trees now that they hope to see flourish in the coming years. And getting the soil just right is a process tested by time. “It’s gonna be a long effort to get the soil to be as fertile as it can possibly be,” Dalessio said.

These winter and spring months are the glory days for Meacham, despite the cold. It’s the summer heat that can really take a toll on the crops. In June, they’ll switch from the current spring crops, which will be replaced by summer crops like okra, black eyed peas, hot peppers, sweet potatoes and yuca. It’s for this reason that the farmers measure years not in the traditional method of calendar dates, but in when the growing seasons begin and end.

The school district leased them the land for five years total, so they have at least four years left to cultivate the farm. They hope that for the seasons to come, they can continue to build the farm into an even more beneficial fresh food resource for the neighborhood.

“It’s amazing to see people coming back, week after week to support what we’re doing,” Malloy said. “And we hope to just keep building on what we have, to keep providing good food for our community.”

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Brownie points

‘Good Eats’ star says one downtown Tampa sandwich is ‘best I’ve ever had.’

F

ood Network and Cooking Channel Chef Alton Brown was in town for a Feb. 9 appearance at the Straz Center, and it seems he took a liking to some of downtown Tampa’s two best places to eat and get tipsy.

Brown, 59, visited Supernatural Food & Wine a few days before his tour kickoff and posted that chef Wesley Roderick & co. make the “best breakfast sandwich ever.”

He and his wife, interior designer Elizabeth Ingram, also visited downtown dive bar The Hub where their rescue dogs—a Boston terrier named Scabigail van Buren Brown and her brother Francis Luther—enjoyed hospitality from bartender Kamran Mir (who is the creator of Tampa’s signature cocktail). Brown ordered a PBR and Buffalo Trace; Ingram ordered an Aperol and soda.

The next morning we went to Supernatural— located at 305 E Polk St., next door to The Hub—to ask Roderick about the encounter. But Brown and Ingram were outside, so we bought a couple of Supernatural’s Best of the Baywinning doughnuts to share. We also asked chef to confirm his stance on the food and wine store’s bacon, egg and cheese sandwich.

“The best I’ve had,” Brown reiterated. “The best ever.”

In a message to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, Hub bartender Mir said he bumped into Brown at Supernatural, fan-boyed and then invited them to dive, which is very dog-friendly.

“They were both very cordial and gracious. He was very impressed with our selection. When commenting on the tequilas, I said we have a pretty good mezcal selection and he got excited, saying ‘mezcal is my scotch,”’ Mir said, “I asked him if he had tried something that we just got in and he had, loves it, and bought a few bottles to take with, as it’s not available in Georgia at the moment.”

As I drove away, I saw Brown sharing some of his food with a houseless person digging through a trash can.

On Feb. 9, Brown—along his three-piece band which now includes Ingram, lab coats, and outrageous props—staged a nearly three-hour show with intermission, signed posters selling for $10, and original, food-related songs.

Brown entered the stage a little after 7:30 p.m., wearing an open suit and tie, with a 1961 Telecaster strapped around him. Brown had apparently written a theme song for the tour, that centered around how he was told as a child that being a cook would bring shame on his family—and yet look what happened. “Thank you for coming back to live theater,” he acknowledged right after.

On “Good Eats,” Brown was the Bill Nye the Science Guy of cooking: A family-friendly, bowtiedonning, semi-goofball, who knew his way about working smarter and not harder. (i.e: If you throw a popcorn kernel into some oil you’re bringing up to heat and it pops, said oil is hot enough to fry shit in. You’re welcome.) But onstage, not only is he that, but he’s a man of many regrets—most of them relating to food. Sitting in a swivel chair, he went through an actual “rolodex of regrets,” and picked out his favorites. There was the time he posted a Crock Pot lasagna that got 81 onestar reviews (one of which said that it presented them with a perfect opportunity to eat cereal for dinner.). There was also the time he mistakenly made s’mores for his family out of his visiting aunt’s Ex-Lax chocolate he found.

Brown spent a solid half-hour spouting useless information about s’mores, too. “Boy Scouts never did anything but take out each other’s eyes out with BB guns and arrows. The Girl Scouts gave us s’mores!” He rambled, before taking an awkward turn toward the s’more’s sandwiching ingredient. Apparently, graham crackers—invented by Reverend Sylvester Graham, were dreamt up to quell sexual urges. “So, when you get home tonight…” Brown joked, “I don’t think there are any graham crackers in The Villages.”

Another regret had to do with a previous show idea.

Before “Good Eats” came around, Brown pitched “Eat This,” a game show revolving around food trivia and knowledge—from multiple choice questions, to interactive, “Price Is Right”-style games, “They told me, ‘Food, competition…I just don’t see it!’” So in a matter of seconds, Brown’s crew brought out host and contestant podiums for three fans who had excelled at quizzes on his website: A retiree, a third-grade teacher, and a paralegal who loves baking.

“Baking, the dark arts!” Brown joked. “Some are Hufflepuff, but most bakers are Slytherin!”

In the end, the third-grade teacher won the game show, mainly because she knocked her grocery shopping-based game out of the park, and was awarded a signed tour program before the show went into intermission.

During the second act, photography was strictly prohibited, and I’m assuming that talking too much about it is as well. Brown warned us early on that act two was “top secret,” so let’s just say that it included wings, hot sauce, and an outrageous contraption that only Alton Brown would utilize.

We hope you made it to one of the Florida shows. If not, that Supernatural BEC is always there as a very great consolation.

FOOD NEWS

38 | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | cltampa.com

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“They’re unjust fees, and that’s why we’ve been fighting them.”

GROVE GET ‘EM: Bearss Groves Farmer’s Market wants to get two years of fines taken care of.

JUSTIN GARCIA

Bearss necessity

North Tampa farmers market says its on the verge of shutting down.

By Justin Garcia

L

ast Friday, Bearss Groves Farmer’s Market sent out a cry a for help. On its Facebook page, the market claimed the produce stand is in danger of being shut down due to county fines.

“The County Code Enforcement Department is close to shutting us down,” ownership at the 29-year-old stand wrote. They included a link to contact the board of county commissioners, asking supporters to oppose the fines.

Management at the stand says that the county has fined them $200 per day since late 2018, because the county doesn’t acknowledge them as an agricultural stand. A 2019 Tampa Bay Times article outlined the dispute between the stand’s owner, Barry Lawrance, and the county. Hillsborough County authorities said at the time that the iconic roadside stand never got the permissions it needed to operate, a site development plan or permits for its structures.

Lawrance, who has owned the stand since 2008 after purchasing it from the Bearss family, claimed that he doesn’t need to file the plans and permits with the county because his business

is part of an agricultural operation. Florida’s Greenbelt Law helps protect agricultural operations from certain taxes and rules that other types of businesses face.

But the county claimed that Lawrance would have to revamp the market, including rebuilding the stand’s main wooden building, in order for it to fit within the state law guidelines.

An employee at the market named Isabella Baker told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay this morning that the stand should be protected under the Greenbelt Law, because the stand should be classified as a greenbelt establishment.

“The county is saying that this establishment isn’t protected by it,” Baker said. “But we have the right to disagree.”

Lawrance told CL that the county is also refusing to acknowledge another state statute regarding nonresidential farm buildings, which would also protect the farm from the county codes that are being enforced against the market. Lawrance said that all told, he owes more

than $160,000 in fees to the county. “But they’re unjust fees, and that’s why we’ve been fighting them,” Lawrance told CL. He and the employees at the market are not alone in their stance.

County agenda meetings show that the subject is up for discussion at this Wednesday’s board of county commissioners meeting.

Commissioner Ken Hagan added an item to, “Discuss options for suspending the accrual of fines resulting from a dispute over the appropriate use of an agricultural stand.”

During a phone call, Hagan confirmed his intent to push for the dismissal of the accrued fees, and said he will ask that the county find a way to stop harming farmers markets and produce stands through what he sees as unjust rules and fees.

Baker, who started working at the market four years ago, said that the original 2018 complaints about fans running in a market greenhouse were made by a person in a neighboring development. She said those issues have since been squashed and that Bearss doesn’t receive complaints anymore.

She wonders why code enforcement is still fining them for their operation.

“Personally, I think it’s like they just want the property,” she said.

FOOD NEWS

A search of the county’s code enforcement cases supports Baker’s claim that complaints have not been coming in. The most recent complaint on the county’s site is from 2019, when Bearss Groves was cited by the county for improper use of the area, and “accessory structure setbacks” which Baker said refers to the wooden housing that all of the produce sits under. The only other citation on the county’s website is from 2018, for similar issues including a lack of permitting and planning at the site.

CL reached out to the county’s code enforcement division but has not yet received a response.

This post will be updated when one comes in.

Bearss Groves was opened in 1993, making it almost 30 years old. But there’s an even older piece of Tampa history on the property—a massive live oak that management says may be over 400 years old. Baker hopes the tree, along with the business will be protected from any kind of development on the property should ownership not be able to keep up with fines.

Community support is behind them, too.

Their Facebook post already has close to 400 shares, and over 130 comments.

“We’re a local produce stand, and we’ve been serving the area for so long, I don’t understand why we have to go through this,” she said.

cltampa.com | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | 41

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“It’s the most change that’s we’ve had in this park in the last 30 years easily.”

MOVIES

THEATER

ART

CULTURE

Epic adventure

Theme park updates from Tampa and Orlando.

By Chelsea Zukowski Island that are expected to be ready in time for the park’s first spring guests. The entrance area is getting a much-needed facelift with two new, larger signs, café string lights across the walkway, palm trees and other greenery and some more modern tropical décor.

“For people that walk into the park, it really previews what they’re about to see inside; you know, giving a nod to the quality that’s inside the gates—the rides and experiences,” Thom said. Adventure Island is also getting a seating upgrade to its main beach lounge area. When it’s complete the park’s “Beach” will have a little less sand and a lot more loungers and shade provided by new foliage and what Thom calls “fun-brellas.”

TRAVEL & LEISURE

Epic Universe, Universal Orlando’s fourth theme park, will open summer 2025 NBCUniversal’s parent company, Comcast, announced on Jan. 27 that the new Epic Universe theme park is set to open by the summer of 2025 in Orlando.

The announcement was made by Chief Financial Officer Michael Cavanagh in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. Comcast’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Brian Roberts also announced that Universal Orlando had “ the best quarter in the company’s history for any quarter.”

From those earnings, NBC Universal plans to invest about $1 billion on capital expenditures for the theme park.

After construction was paused for nearly a year, Epic Universe is “full steam ahead” according to Shell.

The 25-acre theme park will include Super Nintendo World, extensive fountains, a direct park access celestial-themed hotel and many other features yet to be announced.—Sofía García Vargas

CHELSEA ZUKOWSKI

W

hen Adventure Island reopens in March, it’ll have two new rides and some of the biggest upgrades in the Tampa water park’s history.

“It’s the most change that’s we’ve had in this park in the last 30 years easily,” Adventure Island Vice President Brandon Thom said. “All happening at once. We have a lot of work to do, but we’ll be ready by the springtime.”

The major draws when the park reopens will likely be the reimagined Wahoo Remix and the brand-new Rapids Racer—both raft rides with starting points in the same hilltop tower behind the Hang Ten Tiki Bar. Rapids Racer replaces the Runaway Rapids, which hadn’t operated since before the 2020 season. Adventure Island bills Rapids Racer as a speedy, two-person raft ride that propels riders through nearly 600 feet of slide.

During a recent media tour of the construction site, Design & Engineering Project Manager Andrew Schaffer said the ride has “the world’s first dueling saucer element” and “six different dueling elements so that you can your family can have fun racing each other.”

“It’s going to be very fun, lots of twists, lots of turns, lots of dueling, speed, excitement, water splashing all the way down to the end of the ride,” Schaffer said.

After racing each other on Rapids Racer, riders can trudge back up the tower to hop on Wahoo Remix, a revamp of the popular Wahoo Run. The ride’s former dark, enclosed tunnels now sport new colors lit up with multi-colored lights that dance to the music pumping through the slide—about a dozen different songs of all genres, Schaffer said.

Wahoo Remix is also getting all-new fourperson rafts to max its new color scheme. Thom said Wahoo Remix is the park’s most inclusive ride with the shortest height requirement.

“If you can walk and hold yourself upright— that could be as young as two, three years old—you can ride it,” Thom said. “So that’s going to be huge for families.”

During the tour, Thom showed off two other big changes under construction at Adventure

“I think that’s going to be spot number one when that gets finished,” he said.

Adventure Island and its sister theme park Busch Gardens are simultaneously bouncing back with new rides and attractions two years after the pandemic upended the theme park industry.

Days before essentially the world shut down because of COVID-19, Adventure Island was able to open the Solar Vortex water slide. Then last summer, the park’s full-service Hang Ten Tiki Bar opened with a menu packed with tropical classics, local beers and snacks like the Tiki Man soft pretzel.

And in spring of 2022, Adventure Island will boast two new rides while Busch Gardens finally opens the epic Iron Gwazi hybrid coaster, which is set to debut on March 11.

Adventure Island reopens on March 5 and is expected to remain open year-round thanks to the addition of pool heaters. Tickets, passes and more information can be found at adventureisland.com.

AMUSÉMENT BOUCHE: We got a sneak peek at upgrades to Adventure Island

cltampa.com | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | 45

Making Waves in Tampa Bay Raymond James Pops

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cltampa.com | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | 47

Florida man

Alan Ritchson fills the screen, and some huge shoes, in ‘Reacher.’

By John W. Allman

T

about a year, and when I started to realize I think there’s a really good shot at this, obviously I need to do my homework. I picked up the books and I raced through all 24. I couldn’t put them down. So, I’m as big a fan as anybody, and I mean that, sincerely. In fact, I re-read them, just for fun. I’ve read a lot of them twice. I just love the books. I love them,” he said.

And while he’s never seen the two Cruise adaptations, Ritchson said he still felt the weight of meeting or exceeding expectations.

“There’s a unique kind of pressure that

FILM & TV

Both “Reacher,” as an weapon. It’s fast and brutal ★★★½ eight-episode series, and and precise. He fights with Now Streaming on Amazon Prime Reacher, as a formidable, this almost like a layer of unstoppable blunt force, are calibrated per- telepathy involved. His Spidey senses are going fectly. The hour-long episodes are well-paced off, what’s behind him, what’s around him, so and packed with some decidedly brutal hand- to get all that timing right took a long time. to-hand combat. And damn near every episode “Fighting is nothing new to me, but this includes a supporting character commenting particular style was new and it took us really on Ritchson’s hulking frame, which never fails breaking down my habits and reforming them.

I had to reshape the way that I move. We kind of to elicit a smile.

SHANE MAHOOD/AMAZON STUDIOS

here aren’t a ton of literary characters who evoke a specific mental image whenever you hear their name, but of the ones who do, few strike as imposing a presence as Jack Reacher, the fictional hero at the heart of 26 novels authored by James Dover Grant, aka Lee Child. Reacher, in the novels, is described as a beast of a man, 6-foot-5 with a 50-inch chest; the kind of person you notice as soon as he enters a room.

That didn’t stop 5-foot-7-inch Tom Cruise from stepping into the character’s shoes for two ill-fated and under-whelming films in 2012 and 2016. To say fan reaction was visceral would be an understatement.

Six years later, we can all rest a little easier knowing that the real Jack Reacher, the brutally-efficient ex-military officer with unrivaled intelligence and cunning, is finally, properly being represented—by Alan Ritchson, a Florida native and current Panhandle resident, no less.

Ritchson, an actor many might recognize from DC’s “Titans,” he played Hank Hall, aka Hawk, might be an inch or so shorter, but his massive frame and magnetic personality still filled a hotel room during a recent press stop in Tampa to promote the new Amazon Prime original series, “Reacher.”

Though he’s never spent a lot of time here, Ritchson said he had visited before, years ago, on school trips to Busch Gardens.

“My Dad was in the military. We moved around a lot. Eglin Air Force Base is the largest Air Force base in the world, and that’s where my Dad was stationed the longest, so I grew up in a little town called Niceville,” Ritchson said. “You know, I couldn’t wait to just get out of town and figure out what life had in store for me. (The) first place I moved was Miami, so I’ve been in Florida a long time.

I eventually found my way to L.A., and like most 18-year-old, 19-year-old’s do, ‘I’m leaving home and I’m never coming back!’ I’ve got three young boys, and when my first was born, my wife decided it’s best if we have a place near grandparents where they can grow up near them, see them and I can get help with the kids when you’re working…so yeah, we moved to Santa Rosa Beach and it’s been great. I love being there.”

For this new iteration of “Reacher,” showrunner Nick Santora (“Prison Break,” “Scorpion”) and the creative team tackle one novel for the show’s first season, which is Child’s first Reacher story, “Killing Floor.”

Ritchson said he had never read the source material prior to being considered for the role.

“The process to get the part was long, so I had

“Buster Reeves is stunt coordinator, and Thankfully, we can report that Ritchson and Co., including his co-stars Malcom designed those fights, and he’s one of the best Goodwin (“iZombie”) and Willa Fitzgerald in the world at that,” Ritchson said, his face (“Scream: The TV Series”), have forever beaming. “It took a couple of months to get that expunged any lingering fight right. It’s a five-onresentment about how the one fight in a prison where character was previously everything on his body and Reacher presented. in his environment is a

48 | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | cltampa.com

MR. NICEVILLE GUY: (L-R) Malcom Goodwin and Alan Ritchson, a Florida native and current Panhandle resident. comes along with that because usually there’s this external, everybody’s got an expectation, whatever version of Reacher comes alive in their imagination, they want to see that come to life on the screen,” he explained. “But there was this internal pressure, oh my gosh, I have to get this right, I love this series so much. Usually, it’s about blocking out that external noise; for me, it was also about blocking that internal, better not screw this up.”

The first episode, “Welcome to Margrave,” which has Reacher arriving in Georgia after getting on a Greyhound in Tampa, and promptly being arrested for murder, establishes its bareknuckle brawling style early on after Reacher is sent to a state penitentiary to safeguard a key witness. He soon finds himself surrounded in a cramped bathroom, squaring off against multiple assailants with only his fists and found objects to defend himself.

deconstructed my kind of fight style and rebuilt it from the ground up.”

While nothing is ever guaranteed, Ritchson certainly sounds like he wants to continue embodying Reacher for as long as he’s able. “I told them when we started shooting, I told the studio, guys we have to start shooting two seasons a year because I don’t want to age out,” he said, laughing. “I want to see as many of these books come to life as possible.”

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Hollins back

St. Pete home of Pinellas’ first school superintendent is for sale.

By Colin Wolf

T

he home of Pinellas County’s first school superintendent is now for sale in St. Petersburg’s Historic Old Northeast neighborhood. Located at 556 16th Ave. NE, county property records date the house to 1925, though due to a records fire at the time, it was likely built even earlier. According to listing agent Cathy Hypes, of Coastal Properties Group International, the home was first owned by the late Dixie Martin Hollins.

In 1912, when West Hillsborough County became what is now Pinellas County, Gov. Albert Gilchrist appointed the 24-year-old Hollins as the area’s first school superintendent, a job that would require him to travel from school to school via dirt roads on horse and buggy.

The Hollins family also owned the St. Petersburg Printing Company and the Pasadena Country Club,” reads his obituary. Today he’s arguably most well-known as the namesake of Hollins High.

Over the years there have been a few owners of the Hollins house, most notably Dr.

Richard Montague, and his wife Maude, who purchased the property in 1965. Montague was a celebrated concert pianist, an instructor at what is now St. Petersburg College, and an avid wild horse tamer. The Montague family owned the home for over 50 years, until it was sold in 2015 to the current owners, following his death at the age of 98.

Since then, the 3,508-square-foot Mediterranean home has had quite a facelift.

“These owners did everything,” said Hypes. “They upgraded the electrical, the plumbing, the kitchen. But they kept the Cuban tile and the lilac bathroom!”

Besides a perfectly purple retro bathroom, the four-bedroom, five-bathroom property also comes with an above garage in-law suite, new solar panels, and a saltwater pool. “It’s a special type of house, for a buyer that really appreciates owning a piece of history,” added Hypes.

The Hollins house is currently asking $1,949,000.

HOMES

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cltampa.com | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | 51

52 | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | cltampa.com

LOCAL MUSIC Navin Ave. ‘Book 1- A Little Warming’ album release w/Jeremy Gloff/Deb Ruby Saturday, Feb. 19, 8 p.m. No cover Hooch and Hive. 1001 W Cass St., Tampa @navinavenue on Facebook

REVIEWS

PROFILES

MUSIC WEEK

Warming feeling

Murder and moonshine are just two elements of the debut full-length from Navin Ave.

By Gabe Echazabal

S

the ways we have to kill off parts of ourselves in order to live in the world. As we grow, we have to kill off a part of who we are,” she explained.

Pressing for more insight, and inquiring if she was referring to either an emotional or spiritual type of self-realization, Krispinsky acknowledged that both of those factors play significant roles in the characterization.

Movement and location are relevant to the scenery, too. “When I’m traveling, I’m always observing and noticing locations. Places and settings inspire me” Krispinsky admitted while detailing the changing locales that serve as backdrops for the progression of her musical

“I use the guitar as a call and response” he said in describing his approach for creating the musical accompaniment for the storyline. “It’s more of a coloring or feel than a guitar part. The idea is that it’s a second voice in a style that fits and supports the emotional context” he went on to say.

“We play off each other’s strengths” Krispinsky added in comparing the solitude that is prevalent in authoring a novel versus recording an album with a group. In the capacity of songwriter, it’s common for Krispinsky to write acoustic melodies and then hash out rough demos for compositions before bringing them to the band. A sense of wonder and amazement is

BRYANT MARTINEZ

hae Krispinsky’s name should sound familiar to anyone with even a passing interest in the local arts and music scene. More commonly recognized for her folk-pop solo work, she’s also a writer of fiction, poetry, and music and she’s consistently served as one of the brightest and most captivating artists since her move to the area in the late 2000s.

In what’s arguably the most fascinating (and certainly the most ambitious) project the native Pennsylvanian has ever embarked on, Krispinsky and the band she fronts, Navin Ave., are about to release a debut album, Book 1- A Little Warming.

As the title suggests, the band’s initial outing will serve as the first in a series of releases.

Krispinsky and her husband and musical partner Derek Forrester told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay the album is the first installment in a trilogy of releases over which an ongoing story will unfold.

Some cuts go back to Krispinsky’s days with Forrester as part of the now defunct local band, ... Y Los Dos Pistoles. “Some of the songs didn’t fit that band, and then we broke up” Krispinsky reminisces.

Wisely opting to keep the songs in the hopper for use on a future project, the sometimes-bashful artist excitedly said that some of the inspiration for the project and its song concepts came in part from the 2015 HBO docu-series “The Jinx: The Lifes and Deaths of Robert Durst” (which chronicles the real-life murders committed by Durst, a serial killer). But it was a recent, odd encounter with an unwavering bird that inspired Krispinsky to push forward with the project.

While exiting her vehicle at a local grocery store parking lot, she became intrigued while observing a resolute crow that just wouldn’t fly away.

“This has to mean something” she thought at the time. Intent on finding the relevance of this run-in with the stubborn avian, Krispinsky discovered that crows are regarded as the guardians of the underworld which sparked her creativity and helped her flesh out this musical venture.

As a landscape for this first chapter of the band’s musical saga, Krispinsky describes the scene as one that encapsulates a “Southern gothic” motif; that is, one rich with murder, moonshine, religion, fire, bayous and, yes, crows.

“It’s a journey through a section of America where she [the story’s central character] faces all

MOONSHINERS: (L-R) Navin Ave is Adam Revak, Shae Krispinsky, Derek Forrester, and Jeff Brawer. novel. Book 1 opens in western Pennsylvania (the area from which the writer hails) and winds through southeastern Virginia. The forthcoming musical installments will continue in that vein where travel and movement are integral to the plotline.

Musically capturing the mood and feel of the drama that ensues over the course of the songs had to be a challenge in itself. Forester, lead guitarist for Navin Ave. offered his view of how the music supports the atmosphere of the narrative.

noticeable when the singer-songwriter describes the developmental stages and how each band member added their own flavor to the music.

“I don’t dictate to others what their parts should be; everyone can hear their own parts… and I trust them. Everyone brought things to the music” she gushes when describing her bandmates—including Jeff Brawer on bass and Adam Revak on drums (who took over after Rodney Smith, the group’s original drummer who plays on the album, moved away from the area). “And I’m so grateful for them” she added.

Gratitude was also expressed by the couple when describing the guidance and assistance they received from another local musician, Shawn Kyle, who recorded and mixed Book 1A Little Warming. “He made us sound good!”

Krispinsky laughed. “He’s so patient and meticulous; he suggested things we would have never thought of” she added. “He never got flustered.

He was upbeat and friendly, and he sat all day with us,” she stated while describing the recording process.

When asked if the idea was always to create a three-part series of recordings, both Krispinsky and Forrester quickly replied. “No! It was originally going to be three EPs with five songs on each of them. Now it’s become three albums with 30 songs” Krispinsky stated before Forrester added jokingly “…which is perfect for today’s attention span!”

Not surprisingly, as Krispinsky thinks of herself more as a writer than a musician, the literary aspect of the album’s concept isn’t being overlooked. The band intends to create music videos for each of the 10 songs on Book 1- A Little Warming that contain accompanying song lyrics as they are integral to the overall storyline.

Additionally, a limited edition, uniquely packaged version of the album will be available, too.

A small run of physical CDs housed inside a clamshell DVD case and including two printed booklets will be unveiled and sold at the band’s album release show which will occur on the Feb. 19 release date.

Drawing from a variety of influences, the creation of this ambitious project didn’t fully dwell on dark, morose subject matter. Recalling the band’s stab at emulating pop glam hair metal band Poison in an installment of the annual local fundraiser concert Fangsgiving, both Krispinsky and Forrester spoke of the Talk Dirty to Me band in the fondest terms and admitted that, sometimes, those ‘80s power ballad guitar solos find ways of creeping into their consciousness when creating music.

Don’t expect any hair metal covers on any of Navin Ave.’s trilogy of albums but rest assured that the originality and creativity that’s being invested and poured into the project guarantee end results unlike anything the local music scene has seen or heard before.

cltampa.com | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | 53

THU FEBRUARY 17–WED FEBRUARY 23

By Joshua Bradley C

CL Recommends

THU 17

Murphy’s Law w/PissTest/The Scurvy/ Right on Time/PigPen To New York hardcore punk four-piece Murphy’s Law, a consistent lineup doesn’t matter. Lead vocalist Jimmy Gestapo is the only remaining original member of the band, which turns 40 this year.

A new album has been in the works since at least a decade ago, and was set to be released in 2014, but as of right now, nothing new has materialized on the band’s part since 2001. In the meantime, the group behind “California Pipeline” will return to Tampa’s Brass Mug—just down the street from Skipper’s Smokehouse—this Thursday. Joining it are Gainesville punk-rock group Piss Test, the pirate punks of The Scurvy, as well as Right on Time, and Pig Pen. (Brass Mug, Tampa)

beloved New World Brewery has held a celebration of rockabilly that features bands and artists that specialize in the genre, as well as fake bands paying tribute to pioneers of rockabilly such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Joe Clay. This year, Rockabilly Battle Royale is lucky enough to have scored Deke Dickerson, a modern rockabilly hero who established his bands upon moving from his home state of Missouri to California in his 20s. Recently, the 53-year-old even did the soundtrack to the Johnny Knoxville comedy, “Action Point,” which is the only good thing about that film. Joining Dickerson at the royale will be Boston’s own Jittery Jack & Miss Amy, and Bloodshot Jack from Montreal. (Music Hall at New World Brewery, Tampa)

charts, and Billboard’s reggae charts along the way. His 5th album, Truthful Lies, even debuted at no. 2 on Billboard. Right now, none of the incredibly prolific American songwriters (Dylan, Simon, Springsteen) have upcoming shows in Tampa Bay, so The Attic at Rock Brothers Brewing is giving a perfect opportunity to see a perennially “up-and-coming” artist such as Mike in a small setting. Joining him will be a man of similar genres, Fayuca frontman Gabo Fayuca. (The Attic, Ybor City) Mobius Loop w/Ascending Radius The biggest songs from U.K-based folk-rap trio Mobius Loop all have one thing in common: They all sound like the type of song you would hear over the credits of a “Lord of

SPIKE MARBLE

C Black Coffee Grammy-nominated DJ, producer, and songwriter Black Coffee brings his self-described “Afropolitan house” beats to the Warehouse District. The South African music mogul has an expansive list of credits including collaborations with Drake, Sabrina Claudio, Usher, and David Guetta. A staple in the global house scene since 2005, he continues to cement his place in the industry with every accolade he receives. (The Factory, St. Petersburg)—Brandalynn Nuñez Cepeda

C The Jacksons Betcha didn’t know that three of the Jackson 5 were still together.

Upon reuniting after brother Michael’s death, Tito, Jackie, and Marlon Jackson have been more active in keeping the discopioneering group alive than ever. Wherever Jermaine is, he’s gonna miss out on a party, because the three Jacksons are gearing up for a U.S. tour, which makes a stop at Tampa’s Hard Rock Event Center. It’s a pretty bittersweet situation, considering the fact that Michael only made it to Tampa a few times—all of which were before he was Michael fuckin’ Jackson. There are still plenty of tickets available. I’ll be there, will you? (Hard Rock Event Center, Tampa)

TUE 22 Deke Dickerson

SAT 19

Jose Feliciano How about an encore for all that Christmas music you either indulged yourself in, or tried to avoid this past year? If that’s what you’re after, Puerto-Rican singersongwriter Jose Feliciano, who gave us “Feliz Navidad” is making what appears to be his Tampa Bay debut this weekend in Largo.

Don’t cringe, though. Born blind, Feliciano taught himself to play the accordion, played guitar obsessively, and sung in public while living in New York–all before the age of 10.

(Central Park Performing Arts Center, Largo)

Flosstradamus Like Vincent Furnier with Alice Cooper, DJ Curt Cameruci decided to use Flosstradamus—his old duo—as a pseudonym upon its breakup. And yet, it’s been a minute since the Chicago-bred DJ has released a new single or EP. After an immensely successful “Re-Entry” tour, he’s bringing his equipment and all the beats you could want to The Ritz for its Sunset Saturdays series. It’s a tight, indoor venue on a Saturday night, so bring a mask. (The Ritz, Ybor City)

C Rockabilly Battle Royale XII feat. Amy Griffin/Bloodshot Bill/Deke Dickerson/ Jittery Jack For almost a decade, Tampa’s

Mike Pinto w/Gabo Fayuca San Diego singer-songwriter Mike Pinto has been singing about California living for the last decade, earning spots on the iTunes singer-songwriter

54 | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | cltampa.com

Vanessa Collier Dallas-born saxophonist Vanessa Collier has been selling out wineries, clubs, and smaller venues worldwide for almost the last decade and has shared stages with Joe Louis Walker and Buddy Guy. Recently nominated for the Blues Music Award for Contemporary Blues Female Artist, Collier brings widely praised saxophone excellency to Skipper’s this weekend for her own solo show. (Skipper’s Smokehouse, Tampa)

MON 21

FRI 18

C Joe Bonamassa One of Clearwater’s most regular performers returns for his annual performance–or in this case, performances. Guitar hero Joe Bonamassa, who had already made a name for himself when he reached his teens, has a new record out, entitled Time Clocks. Ahead of a Europe tour this year, he’s heading out on a U.S. run, which includes a two-night stint at Clearwater’s Ruth Eckerd Hall this weekend. The last time the 44-year-old was here, it was with a power trio, and it appears that he’s finally back with his old, full band. (Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater)

power-trio will be at the Dunedin Brewery for two free shows. On Saturday, it’s a hip-hop set, while Sunday night features all Ricca Project material on the setlist. Joe Bonamassa recently put the trio’s latest single “Midnight Rider” on his “Keeping The Blues Alive” playlist on Spotify, so since he’ll also be in town this weekend, perhaps he’ll pop into Dunedin for a “drink.” (Dunedin Brewery, Dunedin)

the Rings” film. The trio and its borderlinemedieval, mainly folksy sound is incredibly vocal in spreading the word about veganism, how shitty fox hunting is, and according to its Facebook bio, “alchemical magic, in the name of Hemp Redemption and the infinite unknown.” If this is something you wish to become a part of, Mobius Loop is hitting the road in the U.S this year, and a stop at New World Brewery is Tampa Bay’s latest brush with being one with the world. Supporting the trio will be rock trio Ascending Radius.

(Music Hall at New World Brewery, Tampa) C The Ricca Project Made up of half the members of Ft. Lauderdale’s Heavy Pets, Ricca Project may remind some of Little Feat, thanks to its jam-based, yet very consistent instrumentation. This weekend, the funky

C Pilot Jonezz w/Charles Irwin/Sally4/ They Hate Change Next month, Porchfest will see music lovers roaming St. Pete’s Roser Park neighborhood catching mostly acoustic acts outside, but here’s a chance to go inside one of the neighborhood’s beloved DIY venues for one hell of a bill. They Hate Change signed to Jagjaguwar last year after label heads at the indie stalwart grew fond of the rap duo’s love and utilization of Chicago footwork and out-of-the-box ambient samples.

Charles Irwin might be the best indie-pop band on either side of the Bay, and Pilot Jonezz (RIYL Radiohead, Funkadelic) has been making lots of noise lately, too. The addition of Tampa Bay’s grilled cheese man Jake Yaakov is a nice draw for this one, but the crown jewel is a solo set from Charles Irwin guitarist Sally4 who just dropped a new EP of bedroom-pop that’s already one of the best releases of the new year. You’re going to have to DM @sallyfourr on Instagram for the address. (Roser House, St. Petersburg)—Ray Roa

continued on page 56

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56 | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | cltampa.com

Sarah Shook & the Disarmers

WED 23

C Nita Strauss w/Like Machines/Level The Planet/Kamenar If you’re still bummed that you missed Alice Cooper’s annual performance in Tampa Bay this month, you have a chance to catch the most prominent member of his current backing band. Hurricane Nita Strauss—the band’s shredder—recently broke the glass ceiling of being the first female artist to have a no. 1 hit on the Mediabase Active Rock Chart. You’ll get to hear it live when the 35-year-old and her band tear down Tampa’s Brass Mug on Tuesday. Supporting them will be Atlanta-based rock duo Like Machines, and local support from rock groups Level the Planet and Kamenar. (Brass Mug, Tampa)

CHAD COCHRAN

C Sarah Shook & The Disarmers w/Will Quinlan and the Holy Slow Train Sarah Shook may have had a conservative Christian upbringing, but even having to live through rules like only being allowed to listen to classical and worship music, they still live the life of a non-hateful country musician. Shook is days away from dropping the Pete Andersonproduced Nightroamer, the third album with the former’s band, The Disarmers. A few days after the album’s release party—which will feature support from Hank Williams’ great grandson—Sarah and the Disarmers will be at Crowbar, technically kicking off its 2022 tour. Opening the show is local favorite Will Quinlan and The Holy Slow Train. (Crowbar, Ybor City)

WILL QUINLAN & THE HOLY SLOW TRAIN WEDNESDAY 02/23/22 • 7pm / $12-15 / all ages!

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cltampa.com | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | 57

Tickets for this family-friendly event can be purchased online at the Historic Roser Park District’s website, or at the festival. If you’d like to attend the tour of homes, tickets are available for $15 online, or $20 when purchased at the event. There will be a variety of different homes available to tour, featuring architectural styles from Spanish Revival to Craftsman to Dutch Colonial. The musicians will perform on porches scattered throughout the neighborhood, equipped with low-key acoustic setups.

The lineup of local music ranges from genres like singer-songwriter to folk rock—including acts like The Cheaters, Hot Tonic, Greg Roy, Deb Hunseder, LCNV, Rebekah Pulley, Kristopher James and the Kerry Courtney band. Access to this stacked lineup of local talent is free. In addition to the historic home showcase and live music, there will also be St. Pete-based arts and crafts vendors and food trucks.

THANK YOU FOR VOTING US BEST FRIED CHICKEN 3 YEARS IN A ROW!

The 270-acre Roser Park neighborhood runs from Dr. MLK Street S to 4 Street S

Liquid Pennies w/The Drain Outs/Witch Hiatus/Dream Thing Saturday, Feb. 19. 8 p.m. Free. The Hub, Tampa

Visit the Historic Roser Park Neighborhood Facebook at @roserparkneighborhoodcommunity organization for the day-of music schedule as Porchfest nears closer.

Read more of Josh Bradley’s weekly new, canceled, postponed and rescheduled concert roundup below.—Kyla Fields

Larry Fleet Saturday, April 9. 8 p.m. $25$45. Bilheimer Capitol Theatre, Clearwater Mike Love w/Cas Haley/Brett Wilson Friday, April 15. 6 p.m. $20. Jannus Live, St. Petersburg

Sarah Borges Saturday, March 5. 8 p.m. $20-$25. Skipper’s Smokehouse, Tampa

Eric Bellinger & Sammie Thursday, April 21. 7 p.m. $35-$150. Orpheum, Ybor City

Warped Winter 3 Tampa feat. Viewers Like You/Felicity/Deserted Will/ The Easy Button/Keep It A Secret/ Neverless/Malaya/Discord Theory Saturday, March 5. 5:30 p.m. $12. New World Music Hall, Tampa

The Who Wednesday, April 27. 7:30 p.m. $37.25-$650. Amalie Arena, Tampa

Chris Young w/Big & Rich Saturday, March 19. 6:30 p.m. Free with Valspar admission. Innisbrook Resort, Palm Harbor

Tim Montana (opening for Koe Wetzel) Thursday, May 5. 8 p.m. $36. Jannus Live, St. Petersburg Dying Fetus w/Chelsea Grin/ Bodysnatcher/Frozen Soul/Undeath Friday, May 6. 5:30 p.m. $22.50. Jannus Live, St. Petersburg Sylvan Esso Sunday, May 15. 8 p.m. $32.50-$40. Jannus Live, St. Petersburg

Luccio (opening for Cosmic Gate) Saturday, Mar. 19. 10 p.m. $15-$20. The Ritz, Ybor City

Cancellations/reschedules

Lettuce (rescheduled from Dec. 30) Thursday, March 24. 7 p.m. $25.50. Jannus Live, St. Petersburg

Steven Wright at Bilheimer Capitol Theatre, March 6 Rescheduled to Nov. 10

Girl Named Tom Friday, April 1. 8 p.m. $25$39. Bilheimer Capitol Theatre, Clearwater

58 | FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2022 | cltampa.com

just south of downtown St. Petersburg— but the main hub of action for next month’s Porchfest is the intersection of Roser Park Drive. S and Prospect Court. S. There’s plentiful street parking throughout Roser Park’s red brick streets, as well as a free Bayfront Health parking garage located just north of Porchfest.

George Pennington and Friends Friday, Feb. 25. 8 p.m. $10. Crowbar, Ybor City

Dave Stryker Sunday, Mar. 6. 3 p.m. $10-$20, free for HCC students. HCC Ybor Mainstage Theatre, Tampa

KingOfTheCoop.com

KEVIN TIGHE

Familiarize yourself with the hilly roads and historic homes of one of St. Petersburg’s oldest neighborhoods at Roser Park’s Porchfest next month. This year’s installment—happening on Saturday, March 19—features an exclusive tour of homes in the morning, with a stacked lineup of local music in the afternoon.

The entire Porchfest runs from 9 a.m.-6 p.m.

AU5 + CHIME Friday, April 8. 10 p.m. Free guest list, $10 guaranteed entry. The Ritz, Ybor City

Arielle at Ruth Eckerd Hall’s Murray Theater, Feb. 20 Rescheduled to Oct. 8

Lil Tecca at The Ritz, March 27 Rescheduled to May 21 Matchbox Twenty at MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre, July 9 Rescheduled to July 8, 2023

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JOE NEWTON

Quickies

By Dan Savage

I’m a very sexual cis male in his 30s. Three years ago, I met this woman who just blew me away. She is eight years older, extremely beautiful, intelligent, and funny. I came onto her early on and she told me straight up that she was asexual. She likes kissing, cuddling, and solo masturbation, but that’s it. She says intercourse doesn’t do anything for her. To keep a relationship alive in the past, she would go through the motions, but she has no interest in doing that anymore, so I moved on. Since then, we got to know each other better and I have fallen in love with her. Last night we had dinner and I started thinking aloud how we might make a relationship work. I suggested that I could watch her masturbate, and maybe we could have an open relationship. She said it was out of the question. She admitted that when she first met me, she liked me, but now she loves me as a friend. She says there’s no chance that this could work, and we should keep things platonic.

She doesn’t even want to kiss and cuddle me, as she fears I would get “worked up” and she would have to reject me. We got into an argument, and she got angry with me. I love her. I want to spend every moment with her. I sincerely believe we could make this work. How can I convince her?—Sexual Man Into Loving Ecstasy

and I feel guilty about this. I’m also married, but my husband and I have an agreement about outside games. Maybe I just need you to tell me to stop.—Gay Urinal Is Lying To Spouse First, the obvious answer: Stop.

Second, the obvious follow-up question: How’d that happen, GUILTS? Unless your best friend’s husband was wearing a ridiculously convincing urinal costume at a Halloween party and you were on mushrooms, it didn’t just happen. You did it. Even if he was in a convincing urinal costume and you ate all the mushrooms, you did it. You won’t be able to stop doing this if you can’t be honest about how you started.

SAVAGE LOVE

You already have your answer, SMILE, and that answer—her answer—is “no.”

I’m a horny divorced bisexual male. Can you help me find females for regular phone sex? I masturbate every night and enjoy it much more if I hear a sweet voice on the other end of the line. I live in North Carolina, and I am usually freshly showered, naked, and erect between 11 p.m. and midnight. I time my orgasms for precisely midnight. Please help and find me a female to have erotic discussions with!—Jerking About Conversations Kept Sensuous Sir, this is a Wendy’s. (Full disclosure: this isn’t a Wendy’s. This is a sex-advice column, JACKS, and sex-advice columnists are not match-makers. So, you’ll have to find and/or hire a phone sex provider on your own.)

I’m not having sex with my best friend’s husband, but we’re doing something my best friend would probably find objectionable: I’m letting his husband drink my piss. The first time it just kind of happened. We’re able to rationalize what we’re doing—my best friend isn’t into piss and I’m a “safe” person to do it with in that I’m not going to ask him for more—but it does involve putting my dick in the mouth of my best friend’s husband. I was the best man at their wedding,

My friend started dating a girl eight years ago in college and broke up with her a year later.

They have no relationship at all now. They don’t even converse. I have been in love with the girl in question since the first day I met her. I was going to ask her out years ago but before I could she was dating my friend. I recently asked her out and we are now dating but none of our friends from back then know. I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I vibe with her like no one else.

Do you think it’s right to be with her? Or am I doing wrong to my friend?—The Bad Friend Your friend broke up with this woman—the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with—seven years ago. He doesn’t own her, he doesn’t have eternal dibs, and if he can’t be happy for you, he’s not your friend. And if you’re feeling like a bad friend, maybe backing up and re-reading GUILTS’ letter will make you feel better.

My partner of 20 years and I recently agreed to open our relationship. There’s an acquaintance I’ve had a crush on since high school. I don’t know his situation—if he’s partnered, monogamous, whatever—but we’re in touch now and I have permission to approach him. But I’m nervous his answer will be no, and my fun fantasies—fantasies I’ve enjoyed about him all my adult life—will be tainted by embarrassment. The reward would be great, but the risk is huge. The possibility of a hookup with him IRL has been fueling my desire, which my partner has benefitted from, and I’d hate to lose that. What do you think?—Reliable Orgasms At Risk Sexual fantasies are perfect, sexual realities are messy. So, even if your high school crush is available and interested, ROAR, there’s no way IRL sex with him is going to live up to your fantasies. But hitting on him (risky!) and/or getting with

him (could still be great!) will make some space in your erotic imagination for other fantasies— fantasies you can enjoy during solo masturbation, fantasies that will continue to fuel your desire for and/or during sex with your husband.

During a recent Sack Lunch you spoke of a “zone of erotic autonomy” that we are all entitled to, even partnered people. I think that should be a term: ZOEA. It’s already a legal Scrabble word, as I’m sure you’re aware, and I think ZOEA would be as useful as DTMFA or GGG. Here’s an example of it being used in a sentence: Husband: “Do you think of me when you masturbate?” Wife: “Mind your own ZOEA.”—Neologism Now Needed Zoea is already a word—and, therefore, fair game in Scrabble (“a free-swimming planktonic larval form of many decapod crustaceans and especially crabs [with] fringed antennae and mouthparts”)—but words can have more than one meaning, and I think ZOEA (pronounced “zo-EE-ah”) is a nice addition to my collection of initialisms.

I’m a late-to-come-out lesbian and so is my sister. We both live in the same moderate-sized city in the Pacific Northwest and are currently both on the dating market. The trouble I’m having is that the pool of eligible women in our city is small and the chances of us dating the same person seems likely, which makes me feel icky. I even matched with my sister on a dating app! That experience prompted me to take a break from dating while I sort out a better strategy. I’ve been dipping my toes in the water of more national queer communities and want to attend The Dinah in the fall to connect with other womxn from outside our area. I don’t want to hold back but getting too close to my sibling’s sex life just feels gross. Any guidance?— Looking Everywhere Since Bursting Out Get over it, LESBO. It’s a small world, the

lesbian world is smaller still, and even if you restrict yourself to long-distance relationships, you’re probably gonna wind up dating someone your sister dated at some point. Hell, your chances of meeting a woman your sister dated at The Dinah are about as good as meeting a woman your sister dated on a dating app.

Acknowledge the awkwardness, don’t be paralyzed by it, and block each other on dating apps.

I’m a straight 30-year-old guy. I live with my girlfriend of three years, we love and respect each other, and have very good sex. Unfortunately, sex is very satisfying for me until I have an orgasm.

My orgasms start well, but they fade out toward the end, leaving me disappointed, because I consistently have better ones during masturbation. I have a plausible explanation: when I orgasm, I become very sensitive, and I cannot “spot-reduce” the stimulation very easily during intercourse. I’ve tried thrusting less, coming outside, breathing to stay relaxed, with and without condoms, etc., but the end result is always the same. I still enjoy my sex life but I’d like to be able to have my best orgasms while I’m with my girlfriend. Do you have any advice for me?—Climaxes Underwhelming My Senses Stop masturbating for a bit and see if that doesn’t improve things during partnered sex. But if that doesn’t work, CUMS, you might wanna incorporate masturbation into your regular sex sessions with your girlfriend—not masturbation as foreplay, not mutual masturbation, but youdo-you-while-she-does-her and you watch each other. Having some of your “best” orgasms when you’re with her, even if you’re not touching her, may help you get to a point where you can have those orgasms when you’re inside her.

Send queries to questions@savagelove.net, follow @FakeDanSavage on Twitter, then get your podcasts, columns, books, merch, and more at savage.love.

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