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PIONEER PARK PIONEER PARK
PARADE, MUSIC & MORE PARADE, MUSIC & MORE
SCAN FOR MORE INFO SCAN FOR MORE INFO
FEBRUARY 17, 2026
5PM-10PM
PARADE STARTS AT 7PM
MUSIC LINEUP
5PM-7PM
PAPA J & MO SOUL 8:30PM-10PM
MUTANT FUSION COLLECTIVE
do this
Tampa Bay's best things to do from Feb. 05-12. See more on p. 39
Reading is what? Fundamental!
Did you know they make more gay books than “Heated Rivalry” “Red White & Royal Blue”? Gulfport’s LGBTQ+ book festival is back to introduce Tampa Bay to local queer authors and inspire writers. This year’s very sapphic lineup includes workshops on queer writing and publishing, signings from authors like Kristen Arnett (pictured), a live taping of the “Yappin’” podcast and a live gameplay of “Thirsty Sword Lesbians” with a Valentine’s twist. Plus, a rolling queer book swap. Many workshops and events can be attended virtually.
ReadOut: Friday-Sunday, Feb. 6-8. $10 & up. Catherine A Hickman Theater, 5501 27th Ave. S, Gulfport. outartsculture.org—Selene San Felice
Croomers
Florida may not have mountains, but that doesn’t stop its mountain bikers. SWAMP (the Southwest Association of Mountain Bike Pedalers) wholly maintains approximately 130 miles of trails in parks around the Tampa Bay area. To fund those efforts—plus the building of a new Lake Seminole bike park system—the group rips around Croom, the legendary trail system of the Withlacoochee State Forest. The outdoor festival weekend includes camping and paddling, but the highlight is the cycling, with 20-50 mile dirt, gravel and pavement rides. Some have been camped out since Wednesday, but the main events happen over the weekend.
CroomFest: Runs through Monday, Feb. 9. $35 & up. Silver Lake Campgrounds, 31475 Silver Lake Rd., Brooksville. croomfest.com—Selene San Felice
Come on in
Log off of Zillow and meet the people who own some of the most coveted cozy homes in Tampa Bay. The Historic Kenwood Neighborhood Association has been running BungalowFest for nearly three decades, highlighting the area’s charming homes. The houses open for touring are all around 100 years old, mostly consisting of Craftsman Bungalows. Just as important as the architecture is the celebration of residents’ creative decorations and design. This year’s tour also marks St. Pete High School’s centennial birthday as the nation’s first million dollar high school. The tour starts there, then attendees can stroll at their own pace or hop on Jolley Trolleys. BungalowFest: Saturday, Feb. 7. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. $30-40. St. Petersburg High School, 2501 5th Ave. N, St. Petersburg. historickenwood.org—Selene San Felice
You’ve Butterflies ecosystem—second flowers self-proclaimed terfly Tampa locally disease. of exposure of her chemical-free tion.
Guests
Those Butterfly International Selene
You’ve got it all
Butterflies are more than just a pretty set of wings. The vital component to a healthy ecosystem—second to bees as the most important pollinators—we wouldn’t have flowers or many crops without them. Nonprofit Butterfly Tampa opened the city’s self-proclaimed first bug zoo in 2024, and also runs a nature center and native butterfly botanical garden. Founder Anita Camacho previously told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay her passion for pollinators and spreading environmental awareness locally began about 30 years ago when her mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Research into the disease led Camacho to learn about the long term effects of exposure to pesticides and chemicals. Since then, Camacho has dedicated much of her personal and professional life to spreading the word about the benefits of chemical-free gardening, native plant gardening and native pollinator conservation. At the nonprofit’s annual fundraiser, the category is “Bug-Inspired Brilliance.” Guests can come as their favorite invertebrate for the Best Dressed Bug Contest. Those who opt for “elevated business casual” won’t be bugged about it. Butterfly Ball: Next Thursday, Feb. 12. 6 p.m.-9 p.m. $75 & up. Tampa International Airport, 4100 George J Bean Pkwy., Tampa. butterflytampa.com
Selene San Felice
Lovin’ the Flea
Over the last 14 years, Rosey Williams’ team has taken St. Petersburg’s Indie Flea on one hell of a ride, from its early days on the sidewalks of a still-emergent 600 Block to the big ol’ shopping spree it staged last December at Albert Whitted Park. The next and latest installment comes just ahead of Valentine’s Day at Tampa Armature Works where more than 150 vendors will take over the waterfront to sling “antiques, vintage clothes, art, jewelry, plants and unique gifts” along with last-minute gifts for your significant others. There’s no cover, but make sure your checking account is topped off before arrival.
Tampa Indie Flea: Sunday, Feb. 8. Noon-4 p.m. No cover. Armature Works, 1910 N Ola Ave., Tampa. theindieflea.com—Ray Roa
I’m talon you
You don’t need to go to Jurassic Park to see majestic raptors. The birds of prey that evolved from dinosaurs will be in free flight at RaptorFest, with lots to learn from trainers and environmental exhibitors. The Boyd Hill event supports the care of its resident raptors and community learning programs. The nature preserve is home to around 20 birds of prey deemed non-releasable by licensed rehabilitators and are vetted to ensure they can be safely handled and used in educational programs, per the City of St. Petersburg. Parking at the preserve is for handicap permit only. A free shuttle runs between the center and parking at Lakewood High School and the Lake Vista Recreation Center. Bring an animalloving spirit, but leave pets at home.
Raptor Fest: Saturday, Feb. 7. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. No cover. Lake Maggiore Environmental Education Center at Boyd Hill Nature Preserve, 1101 Country Club Way S, St. Petersburg. friendsofboydhill.org—Selene San Felice
In the dark
Groups fighting publicly-owned electricity won’t disclose funding sources.
By Valerie Smith
Pinellas Energy Alliance is spending tens of thousands of dollars on ads, consultants and canvassers to oppose municipal takeovers of Clearwater and St. Petersburg’s electric grids. They’re not telling anyone where they got the money, or who created the group.
The alliance’s activity comes as St. Petersburg’s contract with Duke Energy is up for renewal this summer. The city is officially exploring the possibility of buying local power lines from Duke Energy, then buying electricity wholesale and selling it to residents through an electric utility run by the city—a process referred to as “municipalization.” Other Florida cities that switched experienced lower costs and fewer service interruptions, according to promunicipalization group Dump Duke.
Members of the Pinellas Democratic Socialists of America formed Dump Duke to support a city takeover of the electric grid. They were backed at a press conference last Wednesday by St. Petersburg City Council Vice Chair Richie Floyd—who is running for re-election—as well as local groups like the Suncoast Sierra Club, Faith in Florida, Food and Water Watch, and Hillsborough Affordable Energy Coalition.
Only one local organization appears to be in favor of investor-owned utility Duke continuing to control the local grid: Pinellas Energy Alliance, which has subsidiaries in St. Petersburg and Clearwater.
Duke ties
Creative Loafing Tampa Bay asked Pinellas Energy Alliance and Dump Duke to both disclose their leadership, funding sources, and other affiliations. Dump Duke answered; Pinellas Energy Alliance stopped responding to CL’s emails when these questions were asked.
The incorporation paperwork for Pinellas Energy Alliance says that it is “organized for the purpose of promoting the business interests of the owners and operators of energy holding companies, electric utilities providers, and individuals and organizations that have a stake in who and how electricity is delivered” in Florida.
Dump Duke’s membership consists of unpaid community residents, many of whom are DSA members. Dump Duke is co-chaired by Jason Scott, a utility planning engineer who lives in Clearwater, and Marley Price, a business analyst in St. Petersburg. Scott and Price pay out-ofpocket to run online ads, while some expenses
like printing are paid by DSA, which is funded entirely through local membership dues.
“Let’s be honest—it doesn’t matter who’s behind this, it’s 95% lies,” St. Petersburg City Councilmember Brandi Gabbard told Poliverse in a recently-published investigation of Pinellas Energy Alliance. “Everything that’s stated is just fabrication and fearmongering against something we don’t even know is feasible.”
As of publication, Pinellas Energy Alliance has not answered a single question from any media outlet about its funding sources. That’s despite spending at least $53,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads, per Meta records, and an unknown amount on canvassers and public relations consultation.
Meta requires a name and phone number to be publicly linked to all political advertisements. The person who published Pinellas Energy Alliance’s ads is identified only as Micaela. The phone number is associated with Micaela Chavez, a digital PR specialist with Left Hook, a California-based Democratic political communications firm. The phone number associated with the ads did not return any of CL’s calls or texts.
organized it used a popular business management firm, CT Corporation, who also manages all of Duke Energy’s Florida business filings.
The only person listed on Pinellas Energy Alliance’s public paperwork is Lisa Lohss, a former Duke Energy employee, as confirmed by public record and her LinkedIn profile. CL called Lisa Lohss, who said she was “not at liberty to discuss” the group.
Dark money
LOCAL NEWS
Dump Duke called Pinellas Energy Alliance a “dark money group,” since the group spends to influence political outcomes without disclosing its funding sources. If Duke Energy is indeed funding the group, they’re likely using money from their customers’ electric bill payments to do so, Price said at Wednesday’s press conference.
“You have a group of people, entities … who are trying to influence public policy, and they’re not telling you who they are,” Brendan Glavin told CL. He is the director of insights at OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan watchdog organization that tracks political spending across the U.S.
Floyd said at the press conference that constituents told him Pinellas Energy Alliance was engaging in “predatory hiring practices,” and that “all arrows” point to Duke Energy funding the group. It’s a 501(c)(6), a type of nonprofit that advocates for business interests and doesn’t have to disclose their donors. Whatever entity
“They’re lobbying citizens directly on an issue, but they’re not giving citizens full information about who’s behind the messaging and what their motivations are. You can guess, obviously, what their motivations might be,” Glavin said. “That constitutes dark money.” continued on page 15
BRIGHT IDEA: St. Petersburg City Councilwoman Brandi Gabbard is not buying the ‘energy alliance’ claims.
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continued from page 13
At the press conference, Price said that there was a representative from Pinellas Energy Alliance in attendance. She gestured towards audience member and Clearwater resident Sean Schrader.
CL attempted to speak with Schrader after the press conference. When asked if he was a representative of Duke Energy or the Pinellas Energy Alliance, Schrader said no and that he was “just an interested resident.” Schrader was, however, a spokesperson of the Pinellas Energy Alliance, he later confirmed via email. “Maybe I misunderstood you today,” Schrader told CL. “I thought you were asking me if I worked for Duke and I do not.”
Schrader also did not answer questions about Pinellas Energy Alliance’s funding sources. Instead, he said that the group “operates independently.”
The group has not answered any other questions from CL, including questions about funding, spending, leadership and other affiliations. They have also not answered questions regarding claims made on their website about municipalization hurdles and clean energy.
“encourage credible allies and third parties to participate.”
“In some takeover battles, the utility itself may not be the most credible messenger or spokesperson,” the article reads. “This could be because voters see the utility as having too much vested in the outcome, rendering its arguments ineffective. In other instances, if customer dissatisfaction with the utility company is high (often because of rate increases or service problems), the utility also becomes the wrong entity to deliver persuasive messages. Consequently, voters often turn to other, locally trusted individuals and interests for guidance.”
LOCAL NEWS
CL asked Duke Energy representatives if they fund, communicate with, or created Pinellas Energy Alliance. They did not respond to repeated requests for comment via call, text or email.
New contract, old playbook
CL obtained a 2003 article titled “10 tools to fight take-overs” written by the Edison Electric Institute, the leading interest group for investor-owned utilities. Despite the article being old enough to blame municipalization on “the Enron debacle,” it outlines a strategy Duke Energy seems to be using today to fight municipalization. The article suggests that utilities
“In several recent takeover battles, incumbent electric utilities helped organize third-party communications campaigns in affected communities but played a low-key public role,” the article adds. “For example, companies organized citizens’ committees that led efforts against takeover ballot measures. Often, these committees included a number of well-known community leaders from various sectors—business, retirees, civic organizations, etc.—who served as the primary media spokespersons and appeared in print and electronic advertising. Even when the companies involved provided funding for such activities, the efforts were very effective due to the personal credibility of the committee members.”
St. Petersburg city council members and Dump Duke have suggested that Duke may be following this model with the Pinellas Energy Alliance, considering its ties to Duke and both parties’ unwillingness to comment on their connection.
This strategy has proven successful for investor-owned utilities in the past. St. Petersburg and Clearwater are Duke Energy Florida’s largest clients; If they municipalize, Duke’s future in Florida is unclear.
SLAM, DUMP: Jason Scott (L) and Marley Price of the Dump Duke movement.
Dumping grounds
Groups say St. Pete could have cheaper, more reliable, power.
By Valerie Smith
Dump Duke held a press conference last Wednesday supporting a municipal takeover of St. Petersburg’s electric grid. The group said that even among investor-owned utilities, Duke Energy’s rates are exorbitant, and said investors are less responsive to customers than local elected officials are to voters.
Dump Duke was joined by Faith in Florida, Suncoast Sierra Club, Food and Water Watch, St. Petersburg City Council Vice Chair Richie Floyd, and the Pinellas chapter of Democratic Socialists of America. Dump Duke was started by two members of Pinellas DSA and remains affiliated with the organization.
No tax increase expected Duke-affiliated interest group Pinellas Energy Alliance says on its website that Duke would fight a buyout of the electric grid, leaving the city with debt and tax increases. Floyd said the debt would be paid off through electric bills rather than taxes, and that Duke isn’t much different.
“Duke Energy takes out debt to upgrade our infrastructure, and they pay for that debt using our utility rates,” Floyd said. “(Duke) pays for their shareholder dividends and their profit margin through our utility rates as well. We’re calling on this process to happen within the realm of the city, so that there’s no longer a profit margin associated with this and those revenues can be returned to the residents of St. Petersburg.”
Feasibility studies
Clearwater recently conducted a municipalization feasibility study that projected a 10% electric bill decrease within the first year, with savings increasing as the debt decreases over a 30-year period. Duke Energy sponsored its own study through utility-favored firm Concentric that put a higher price tag on the grid. Both studies acknowledge that their results aren’t concrete. St. Petersburg’s city council is awaiting a feasibility study that they requested in August. The study can’t start until Mayor Ken Welch’s office puts out a request for proposals, which still hasn’t happened as of publication but is expected to go out by the time this story hits newsstands. Welch is a former employee of Florida Power Corp., which later became Duke Energy Florida, and he issued a controversial “Duke Energy Day” proclamation in 2024.
Winter Park City Manager Randy Knight spoke with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay reporters on WMNF Tampa’s public affairs show “The Skinny” last Friday. He said that when Winter Park municipalized in 2005, Progress
Energy (now Duke Energy) said it would cost the city $100 million, while the city’s feasibility study predicted $15 million. The final cost was closer to $43 million. Knight added that it’s reasonable to expect that a similar in-the-middle figure could be true for St. Petersburg or Clearwater.
Winter Park is a much smaller city, and its contract with Duke at the time included a right to purchase the grid back when it came time to renew, so it’s not a direct analog. Investorowned utility supporters, however, seem to be following a similar playbook.
The Duke-funded feasibility study was conducted by utility-favored Concentric Energy Advisors. Concentric has gained a reputation for helping investor-owned utilities fight municipalization efforts.
When Winter Park was attempting to take over its power grid, Concentric CEO Danielle Powers worked for Navigant Consulting. Navigant was recommended to investor-owned utilities in a 2003 strategic guide on fighting municipalization obtained by CL, written by investor-owned utility interest group Edison Electric Institute. Duke’s fight to stay in control mirrors much of the advice given in this article.
City councilor asks Duke to fight fair Floyd—who is running for re-election— asked Duke and its affiliates, including the Pinellas Energy Alliance, to avoid spreading misinformation. “There have already been flyers going around saying that this is going to impact taxes, which is a lie,” Floyd said. “I’m asking for
Duke’s front groups and Duke Energy to not fund these lies and to not participate in them.”
A quick glance at Pinellas Energy Alliance’s websites shows that even when the information they provide is factually correct, it can be skewed and misleading.
The St. Pete Energy Alliance website says creating a municipal electric utility would involve “borrowing billions of dollars from big Wall Street banks and putting the city billions of dollars in debt.” While this may be true, it’s not the full picture. “Big Wall Street banks” already finance Duke Energy’s debt, and massive investment groups like Vanguard and BlackRock are Duke’s largest corporate shareholders.
Environmental concerns
Pinellas Energy Alliance points to Boulder, Colorado and the State of Nebraska as two examples of municipalization slowing down a switch to clean energy. Governments, the group says, move slower in making the switch and have more bureaucratic hurdles to overcome. Josh Sproat, clean energy co-chair of the Suncoast Sierra Club, doesn’t buy it.
LOCAL NEWS
Currently, a portion of each electric bill goes to financing interest on Duke Energy’s debt it takes out to build infrastructure, and an additional portion goes directly to the pockets of investors as profit. A switch to municipal would mean a consumer would still pay for that interest over the course of a municipal bond (usually 30 years), but otherwise would no longer pay for the investor profit.
Floyd also claimed that the Duke-affiliated Pinellas Energy Alliance is engaging in “predatory hiring practices.”
“We’ve been told by constituents that they’re preying on people who are desperate for a job,” Floyd said, referencing the paid canvassers Pinellas Energy Alliance hires who don’t know that they’re being paid by a Duke-affiliated group.
“To try to pit people in need against other people in need, who need utility rate decreases, is not professional. It’s not a high level of standard, and it’s not what we want from someone who’s a partner in the city,” Floyd said.
“The marketplace has spoken: clean technologies like energy efficiency, solar, and batteries are now the cheapest, most reliable ways to power our communities,” Sproat told CL. “Duke has slow-walked deploying these resources to maximize investor profits at the expense of their captive customers. A city-owned electric utility could prioritize and incentivize the deployment of flexible modern technologies to lower customers’ bills, reduce pollution, and keep the power on when bad weather strikes.”
Duke’s touted ‘decrease’ isn’t really a decrease
Duke Energy made headlines for an anticipated rate reduction in March of this year. Dump Duke co-chair Jason Scott said this isn’t really a decrease, but a planned lifting of temporary increases imposed due to storm recovery costs and to offset the winter dip in energy use. Duke is lifting the charge early only because they overcharged customers by $21 million,” Scott said. “Do you think this was out of generosity?” Scott asked. “Of course not.”
“They’re not doing us any favors, but they’ll do all these press releases,” Dump Duke co-chair Marley Price said. “They’ll do all these charity events. But who’s paying for it at the end of the day? We are.”
PEOPLE POWER: ‘Dump Duke’ co-founder Marley Price in St. Petersburg, Florida on Jan. 28.
Stick to it
Eckerd professors have an app to help track single-use plastic.
By Kailey Aiken
Research on microplastics is still getting off the ground, but Dr. Shannon Gowans is sure about one thing. “What we do know is that they’re not natural, and they shouldn’t be [in our bodies],” she told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. In 2023, Gowans and fellow Eckerd College professor Dr. Amy Siuda launched the Remora app, encouraging users to monitor their singleuse plastic consumption, track their progress in refusing plastics, and connect with friends. Last Thursday, the professors of marine science, hosted a town hall-style meeting to discuss microplastics in Tampa Bay and how we can reduce them.
Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic under five millimeters in size. They can be manufactured small, like glitter or microbeads, but more frequently, they’re broken down from larger plastic items, such as water bottles, shopping bags, fishing nets, or clothing.
That larger debris ends up in waterways like Tampa Bay where sunlight, heat, waves, and oxygen erode it into smaller pieces.
Microplastics are ingested by organisms including plankton, fish, turtles and manatees. They accumulate in the animals’ digestive systems, making them feel full, which can lead to starvation and leave animals to die with a gut full of plastic.
As microplastics work their way up the food chain, they end up in seafood and being eaten by humans. The precise impact of microplastics on human health is unknown.
“We can’t do a controlled experiment where we feed somebody a whole bunch of microplastics and see what happens,” Gowans told CL. Practical and ethical constraints, as well as the emerging status of the studies, make it difficult to document.
Microplastics also act as a sponge, or magnet, for persistent chemicals like DDT, an insecticide popular in the 1970s that became notorious for its harmful environmental effects. One of its most significant impacts was causing the thinning of eggshells in bald eagles and other birds, leading to substantial population declines.
Although now banned in the United States, DDT still lingers in the environment and can be
dangerous when it is concentrated in microplastics. When humans and other organisms ingest these DDT-infused microplastics, it leaches out into their bodies and causes harm.
Gowans and Siuda said that right now, the best way to reduce microplastics in the bay is to stop them at their source: by reducing single-use plastics. “Trying to remove them and not have them out there is a far better scenario than debating exactly how harmful they are,” Gowans said.
Remora, the app that helps users track how often they use single-use plastics
While many grocery stores promote reusable bags, other retailers such as clothing stores and malls lag behind. Gowans and Siuda’s Remora app aims to encourage more businesses to adopt sustainable practices and support policy changes. A new update allows users to rate businesses on their plastic use practices, which in hopes that it will benefit businesses limiting plastics.
Monitoring of microplastics is not federally regulated, which makes it difficult to estimate how many are in our waterways on a national level, and how different areas compare to one another. Measurements that have been made are the result of localized scientific studies.
“Now, we’re pretty sure our Tampa Bay is the longest running estuary microplastics monitoring project in the country,” Siuda said.
Gowans and Siuda envision the Remora project as a way to establish a baseline in tracking change and to serve as a model for other waterways and research efforts.
ENVIRONMENT
The duo told CL that in Tampa Bay, it is estimated that there is approximately one plastic particle per liter of water. That’s two pieces of plastic for the amount of liquid in a two-liter Coca-Cola bottle.
With the data collected from Remora, Gowans and Siuda monitor plastic use, identify trends, help support policy changes, and encourage businesses to use better practices.
“The more data we have, the more powerful it becomes,” Gowans said.
If we were to filter all of the water in Tampa Bay to remove microplastics, Gowans and Siuda said, we would kill pretty much everything in Tampa Bay, because we’d also be removing all the plankton and microorganisms that are the foundation of the ecosystem.
There is a better solution, though. “If we’re generating less, there’s less chance it ever gets out into the environment,” Gowans said.
KEEP SWIMMING: Dr. Amy Siuda (L) and Dr. Shannon Gowans.
Angela Fisher, PhD BBs Micros
Street legal
Hillsborough’s public defender brings services to residents this month.
By Valerie Smith
For a lot of people with a criminal case, getting downtown to the public defender’s office on a weekday can be prohibitive. Hillsborough’s elected public defender, Lisa McLean, is setting up a satellite office once a month to bring her services—and those of other agencies—to zip codes that need it the most.
On Feb. 21 from 10 a.m.–1 p.m., McLean and her team will hold office hours for anyone with questions for, or business with, the public defenders office at the University Community Resource Center at 13605 N 22nd St. in Tampa. The event is expected to take place on the third Saturday of every month.
In addition to covering criminal cases, the “PD13 Street Legal” event will host other groups to support Hillsborough residents holistically.
In deciding where to hold the event, McLean’s team found the three zip codes in Hillsborough County that have the most public defender clients. “It’s about equal access,” McLean told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “A lot of times, clients can’t really get to us downtown. What better way to reach people that have a difficulty getting to us than to meet them where they are?”
McLean said transportation insecurity, work hours, and food and housing insecurity can all be barriers to getting legal help from her office, which is why she wanted to include other community organizations.
LOCAL NEWS
PD13 Street Legal Saturday, Feb. 21. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. No cover. University Community Resource Center, 13605 N 22nd St., Tampa. @hillsboroughpublicdefender on Facebook and Instagram
Nonprofit law firm Bay Area Legal Services will be there to field questions about any non-criminal legal issues people may have, like evictions or custody cases. Tampa Family Health will help people access affordable medical services. Tampa Hillsborough Homeless Initiative will be available to help people find housing or connect them with other resources like food banks.
Ibis Healthcare, formerly Grace Point, will be present for any mental health-related assistance. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Department of Corrections will be present to answer questions about jail or probation.
“The PD’s office, for a long time, has prided itself on this holistic approach to our representation of our clients. We are trying to help people resolve the root causes of crime, reasons people might become involved with crime,” McLean told CL. “When you don’t know where you’re going to lay your head, you’re not really thinking about your criminal case.”
Attendees will start in a reception area, where they will be directed to the appropriate table for whatever services they need. Since this is the first event, McLean said she’s not quite sure what services will be most indemand, but all organizations will make their best effort to address everyone who needs help.
Follow @hillsboroughpublicdefender Facebook and Instagram for updates about PD13 “Street Legal.”
Hit or miss?
Remember the students when talking baseball at Hillsborough College.
By Jeffrey Rubinstein
Spring brings the same optimism to newly minted Hillsborough College as it does for the Tampa Bay Rays and its fans. And while no hot topic could topple AI generated student content, everyone who attended Faculty In-Service Day on the Dale Mabry Campus awaited the latest update from President, Dr. Ken Atwater.
Everyone wanted to know—are the Rays going to take over 100 of the 125 acres of the Dale Mabry Campus to build a stadium and mixed-use residential and commercial district that Dr. Atwater compared to the recently developed Water Street project?
The Hillsborough College president began his address with his familiar optimism and genuine appreciation for the faculty. He described how disruption would be minimal. The Rays ownership group assured him that they had the HC students’ priorities in mind. Dr. Atwater estimated that the project could take about five to six years.
It’s not hard at this point to see that the priority for Dr. Atwater and the Hillsborough College Board of Trustees is revenue and the profit potential this has for the Tampa business community, though it’s not clear how that will benefit the average Hillsborough College student. There is some estimation that as many as twelve thousand new jobs would be created by this project, but there was no distinction between which would be permanent or temporary, or if there would be cooperation between HC and the Rays for those jobs.
LETTERS
This can be a difficult time for anyone concerned about the state of education in Florida, let alone higher education. This can be an equally difficult time for anyone still dealing with insurance adjusters and home renovations, only to await the next catastrophic flooding that is almost certainly to occur on this sandbar we call home.
If we’re being conservative, that’s three cohorts of full-time HC students. They won’t know the new buildings or facilities that have been proposed on that remaining 15-20 acres. The new residences, cafes and restaurants won’t be any more affordable to the average HC student as in the Water Street District. Nearly all of those students will be in trailers while they attend classes on campus.
There will be considerably more traffic, widening of all surrounding streets, and if the traffic studies have been done, the Dale Mabry site is likely at the top of a pretty short list. When Dr. Atwater was asked if he had been given any information on the flood mitigation strategy or if sustainability would be taken into consideration at a time when many new condos and housing developments in Tampa are besieged by flooding, he said he did not know about the environmental impact but would ask.
Is it in the best interest of Hillsborough College students and the surrounding community to confine academic growth while continuing a trend that prioritizes lucrative sports industries, unaffordable housing, more concrete and cars?
As a native New Yorker, I grew up with baseball in my blood, but a Hillsborough College Dale Mabry campus that can grow and facilitate both the educational needs of our community and one that can be sustainable for the future is the walk off home run Tampa needs at this time.
Jeffrey Rubinstein has been teaching college English since 1998 for Hillsborough College, University of Tampa, Arizona State University and other colleges and universities. Creative Loafing Tampa Bay accepts letters to the editors. We will not run your letter without permission. Email your submissions to rroa@ cltampa.com for consideration
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Wing and a prayer
Some of the best places to watch a big game.
By Jourdan Ducat and CL Staff
The NFL season is almost over, folks. Some of these spots are bonafide American football honey holes, but others are simply some of the Bay area’s most unique places to set your gaze on the TV inside a comfy local watering hole. And, let’s face it: nobody at your buddy’s Super Bowl party wants to hear about all the bad bets you’re making on the apps.
5 Bucks Drinkery While Pinellas Park’s 5 Bucks Drinkery offers the same stiff drinks as its flagship bar in downtown St. Pete, this large space and accompanying parking lot definitely draws more of a sports bar crowd from the greater P-Park area. The now-open Seminole location at 7498 Seminole Blvd. boasts an even bigger bar, full lunch and dinner menu, and a whopping 70 flat-screen TVs for all your favorite games. 7402 49th St. N, Pinellas Park. fivebucksdrinkery.com
Anchor Bar Both locations of this Tampa staple are rife with televisions (the outside tube at Anchor’s Davis Islands location is clutch), and the menu of well-executed bar food favorites makes it a low-key place to watch sports elbowto-elbow with regulars who might as well have their names etched onto the barstools. 514 N Franklin St. or 304 E Davis Blvd., Tampa. anchortaverntampa.com
DINING GUIDE
Bar Louie Send your kids into the mall with a wad of cash and plop your behind on a barstool at this longtime International Plaza sports bar where the beer seems to be colder than anywhere on Westshore Boulevard. Bar staples like the wings, fried pickles and tots make it a no-brainer for someone who wants to waste away in front of the boob tube. 2223 N Westshore Blvd. 202 Suite B-202, Tampa. barlouie.com
Beef O’Brady’s Beef’s is without a doubt a Tampa institution, and there’s one in pretty much every corner of Tampa Bay, which is great for anyone with a serious wing addiction. Be sure to stop by on Wednesdays for 99-cent wings, and pick from entry level sauces like garlic parm, “smokehouse maple,” and even inferno levels of spice like “atomic” or “firecracker.” Multiple locations. beefobradys.com
Bilmar Station This neighborhood bar in Town N’ Country has food that exceeds pub standards and drinks that are strong enough to rival what you’d make at home. There are several TV’s and bar games to accommodate any game day, as well as beer and wings specials during every football game. They even offer an impressive list of craft drafts that will satisfy anyone who fancies themself as a beer aficionado. 8501 W Hillsborough Ave., Tampa. bilmarstation.com
Buffalo Wild Wings Don’t front like you don’t go to B-Dubs. For a national chain with more than a dozen Bay area locations, it’s still one of the best spots to get saucy fingers and stare at dozens of glaring flat screens. Sure it’s a little sticky, and a little dirty, but this chain is one of the only restaurants that is perfectly designed
for both toddlers and grown men alike. A true family-friendly sports bar. buffalowildwings.com
Cinco Soccer American football is cool and all, but East Tampa is home to a veritable mecca to real football. Cinco Soccer has five turf pitches for five-a-side soccer (or “futsal”), and the club house boasts a gigantic, four-TV screen, plus FIFA gaming stations, an outside TV and the cheapest beer west of the casino. Food vendors pop up, and there’s even a grill where regulars throw down their meat, so we’re you’re talking about a full-day and night of footie on TV. And yes, Cinco plans to show all the 2026 World Cup games. 5305 E Henry Ave., Tampa. cincosoccer.com
Dead Bob’s & Dead Bob’s Too With two locations on either side of the Bay, these locallyloved restaurants serve a seriously delicious menu and offer rotating daily specials at hefty portions for a great price. Regulars suggest the fried pot roast, but a less adventurous diner will be just as pleased with the juicy burgers. Both locations have plenty of TVs for game day and promise a good time with good folks. 6716 Central Ave. N, St. Petersburg or 3681 S West Shore Blvd., Tampa
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WHERE TAMPA COMES TO
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The Dog The Dog is a popular place to watch a game due to the abundance of TVs, including individual sets for most of the suspended wooden tables. There’s also a variety of bar games and traditional pub fare that includes crowd-pleasing chicken wings. The outside patio is a great spot to take a breather in between plays and watch a South Tampa sunset. 3311 W Bay to Bay Blvd., Tampa. 813-832-8211
Duff’s Famous Wings Tampa gets more like New York every day, and we’ve got some of the state’s best wings now, too. The Seminole Heights outpost at the old Ella’s address comes with its own lore thanks to a recipe with roots in the 1940s and craveable, saucy, wings that strike a satisfying balance between crispy and juicy. Covered in TVs, the spot also boasts that patio and giant oak tree making it an easy go-to night after night, game day or not. Turns out the Bills diehards are a lot cooler to hang out with than Giants and Jets fans, too. 5119 N Nebraska Ave., Tampa. duffswings.com
Ferg’s Sports Bar The baseball situation’s been wonky ever since 2024’s back-to-back hurricanes and the recent transfer of team ownership, but downtown St. Pete’s Taj Mahal of sports bars enjoys the company of Rays fans and other sports nuts who flock to Ferg’s two levels, firmly parked underneath the big ol’ globe (RIP World Liquors) taking in college games, hockey, and yes, American football, too. 1320 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. fergssportsbar.com
Friendly Tarpon Tavern Formerly known as Barefoot Billy’s Friendly Tavern, this quaint “dive bar” on South Gandy has undergone some major renovations in recent months under new ownership. While the bar currently doesn’t serve liquor, it does offer a hefty selection of craft beers, seltzers and even sake-based spirits. For now, patrons can order hot dogs and snacks like boiled peanuts, but the food menu will soon expand to include more game day favorites. 3120 W Gandy Blvd., Tampa. thefriendlytarpon.com
Hattricks For almost 30 years, downtown Tampa’s most tried and true sports bar has been a staple for Tampa Bay Lightning fans, but the high ceilings, friendly staff and smorgasbord of TVs and sports memorabilia make it one of Tampa’s greatest places to watch any game. Get the wings, and most definitely opt to have them “Shake & Bake” style (aka put in the oven after getting the sauce out of the fryer). And if you’re there for the Big Game, don’t leave without dapping up the big guy, Larry Heisel, manager at Hattricks and legend of the local hospitality scene. 107 S Franklin St., Tampa. hattrickstavern.com
Hooters You already know. With more than 20 locations in the Bay area, including the OG at 2800 Gulf-to-Bay Blvd. in Clearwater, this restaurant is a rite of passage for any lowdown football fan. hooters.com
The Hub So what? There’s just two TVs in this iconic downtown Tampa dive bar, but the people are amazing and the drinks are stiff.
Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper once brought the Stanley Cup here, and if that doesn’t make it game-day worthy, then what does? 719 N Franklin St., Tampa. hubbaronline.com
MacDinton’s This South Tampa Irish pub is a college student’s best friend on Friday nights, and its sprawling compound on Howard Avenue includes baby cave bars, a giant inside bar and stage, plus generous outside patio— all lined with TVs primarily for watching European football (but good for the NFL, too). 405 S Howard Ave., Tampa. macdintons.com
Mackenzie’s Sports Tavern Locals love the wings at this Westshore staple, with many claiming they’re the best in town. Mackenzie’s also offers the NFL Sunday Ticket, which means patrons don’t have to miss their favorite out of state teams that aren’t being shown on local networks. This allages sports bar has been around since 1995 and is still a great place for the whole family to have fun. 4015 S West Shore Blvd., Tampa. mackenziessportstavern.com
Peabody’s Restaurant, Bar & Billiards
This expansive tavern, located in New Tampa, gets packed on game days due to the abundance of TVs and accommodating atmosphere. Peabody’s offers daily food and drink specials as well as discounted pricing during NFL games, which makes it a great place for the whole squad to meet up without breaking the bank. There are also tons of pool tables, dart boards and other bar games to ease the tension between friends rooting for opposing teams. 15333 Amberly Dr., Tampa. peabodystampa.com
DINING GUIDE
O’ Maddy’s Bar & Grille A Gulfport hotspot great for watching the game while enjoying a beautiful day with a spacious outdoor bar and patio seating that overlooks Boca Ciega Bay. Foodies will love the expansive menu that is teeming with fresh catch options like crab cakes and grouper, all accompanied by daily drink specials that will make the pain of a loss or the joy of a win more enjoyable. 5405 Shore Blvd.S, Gulfport. omaddys.com
Riveters Tell your out-of-towner friends that you’re taking them to see the spaceship atop 2001 Odyssey—and then take a hard turn into Riveters next door. The restaurant is a hidden gem on its busy strip of Dale Mabry Highway and pumps out opulent North American bar fare (get the Hellcat wings or poutine fries and BBQ chicken sliders) plus classic sandwiches and burgers, too. 2301 N Dale Mabry Hwy., Tampa. riveterstampa.com
Miller’s Ale House An ADHD nightmare, the walls at Miller’s are almost literally cov-
Popstroke This Tiger Woods-backed, boozefueled mini-golf course is a great way to bonk around golf balls in a hot parking lot behind a Bonefish Grill and a Carraba’s. When you’re done,
ered in TVs. With three locations in the Bay area (West Tampa, University, Brandon), Miller’s is a kid-friendly chain where a child can gorge on chicken Zingers while grandpa can feel all fancy eating the pork osso buco. millersalehouse.com
North 30th Sports Pub & Grille Located in the former McAlister’s Deli spot, Uptown’s North 30th Sports Pub really is a true, no-frills sports bar. Cold beer, crispy hot wings, pickle chips and over 40 TVs are all on tap. Wings (with a dozen different sauces) are the main event, but this spot also has a nice selection of sandwiches, pizzas, wraps and burgers. 1402 N 30th St., Tampa. north30pub.com
stick around for the restaurant and bar, which is actually a surprisingly good spot to watch a game on either one of their many TVs, or their gigantic jumbotron. Plus, all the standard bar grub is on the menu, including beer, wine and cocktails. 25297 Sierra Center Blvd., Lutz. popstroke.com
Retreat This Hyde Park haunt, located across from what is now called UTampa, is approaching its 90th anniversary and shows no sign of slowing down. Patrons can saddle up to the full liquor bar while cheering on their favorite teams with the locals and seasoned bartenders alike.Try to order a hot dog or brat from the bar if you’d like more traditional gameday fare. 123 S Hyde Park Ave., Tampa. retreattampa.com
Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Come on, you wanna see the house that’s collecting all your bad bets on the Hard Rock betting app. The casino is the place where time stops, the air-conditioning is crispy, and you always have a chance at redemption. The center bar alone has a tower of 12 TVs (and 17 slot machines), so there’s always something to do in between plays. One of Tampa’s low-key best Chinese spots and a new buffet make it a no-brainer. 5223 Orient Rd., Tampa. casino.hardrock.com/tampa Shuffle If you’re looking for some additional recreation to accommodate game day, Shuffle’s four indoor shuffleboard courts have got the whole family covered. Don’t let your kid walk on the court and be sure to check out the fun food menu that offers everything from loaded tots to a surprisingly delicious spaghetti sandwich. The indoor bar at this Tampa Heights staple has TVs on either end, and the impressive backyard complete with outdoor courts, a cocktail trailer, concert stage and toys for your offspring is the perfect place to relax in between plays. 2612 N Tampa St., Tampa. shuffletampa.com
Tampa Bay Brewing Co. Come for the game, stay for the brews and tasty bar grub. Located in the heart of Ybor City (right next to a streetcar stop, aka the ultimate designated driver), Tampa Bay Brewing Co. offers a comfortable place to watch the game and have dinner before heading home or continuing the party elsewhere in Ybor City. Its second location in Westchase (13937 Monroe Business Park) also offers the same variety of craft beer and casual fare, too. 1600 E 8th Ave., Ybor City
Tapper Pub One of Tampa’s oldest bars is another in the long list of establishments that made some big changes over the last few years, most notably nixing indoor smoking at the start of 2024. The open kitchen behind the bar is still pumping out the delicious sandwiches that have drawn regulars in for years, including a Reuben sandwich that seems too good to be dive bar food. The recently added outdoor seating is a welcome option for fresh air in between plays. 3832 Britton Plaza, Tampa. 813-839-7845
The Toasted Monkey While it may seem unconventional for game days given its location and tropical decor, the Monkey has an expansive patio with several TVs to accommodate sports fans. Pair a Rock’s Rita, the signature house cocktail, with your choice of fresh fish or traditional apps while enjoying the views of adjacent Sunset Beach. 678 75th Ave., St Pete Beach. thetoastedmonkey.com
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IT TAKES TWO: There are just a couple tiny TVs at The Hub, but trust us, this is a good place to just be.
Topgolf Don’t be fooled, Topgolf isn’t just a decent place to pound some beers and whack a few balls. There’s also an absurd amount of TVs up in here (200-plus to be exact), and they’re all pretty much tuned to sports. Plus, there’s wings, burgers, pizzas, tacos, and all the usual sports bar fare for when you’re done duffing ‘em into the ether. Just watch out for people making social media reels. Multiple locations. topgolf.com
Walk-On’s This New Orleans-inspired spot describes itself as “game-day bar” with a variety of beers and cocktails alongside its casual menu of fried alligator and po’boys. Walk-Ons is also one of the more kid-friendly sports bars on this list. 1140 Gramercy Ln., Tampa. walk-ons.com
spot has over 80 locations nationwide features over 100 on-tap beers, with a modern industrial interior and outdoor seating area, as well as a menu spanning everything from burgers to poke bowls and vegan options—and yes, you can order a yard of beer to lug around the space rife with TVs surrounding the main bar, the tables around it and outside, too. 450 Channelside Dr., Tampa. yardhouse.com
DINING GUIDE
Walter’s Press Box Sports Emporium
In South Tampa, kids come of age inside Press Box. It’s where they see their relatives cry over the Bucs, and their really drunk uncle get mad when dad tries to put him in an Uber. And it’s where said kids repeat the cycle upon reaching adulthood. Approaching its 50th year serving the neighborhood, Walter’s has taken a step into the future with more than 40 TVs showing what feels like pretty much every sporting event happening in the U.S. on any given day. 222 S Dale Mabry Hwy., Tampa. pressboxsports.com
Yard House This house is huge. The 16,400-square-foot sports bar in the shadow of Benchmark International Arena is a concept from Darden Restaurant Group, which also owns Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse. The
Yeoman’s This British sports pub in downtown Tampa is a staple for before and after Lightning games and happily accommodates the whole family despite offering an expansive beer and liquor menu. Mac & cheese fans will be delighted with housemade varieties like philly steak and seafood and lobster, but there’s also elevated pub grub and British staples on the menu. The recently added Topgolf Swing Suite offers interactive games like golf, soccer and football played on a large screen, as well as billiards and shuffleboard. 202 N Morgan St., Tampa. yeomanstopgolfswingsuite.com
Yuengling Draft Haus & Kitchen We all know it as “America’s oldest brewery” and the favorite beer of middle aged, Under Armour-wearing boomer dads across the nation: Yuengling. The popular brewery opened a massive, state-of-the-art restaurant and beer garden in 2023 and it’s a worthy place to watch his team. It boasts five total bars and 88 different taps of lagers, ales and more. 11109 N 30th St., Tampa. yuengling.com/tampa
Visit a more clickable version of this dining guide via cltampa.com/food-drink.
LONG RUNWAY: A short drive from the airport, Riveters is a Dale Mabry hidden gem.
Chambea
Puerto Rican and Latin bars blasting Bad Bunny’s halftime show.
By Selene San Felice
It’s the year of the bunny. The bad one, specifically. This week, Benito Martínez Ocasio, AKA Bad Bunny, took home a Grammy for Debí Tirar Más Fotos—the first-ever Album of the Year in Spanish.
“Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say ICE out,” he said onstage, one of several acceptance speeches mentioning Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans.”
It’s a powerful tone setter for this weekend. In case you hadn’t heard, there’s a football game happening before and after his concert this Sunday.
Whether the Seattle Seahawks or the New England Patriots score more points, Bad Bunny is taking home the W at this year’s Super Bowl, because Puerto Rico está bien cabrón. These spots confirmed to CL that they’ll show the game and crank it up for Benito.
Cinco Soccer Tampa’s cathedral of soccer has a giant four-screen display plus other TVs scattered inside and outside the clubhouse. “And we just installed brand new soundbars,” secondgeneration owner Zander Rados told CL, adding that the grill will be running as well. 5305 E Henry Ave., Tampa. @cinco.soccer on Instagram
Pal Campo Restaurant This North Tampa spot is part of a four-location Florida-based chain and boasts a menu rooted in Puerto Rico. A Latin band usually plays on Sundays, but the music will pause for a halftime show that will “be loud for sure.” 9218 Anderson Rd., Tampa. palcamporestaurant.com
DINING GUIDE
Wepaa Puerto Rican Bar and Restaurant This Pinellas County gem of Puerto Rican cuisine is already taking reservations for a party that will feature the show on full blast. 118 W Bay Dr., Largo. @ WEPPA118 on Facebook
Latin Grill Tampa There might not be anyone in Tampa Bay more prepared for this year’s halftime show than a certain Latin Grill employee. The club’s celebrity lookalike performers range from Pitbull to Selena, but this Sunday it’ll be all about Bad Bunny (or a guy in a plastic mask that looks like him). His performances will include a collaboration with “Shakira” and “Jennifer Lopez” to recreate their 2020 halftime show. Guests can watch the game on huge LED screens and sip on a Bad Bunny Moscow Mule. 9331 E Adamo Dr., Tampa. latingrillfl.com
Santos Kitchen + Lounge Santos hosts its usual R&B Brunch with DJ Danny in Downtown Tampa, starting at 11:30 a.m. until they turn the game on. Expect Benito to be blasting. 101 N Franklin St., Tampa. santoskitchentampa.com
Triana Caribbean Cuisine The Puerto Rican spot is rolling out game-day specials on wings, beers and sandwiches. “Its gonna fun, just come on over,” an employee told CL over the phone. 4025 W. Waters Ave., Tampa. @trianacaribbean on Instagram
Visit cltampa.com/food-drink to see an extended version of this listing. Laura Troyer and Ray Roa contributed to this dining guide.
HAPPY HOUR AT AMSO
Monday - Friday, 4pm-7pm Saturday 3pm-6pm
DEBÍ TIRAR MÁS FOTOS: Benito takes the Super Bowl stage on Sunday.
“You never know when the last one might be.”
Mane event
Tampa artist raises funds to preserve Café Hey’s beloved holiday tradition.
By Laura Troyer
On most mornings in downtown Tampa, Café Hey hums quietly–espresso machines hissing, neighbors drifting in and out, familiar faces exchanging nods across small tables. But later this month, that familiar calm could give way to drums, firecrackers and the bright movement of a traditional Chinese New Year lion dance if the community can raise enough money to make it happen.
The Tampa Heights shop’s long-running tradition is now an uncertainty. Rising costs have put the annual tradition at risk, prompting Tampa-based muralist and community advocate Michelle Sawyer to step in with a GoFundMe.
“I don’t want to be the person who says, ‘Remember when they used to do the lion dance?’” she told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “You never know when the last one might be.”
Sawyer is organizing the fundraiser to cover performers, musicians and basic logistics— expenses that Café Hey owner Cheong Choi worried were no longer within reach. As of this publication, Sawyer’s fundraiser at less than $100 of its $900 goal.
then, the café has remained a constant in her life—something she describes as “an extension of family.”
She worries about losing that. As Tampa changes rapidly, Sawyer has watched longstanding businesses disappear.
“Every month, every week, someone’s saying, ‘That place is gone,’” she said. “I have a soft spot for the little guys who’ve been here a while.”
Over the last two decades, Cafe Hey has proudly been the quietly consistent, artsy underdog in a rapidly expanding downtown. While it’s fairly isolated, the nearby expansion of the Riverwalk and Armature Works has brought a much more corporate crowd to the area. Still, the shop regularly hosts budding artists at its local mic nights, on its walls, and at one of the area’s best markets for punk zinesters and budding vendors. Not to mention its period pantry.
For Sawyer, the fundraiser is about more than one afternoon of music and movement. It’s about preserving the places that shape Tampa’s creative identity.
LOCAL NEWS
Choi, a graduate of H.B. Plant High School in South Tampa, grew up in the Bay area before living across the United States, China and Europe. When he returned in 2007 he brought those influences with him, opening Café Hey with two friends he’d known since high school.
“The café was just about making a place where people can be together,” Choi said. “That part came naturally.”
At the time, downtown Tampa was quieter and less developed. Café Hey became one of the few spaces consistently hosting art shows, music nights and informal gatherings, long before the area became desirable. Over time, it evolved into a cultural anchor, especially for artists.
“Artists tend to show up at coffee shops,” Choi said. “So I tried to make it an environment that’s nonjudgmental. If you can behave, you’re welcome here.”
That openness is what drew Sawyer to Café Hey more than a decade ago. In 2015, she helped paint a mural on the exterior of the building to raise awareness about a proposed interstate expansion that threatened the space. Since
The fundraiser has no hard deadline, but the tentative date for Café Hey’s Lion Dance celebration is Saturday, Feb. 21. Sawyer said raising the money at least two weeks before a potential event would allow organizers to confirm performers and logistics.
“These are the places that make people fall in love with this city,” she said. “Not the flash-inthe-pan stuff. This is where Tampa’s roots are.”
In past years, the celebration unfolded quietly as part of the café’s rhythm.
Inside, the lion blessed the doorway and counter. Outside, crowds gathered for photos and red envelopes, symbols of luck, were exchanged. This year, nothing is guaranteed.
“It’s a happy event,” Sawyer said. “And I think that’s something people really need right now.”
Choi, who now balances the café with the neighboring Oceanic restaurant supply business and family responsibilities, feels the pressure of rising costs and a changing customer base–but says the mission hasn’t changed.
“It’s harder for weird people to survive,” he said with a laugh. “But we’re still doing the same thing we’ve always done.”
MOVIES THEATER ART CULTURE
WANNA DANCE? Café Hey’s annual lion dance is kind of endangered.
COURTESY
Friday, March 6 & Saturday, March 7th th
Out and about: Events happening in Tampa Bay
The events listed in our Do This section on pp. 8-9 aren’t the only things to do in town this weekend. Have a look at more events—like the Safety Harbor Art & Seafood Festival—going down this month, and see even more by finding Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s user-submitted events calendar at cltampa.com. Don’t see your event here? Please head to the website to submit it yourself.—Selene San Felice
ARTS
Gulfport Plein Air Painters Group Art Exhibit Thursday, Feb. 5. 6 p.m.- 8 p.m. No cover. Catherine A. Hickman Theater, Gulfport. mygulfport.us
10/10 Wood Fire Again: 2025 Winter Wood Symposium Exhibition Wednesday-Saturday through Feb. 7. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. No cover. Morean Center for Clay, St. Petersburg. moreanartscenter.org
Uncommon Beauty - New Paintings by Vlasta Smola Wednesday-Sunday, various times, through Feb. 8. No cover. Soft Water Gallery, St. Petersburg. softwatergallery.com Santa’s Sudden Dysfunction: Holiday PAW Art of Tim Gibbons Monday-Sunday through Feb. 13. No cover. Pinellas Ale Works, St. Petersburg. pawbeer.com
Jennifer Schumacher Waller: ‘In Between’ Opening Saturday, Feb. 14. 5 p.m.-9 p.m. No cover. Morean Center for Clay, St. Petersburg. Runs through April 4. jenniferwallerart.com
Impressions: 35 years of Women in Print at USF Graphicstudio MondayFriday through March 2. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. No cover. Graphicstudio at University of South Florida, Tampa. ira.usf.edu
Brian Maguire: La Grande Illusion Monday-Saturday through March 7. No cover.
USF Contemporary Art Museum at University of South Florida, Tampa. ira.usf.edu
Abstract Corpulence Running through March 29. $0-$20. Sarasota Art Museum. sarasotaartmuseum.org
Jun Kaneko: Silence Before Sound Running through Aug. 23. $5 & up. Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa. tampamuseum.org
BOOKISH
Book Release: ‘SHINE: 10th
Anniversary Edition’ Thursday, Feb 5. 6:30 p.m. - 9 p.m. No cover (RSVP requested). Tombolo Books, St. Petersburg. tombolobooks.com
Tampa Downtown Alliance: Blind Date With A Book Monday, Feb 9. 4:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. No cover. Snow Park, Tampa. tampasdowntown.com
Release Party: ‘Wicked Onyx,’ Debbie
Cassidy Tuesday, Feb 10. 6 p.m.-8 p.m. $20. The Book Lounge, St. Petersburg. thebooklounge.com
Book Launch: ‘Cold Zero’, Brad Thor and Ward Larsen Tuesday, Feb 10. 6:30 p.m.-8 p.m. $35. Oxford Exchange, Tampa. oxfordexhange.com
Wild Space Authors Series: ‘The Birds That Audubon Missed’, Kenn Kaufman Wednesday, Feb 11. 5 p.m.-8 p.m. No cover (RSVP requested). Wild Space Gallery, St. Petersburg. @wildspacestpete on Instagram.
Tombolo Author Talk: ‘We Were Never Friends’, Kaira Rouda Wednesday, Feb. 11. 7 p.m.-8 p.m. No cover (RSVP requested). Tombolo Books, St. Petersburg. tombolobooks.com
Dirty John’s Dirty Disco ThursdaySaturdays. 8 p.m. The Studio@620, St. Petersburg. thestudioat620.org
Tampa Metropolitan Improv Third Fridays through May 29. 7 p.m. $5. Carrollwood Cultural Center, Tampa. carrollwoodcenter.org
FILM & TV
‘Triumph’ Thursday, Feb. 19. Time TBD. No cover, registration requested. Hillsborough Community College, Ybor City. wedu.org
FOOD & DRINK
Safety Harbor Art & Seafood Festival
Saturday-Sunday, Feb. 21-22. Gates at noon (closes 9 p.m. Saturday, 6 p.m. Sunday). No cover (VIP tickets available). Safety Harbor Waterfront Park, Safety Harbor. safetyharborchamber.chambermaster.com
LEARN
Cafe con Tampa Every Friday, through forever. 8 a.m. $12. The Portico, 1001 N. Florida Ave., Tampa. cafecontampa.com
DFACT Presents: Coffee & Conversation with Latonya Hicks Thursday, Feb. 19. Noon-1 p.m. No cover, RSVP requested. Dunedin Fine Art Center, Dunedin. dfac.org
MARKETS & RETAIL
St. Pete Night Market First Wednesdays. 6-10 p.m. No cover. Ferg’s Sports Bar & Grill, St. Petersburg. stpeteissupercool.com
SPORTS
Tampa Bay Lightning vs. Florida Panthers Thursday, Feb. 5. 7:30 p.m. $84 & up. Benchmark International Arena, Tampa. nhl.com
Armature Works 8th Birthday Par-tee Saturday, Feb. 7. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. No cover. Armature Works, Tampa. ArmatureWorks.com Touch Grass 5k Saturday, Feb. 7. Walsingham Park, Seminole. 8:45 a.m. $25. runsignup.com/touchgrass5k
THEATER
The Comedy of Errors Thursday-Sunday through Feb. 8. $29.50 & up. Jaeb Theater at David A. Straz Center for the Performing Arts, Tampa. jobsitetheater.org
Job Wednesday-Sunday, select times through Feb. 15. $5-$44. Urbanite Theater, Sarasota. urbanitetheatre.com
The Scarlet Letter Wednesday-Sunday. Jan. 21-Feb. 15. $0-$60. American Stage, St. Petersburg. americanstage.org
Wildflower Walk Saturday, Feb 28. 1-2:30 p.m. $5. Boyd Hill Nature Preserve Visitor Center, St. Petersburg. stpeteparksrec.org
Interested in advertising around this listing? Contact jhoward@cltampa.com.
In dialogue In Caravaggio’s Light, the MFA presents a singular musical evening with Cubanborn classical guitarist René Izquierdo. Known for his expressive artistry and global acclaim, Izquierdo will perform a thoughtfully curated program that bridges centuries and continents. This intimate concert features an original composition written in the Baroque style, alongside works by well-known composers. The performance will also include selections of Cuban and South American music, offering audiences a rich and layered understanding of the Baroque influences in Latin America. Tickets available at mfastpete.org
Matthias Stom (Stomer), Annunciation of Samson’s Birth (detail), c. 1630-1632, Oil on canvas, Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi, Florence, Italy
Thursday, February 5, 2026, 7:30 PM - 11:30 PM Club 90s Presents Heated Rivalry Night @ The RITZ Ybor 1503 E 7th Ave
Tickets at the door bit.ly/heated0205
Saturday, February 7, 2026, 7:00 PM - 11:00 PM
3rd Annual Grand Tasting Event @ Chateau Cellars 2009 North 22nd St.
Tickets from $88.02 bit.ly/GrandTastingYbor
Saturday, February 7, 2026, 8:00 PM
Dyke Nite St Pete 2 Year Anniversary @ Crowbar 1812 N 17th St
Kaia Bowls Ybor - NOW OPEN 1208 E 7th Ave kaiabowls.com/ybor-city
Where to Live:
Casa Ybor • casaybor.com
Casa Ybor offers unique retail spaces, office spaces, and apartment homes for rent or lease in both newly constructed and lovingly restored historic buildings throughout the vibrant National Historic Landmark District of Ybor City near Downtown Tampa, Florida.
La Union • bit.ly/LaUnionYbor
Community, connection, and culture come together at La Unión Apartments, where Tampa’s rich history and vibrant future unite. Inspired by the historic social hall once on this site, our Ybor City apartments honor that legacy by fostering bonds among residents, the neighborhood, and the area’s deep-rooted heritage.
Miles at Ybor • milesatybor.com
Step into the pulse of Tampa’s most vibrant neighborhood at Miles at Ybor, where modern luxury apartments in Tampa blend seamlessly with the rich cultural tapestry of historic Ybor City. These aren’t just furnished apartments in Ybor City – they’re your gateway to an elevated urban lifestyle that celebrates both heritage and innovation.
Factory on Fifth Avenue 2710 E 5th Ave
Factory On Fifth Avenue’s mission is to promote and provide a destination space for artists, craftsmen, and creative companies in Ybor City. factoryonfifth.com
Elevenses Co
1001 E Columbus Dr
Rustic-chic, colorful cafe specializing in baked goods, including macarons, as well as cakes. instagram.com/lafranceybor
Nicahabana Cigars 1605 E 7th Ave
Locally owned smoking lounge offering hand-rolled cigars & Cuban espresso in a relaxed atmosphere. nicahabanacigar.com
Let’s
go bill. Tampa indie-rock lifers arrive with loud, unforgiving debut LP.
By Ray Roa
Bill.’s new album is not a casual listen.
Simultaneously dense and expansive, the seven-track outing clocks in at just under 27 minutes, but it’s not the kind of LP that warrants an immediate playback. Instead, the Tampa band has put together a record that forces a listener to exhale.
Featuring members of popular art-pop band Hello Joyce, bill.’s debut full-length is the most mature and fully-realized collection of work that longtime songwriting partners Cameron Grant and Nico Remy have put together.
“It feels momentous to us,” Grant told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, with Remy adding that bill. deliberately worked towards an almost experimental sound that was still rooted in familiar structures.
For fans of bands like They Are Gutting A Body of Water (TAGABOW) or Ovlov, bill.’s strain of rock and roll is prevalent in the northeast, but less common on the Gulf Coast. “Living in Florida, we almost work harder to achieve more of a complex sound because a lot of people down here play something totally different than what we’re into,” Remy said. “I think that only makes me want to just be more eccentric and dramatic with the music that we’re creating,” Grant added, “to leave even deeper of a stamp.”
A graduation from DIY recordings done in garages and closets, Wimmer finds bill. loading the tape with contorted, gnarled-up guitars, aggressive drums masterfully-recorded by Nathan Doyle, snippets of Ableton sessions, and the sounds of not just pro synths but toy electronics with origins in the ‘90s.
Remy—a lifelong percussionist who’s earned high marks since his days at Mitchell High School—acquired the synths through Facebook Marketplace and eBay, but one of them has been in his life since he was three years old.
“My oma bought it for me because I needed a distraction,” Remy, 30, said. “That synth survived this whole time up until now, and that synth is actually the secret sauce of this album.”
Despite its ambitious nature, there’s not a song on Wimmer is longer than five minutes, so listeners aren’t getting pummeled by music. And for an album with so many LAN cables attached to it, Wimmer feels infinitely more human than the increasingly AI-assisted music hitting streaming services every day. Remy, who has a music performance degree from the University of South Florida, said that heartbeat is key to the bill. aesthetic.
“My degree is rooted in performing live as a human, not through a computer,” Remy added.
“But computer music has always interested me. We’re at a weird precipice right now where computer music is trying to sound acoustic and human, but I think computer music is way more interesting when it sticks to more of those like bits and bloops and bops.”
The record, he said, feels like a bunch of people made it because the band made a deliberate choice not to sit at a digital audio workstation mapping out notes for every instrument. “For every synth part we played, there was a physical synth in our laps and we were plucking away at it, doing a billion takes until it sounded somewhat right,” Remy added.
On Thursday for Emo Night Tampa’s takeover of Rock the Park, bill. makes up the heart of a lineup that includes more pop-punk-oriented bands Bad, Bad Things and Pet Lizard. Bill. is a regular for Emo Night Tampa shows on account of that sound, which Wood describes as raw, but technically proficient at the same time. He’s been playing a lot of music in the same lane as Wimmer on the Emo Night Tampa radio program that airs overnight Fridays on WMNF 88.5-FM.
INTERVIEW
Wimmer is out now care of Philly and Atlanta imprints Julia’s War and Rope Bridge; the former is a revered underground label that’s embraced obscure sounds under the tutelage of its leader Douglas Dulgarian, frontman of TAGABOW.
Rock the Park Tampa: Emo Night Tampa Takeover
w/Bad, Bad, Things/Bill. (stylized ‘bill.’)/Pet Lizard Thursday, Feb. 5. 6:30 p.m. No cover Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park, Tampa @RockThePark on Facebook
“I love it when Tampa bands get their time,” Theo Severson—co-founder of the Emo Night Tampa collective that celebrated its 10th anniversary last summer—told CL.
Chris Wood—aka beatsmith, drummer and DJ Mes McDonald—co-founded Emo Night Tampa with Severson. Going back to their days DJing at Ybor City’s long-shuttered Pulp party at Czar, Wood and Severson have literally been on the forefront of local music for three decades.
“People are into it,” Wood added about the feedback from the listening audience. “And they’re definitely into bill.’s live performances, so I think they’ve always been a natural fit.” Grant, for his part, wonders what the Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park crowd is going to think about a band that’s played its best shows at American Legion halls and DIY spaces. Those audiences, after all, have told him that they often feel fatigued after a bill. show.
Bandmates Alix Herard, Jorge Sotomayor, and Leonardo Joseph will add another layer to the show, and Grant, who’s not much for in-between song banter is clear about how he’s always wanted the crowd to feel the set in their chests.
“When the song is over, I want you to exhale like you’ve been holding your breath, experiencing every moment,” he said.
Let’s go.
DISTRESS: Bill.’s music is meant to be felt in your chest.
C/O NICO REMY & BLAKE HALLMAN
By Ray Roa
THU 05
C Inner View w/TV Extra/Blonde Gentlemen/Fshwfe Jef Bjarnson is a house show staple in Nashville, and he brings his dream-pop project Inner View on the road for this short run through the South. Arriving with what Bjarnson describes as “similar vibes to” Men I Trust, Inner View is supported by TV Extra, a new electro project featuring Nathan Heck from art-pop band A Rainy Night In and Mila Fino, who played trumpet in that outfit, too. 7 p.m. $10. Deviant Libation, Tampa
C Kathleen Edwards Now a Bay area resident, Canadian songwriter Kathleen Edwards plays a hometown show under the Skipperdome supporting a new album, Billionaire , released last summer. Produced by Jason Isbell and Gena Johnson, the 10-track record finds the 47-year-old turning up the wit and pulling the veil back more than ever. 7 p.m. $30-$40. Skipper’s Smokehouse, Tampa
FRI 06
C Bronwyn Keith-Hynes w/Jason Carter Bluegrass fans should know Bronwyn KeithHynes well. The 33-year-old put her first vocal solo record out about two years ago and started piecing her band together in 2024 as she played Monday gigs at Nashville bluegrass dive Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge. Keith-Hynes, a Berklee product who played fiddle in Molly Tuttle’s Golden Highway, steps to the front and stops playing reactively in her own unit that is part of the genre’s new school leaders who are rooted in tradition but see no boundaries for the classic American art form. She plays what’s sure to be a barnburner alongside Travelin’ McCourys fiddler Jason Carter. Put on Aubrey Hainey’s 1997 classic Doin’ My Time , some Michael Cleveland, or Tim Crouch during your pre-game. 8 p.m. $30. Bayboro Brewing Co., St. Petersburg
Oceanic w/Mirror Parts/Jupiter Bloom
The Bricks changed ownership last month, but its concert calendar remains intact. If you care most about supporting traveling bands playing what venues Tampa has left, best to check out North Carolina indie-pop outfit Oceanic when it’s supported by bouncy Orlando pop-rock band Mirror Parts and Tampa’s own Jupiter Bloom. 8 p.m. $20.51. The Bricks, Ybor City
C Sex Mex w/Wolf-Face/Pet Lizard/ Spanish Bombs Tennessee songwriter James Lee Lindsey Jr. has been gone for 16 years, but the spirit of his ridiculous garagepop project Jay Reatard lives on in folks like Nathan Gray. Leader of his own Texas band,
Sex Mex, Gray used to tap Ableton to help him play guitar and now has bandmates to create freaky rock and roll that blurs the lines between pop and punk. On the road supporting a brand new EP, Down in the Dump Trucks , Sex Mex is supported by Bay area exports Wolf-Face and Pet Lizard, along with “god’s least favorite boy band,” Spanish Bombs. A gig well worth the short road trip from Tampa or St. Pete. 7 p.m. $10-$15. Oscura, Bradenton
SAT 07
C Deep Bite (EP release) w/Blacksmith/ Dagger/Pale Gold/Fessi K On its brand new EP, During & Afterwards , Tampa band Deep Bite washes listeners in a cascade of guitar and drums pristinely put to tape by
THU FEBRUARY 05–THU FEBRUARY 12
Ethan Murphy at Dade City’s Back Forty Recordings. The band will presumably play it in full for this Skatepark gig featuring a reunion set from Bay area emo outfit Blacksmith. 6 p.m. $15. Skatepark of Tampa, Tampa
Pressing Strings For fans of bands like The Head and the Heart (“Blood To Me”) and even Dawes (“Bit Of Belief”), Jordan Sokel, Nick Welker and Justin Kruger—AKA Pressing Strings—play earnest, deeply harmonious folk-pop that plays like a balm to our stimuli-ridden day-to-day . 8 p.m. $13 & up. Fogartyville Community Media & Arts Center, Sarasota
SUN 08
C J Dilla Weekend Celebration: Deejay Kellan B2B DJ Dfaz James Dewitt Yancey would have been 52 years old this month. In 1997 the Detroit producer, who died on Feb. 10, 2006, made a choice that would change the course of hip hop and modern jazz: taking his drum machine off-beat. The small tweak rippled through three decades of music to push organic and mechanical sound together, influencing beat making and pop music as we know it. To mark the 20th anniversary of the famed hip-hop producer’s death, heads will coalesce in Ybor City where DJs Kelan and Dfaz play a B2B set of classics and exclusives by the legendary maestro. Because Dilla shares a birthday with him, performers at this open-aux event will also pay tribute to Japanese lo-fi hip-hop god Nujabes who also died too young on Feb. 26, 2010. 9 p.m. $5. Crowbar, Ybor City—Selene San Felice
WED 11
C Dana w/Permanent Makeup/Tiger 54/ Gnats Permanent Makeup has long been St. Petersburg’s premier purveyor of angular, face-crunching art-punk, and it warms the crowd up ahead of Dana, an Ohio band cut from the same cloth. The tight grooves on a 2025 outing, Clean Living , are what happens when a band spends four years on the road together. From the bounce in the record’s opening track, “Blueteeth,” to the shouted vocals of the title track, and the doomsday vibe of sprawling closer “Mankind,” Madeline Jackson (who fronts the band, with Theremin at the ready) conducts an ensemble that sounds kind of like what might happen if David Byrne was a crusty Dadaist that ran the DIY space down the street. 8 p.m. No cover. The Bends, St. Petersburg Insomniac w/Liquid Pennies/Dead Reef/ Deadmaul Doom and death metal often features a lot of growling. Not so much in the Insomniac camp. The Georgia quartet plays a meditative, almost shoegazing style of sprawling metal which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who picked up the band’s debut on account of its title (Om Moksha
Ritam , stylized in all-caps, and a mantra to align oneself with the universe). 6 p.m. $15. Deviant Libation, Tampa
THU 12
C Digable Planets Digable Planets’ mainstream success stopped on the Grammys stage. Collecting two awards in the 1994 ceremony, the emcee trio from Philly—Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler, Craig “Doodlebug” Irving, and Mary Ann “Ladybug Mecca” Vieira— used its speeches to call out hypocrisy in the music industry. “We’d like everybody to think about the people right outside this door that’s homeless,” Butler told the crowd. “As you sit in these $900 seats … they out there not eating at all. Also, we’d like to say to the universal Black family that one day we’re gonna recognize our true enemy. We’re gonna stop attacking each other, and maybe then we’ll get some changes going on.” The Planets’ sophomore album, Blowout Comb , carried the same tone, spreading antifascist messages to stand up for Black Americans. Unsurprisingly, it got virtually no label support and was considered a commercial flop, leading to the group’s breakup. Somewhere along the way, its message and complex production made Blowout a cult classic. Thirty years later, the group is back together, and St. Pete is part of an extended anniversary tour. 8 p.m. $28 & up. Jannus Live, St. Petersburg—SSF
Michelle Shirelle w/Jason Paul/Vic Alvaraz/Earthgirl For her New York City band Hasty, Michele Shirelle (who was also in The Steinways) plays bubble-gum chewing, literally unapologetic (“I Don’t Know Anything”) pop-punk. At this solo acoustic gig alongside Jason Paul, Shirelle is joined by local favorite Vic Alvarez (Awkward Age) also with acoustic in hand, plus Earthgirl playing a full-band set. 7 p.m. $10-$15. The Potion Portal, St. Petersburg
C Vincent Neil Emerson w/William Prince If you feel that outlaw country music is on life support, you’ll gain a little bit of hope upon listening to folk-country protagonist Vincent Neil Emerson. The Texan arrives with less-than-twangy tracks about adversities like living in his car and losing his father to suicide at the age of nine, and reminiscing about the brutal history of his Choctaw ancestors. The 33-year-old’s last set in town was an opening gig for Dallas Green’s City and Colour at The Ritz Ybor (just four blocks down from where the old Orpheum once stood), and it saw him confess how Green was the reason he picked up a guitar in the first place, and how his father was a truck driver, serving as the main reason why that commonly-used-in-modern-country theme squeezed its way into his set. 7 p.m. $35.06. Orpheum, Tampa—Josh Bradley
See an extended version of this listing via cltampa.com/music
C CL Recommends
MICHAEL WEINTROB
Bronwyn Keith-Hynes
Gasparilla Music Festival’s return has a soundtrack.
Indie-rock band Mt. Joy, college party guys
Two Friends, and jam-rock icon Gov’t Mule are headlining the three-day festival set for April in downtown Tampa. An email from Gasparilla Music Festival (GMF) said more than 50 additional acts will be announced soon.
Late last year, GMF announced a return from a one-year hiatus with a three-day festival at a new site: Meridian Fields, near Channelside and in the shadows of old silos from Tampa’s since-demolished Ardent flour mills.
Tickets for Gasparilla Music Festival 2026 happening Friday-Sunday, April 10-12 start at $55 for single-day admission. Three-day GA passes start at $100. VIP tickets start at
Steinway Piano Series: Ksenia Nosikova Sunday, March 8. 4 p.m. No cover, tickets required. Barness Recital Hall at University of South Florida, Tampa
Currents w/Erra/Caskets/Aviana Tuesday, March 10. 5:30 p.m. $41.25. The Ritz, Ybor City
Home Free Wednesday, March 11. 8 p.m. $41.50 & up. Bilheimer Capitol Theatre, Clearwater
Shehehe w/Wolves & Wolves & Wolves & Wolves/The Miller Lowlifes/In Transit Wednesday, March 11. 7 p.m. $10-$15. The Potion Portal, St. Petersburg
Burning Witches Sunday, March 15. 6:30 p.m. $25 & up. Brass Mug, Tampa
Assemblage 23 w/Mari Kattman/Ootz Ootz/DJ Dave Friday, March 20. $25-$30. Music hall at New World Tampa, Tampa
$135 for a single-day and $245 for a threeday pass. A pre-sale coinciding with GMF’s headliner announcement launched last week and requires the code “GMF26” to unlock.
Mt. Joy, from Philadelphia, will headline day one of GMF and is still on the road supporting last year’s Hope We Have Fun LP. It has two other Florida shows (April 9 and April 11) set for Hollywood and St. Augustine. Two Friends, a DJ duo featuring two actual friends Matthew Halper and Eli Sones, will headline day two of GMF and has only two other Sunshine State shows planned this year (at nightclubs in South Florida). Gov’t Mule, for its part, headlines day three of GMF 2026 as part of a short spring tour that includes an April 11 date at Joe Bonamassa’s Sound Wave Beach Weekend.
See Josh Bradley’s weekly roundup of newly announced concerts below.—Ray Roa
Carnivore A.D. Saturday, March 21. 6:30 p.m. $22.95. Brass Mug, Tampa
Christone “Kingfish Ingram” (opening for Joe Bonamassa) Saturday, March 21. 7 p.m. $95.75 & up. The BayCare Sound, Clearwater
The Beach Boys Thursday, March 26. 7:30 p.m. $141.40 & up. Hard Rock Event Center at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Tampa
Testament Wednesday, April 1. 6 p.m. $45.06. Jannus Live, St. Petersburg
Steinway Piano Series: SchiavoMarchegiani Piano Duo Tuesday, April 7. 7:30 p.m. No cover, tickets required. Barness Recital Hall at University of South Florida, Tampa
The Happy Fits Tuesday, April 14. 8 p.m. $36.05. Jannus Live, St. Petersburg
Lonely IRL
Docs-on-the-ground dating is tough.
By Jane Dyke/Sapphic Sun
How do you meet other lesbians without going to a bar or joining a dating app? It feels like no matter how social I am, I’m not meeting other lesbians.—Honeyhunting Honey
Hi Honeyhunting, dating apps and bars are easy because people there generally expect to get hit on, even if they’re not actively seeking the same outcome as you. If you’re seeking romantic companionship, I’d still recommend a bar if you’re down to be around alcohol. If you don’t want to do that, there are other ways to meet a gay woman. You don’t have to resort to giving yourself a fucked up haircut and browsing the flower section at the St. Pete Trader Joe’s.
ASK A DYKE
Lesbians tend to congregate in art and athletics, and at lesbianspecific nightlife events. I’m talking about gallery openings, DIY concerts, local markets, roller derby, rugby, Dyke Nites, Her Way, and more. You can also find a high concentration of sapphics in some nerdy circles (see last month’s article on gay LARPers), but you’ll have to find the right ones through trial and error to avoid being surrounded by a bunch of annoying gamer guys.
Outside of this, you might meet “solitary lesbians” who frequent straight spaces waiting to bump into another lesbian. Look for the signals of lesbianism. It’s easier to tell with butches or studs whose presentations are visibly queer. If you’re looking to pick up femmes, it could be a little harder and the signs aren’t always clear. Meeting people who you suspect could be queer and finding out they’re straight is a great way to calibrate your gaydar.
Another way to find what events lesbians are flocking to is to follow a few people you know are lesbians on social media and see what events they go to. If you see someone tagged in a post on Dyke Nite’s Instagram, for instance, you could follow their account and see if they share event flyers. You can even do a little respectful stalking of their past posts to see where they show up. I would advise you to do this with multiple people rather than just one to broaden your horizons—and to avoid becoming an actual stalker.
When you meet a gay person, it sounds like you mean to form a friendship before going deeper (or maybe the friendship itself is your goal). Don’t form friendships exclusively with lesbians you’re romantically interested in, and don’t start any friendships with the singular goal to eventually start a relationship. Friendship is one of the most normal ways to feel out a relationship if you do it right.
Don’t let a crush develop into an obsession. If you find yourself daydreaming about a friend
you’re interested in, that’s the time to ask them on a date. There’s no other way around it. Don’t casually float the idea of romantic interest, don’t ask them out over text, don’t half-ass anything; hedging is less romantic if they say yes, and more embarrassing if they say no. When you see them in person, ask if you can take them on a casual date for coffee. If they say no, accept it gracefully, don’t explain yourself, and continue your friendship as normal. If you find that you still obsess over them after this and your crush doesn’t quickly fade, cut off the friendship and avoid putting yourself in similar situations in the future. The “friendship first” approach only works if the friendship can be a separate entity from your attraction. If you still have trouble, just hop on a dating app with the intent to make friends, and have them bring you to whatever spaces they frequent. As long as you can find people with active social lives, it’s foolproof.
Yours in love,
Jane Dyke
The Sapphic Sun is part of the Tampa Bay Journalism Project TBJP, a nascent Creative Loafing Tampa Bay effort supported by grants and a coalition of donors who make specific contributions via the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation. If you are a non-paywalled Bay area publication interested in TBJP, please email rroa@ctampa. com. Support Sapphic Sun by subscribing to its monthly print edition at sapphicsunfl.com.
“Lysistrata
Haranguing the Athenian Women,” Aubrey Beardsley, 1896.
Medicine, man
By Dan Savage
About a year ago I moved in with a childhood best friend and his husband. We’re all in our mid-30s. It’s been going great, and I consider the three of us to be fairly close. About a month ago, the husband and I stopped at the local pharmacy on the way home, which is how our various medications wound up in a pile on the table. While trying to dig my meds out from said pile, I noticed one of his prescriptions that I know can either be used as PrEP or as treatment for HIV. (I work in medicine.)
Through conversations with my friends/ roommates, I know they are in a closed relationship, so I believe this means the husband has HIV and is treating it. I shouldn’t say anything to either of them, right? I don’t consider it any of my business (he’s treating it! I’m not sleeping with either of them! they’re monogamous!), but I could imagine a world where one or both of them is anxious about my reaction if I were to find out. I’m close to my childhood bestie’s family, who I’m 99% sure don’t know. (I would never, ever tell them, of course.) What say you, Dan? Do I take this to the grave?—Getting Real About Viral Eyeful
Arbor Day, Tuesdays, Thursdays, the Oscars, Emmys, Tonys, etc.)
It’s also possible the most important people in their lives know why they’re taking those telltale meds but they didn’t feel comfortable telling you. And seeing as your first impulse after spotting those meds was to wonder whether you needed to INFORM THEIR FAMILIES that one or the other or both of them might be HIV+ or that they might be one of those gay couples that define monogamy as “we only have sex with each and only have sex with other people together,” GRAVE, maybe they were right not to tell you.
SAVAGE LOVE
This is none of your business… which you claim to know, GRAVE, and yet here you are wondering what, if anything, you should do. Nothing. You should do nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Seeing as your childhood best friend’s husband couldn’t be bothered to hide his meds from his relatively new roommate—that would be you—we can safely assume he isn’t hiding them from his husband. So, you can rest assured your childhood best friend knows what’s up and you don’t have a duty to warn him. Also, if they were anxious about your reaction to one of them having HIV, GRAVE, they wouldn’t have let you dig through a pile of their prescriptions.
There’s a reason this guy gets those meds and, again, his husband surely knows what that reason is. Maybe your bestie’s husband was HIV+ before they met and has an undetectable viral load thanks to these medications, GRAVE, which means your bestie is not at risk. (Undetectable = untransmissible.) Or maybe your childhood best friend is HIV+ and on meds and has an undetectable viral load and his husband takes PrEP for an added layer of protection. Or maybe they’re open and they don’t feel comfortable talking with you about it—not all open gay couples are out to their straight friends about being non-monogamous—and they take PrEP daily or PrEP on demand to protect themselves on those rare/special occasions when they do fuck around with other guys. (Birthdays, anniversaries, Pride Month, Lent,
I know, I know: you immediately ruled out telling their families, GRAVE, and you deserve credit for that. (Self-regulation for the win!) But the fact that you had to had to rule it out—the fact that you had squelch the impulse—is a little concerning. Not an indictment of your character or anything, but if your first thought when you find evidence your childhood best friend and his husband might be fucking other people is, “Do their mothers know?”, marks you out as a person a gay man might not feel comfortable confiding in about things their mothers don’t need to know.
If there’s something this couple wants you to know about their health or their sex life, they’ll tell you. In the meantime, GRAVE, you can prove you’re worthy of their trust by respecting their privacy—and for roommates, respecting privacy often means not bringing up something private you only saw because you’re roommates. There’s a good chance your friend’s husband clocked you clocking his meds, GRAVE, and if you do the right thing—if you demonstrate discretion and chill— he might open up to you about his health and his sex life. But let him initiate that conversation.
I’m on SSI in low-income housing. I’m a 54-year-old man and still a virgin. Since I was a child, I have always liked women’s legs and feet. I love pantyhose. I masturbate every night to what I hear and see about that, especially Tiffani Thiessen. I was worried that I had scarred the underside of my penis, but I’ve been given a clean
bill of health by a specialist. With these things in mind, I think a nurse is my best fit since they’re sexual and they can examine me. There was actually an ad on Craigslist a few years ago about rooming with two nurses. Ideally, I’d like to find a similar living situation in the Dallas area, due to the milder climate. Additionally, I think Dallas offers the best chance for me to find a job that fits my educational background and get off SSI. (Finding a relationship while poor or indigent is impossible.) While I would obviously have heavy sexual motives regarding nurse roommates, I don’t want to hurt anyone or ask them to commit malpractice. Perhaps rooming with a nurse or two who works in research, or some other non-invasive field would be a safer bet? If you know someone who could help me, please let me know.—Needs Understanding Roommates Sexual Efforts
Only you can help you, NURSE, and disabusing yourself of this delusion—there are no hot nurses out there who would be willing to examine their virgin roommate’s 54-year-old penis because that’s what he wants—is the single most important thing you can do to help yourself. If you want to live in Dallas, if you have job prospects in Dallas, by all means, NURSE, move to Dallas. Get a job, get your own place, and get roommates if you need help making rent. But springing your kinks on a new roommate or roommates— whether they’re nurses or not—won’t get your dick examined. Your roommates won’t examine your dick just because you asked. Your roommates will box up your shit, put it on the porch, and have the locks changed.
Here’s a better plan: get a job, get a place, get a couple of roommates to cut your living expenses— roommates you wouldn’t be tempted to hit on—and save your money to hire a sex worker. There are plenty of sex workers out there who would happily wear pantyhose and pretend to be nurses while they examine your cock for signs of wear and tear.
I’m a 50-something penis owner with a factoryinstalled attraction to diapers. As a committed ABDL switch, I’ve had the luxury of building my own special clothing collection and a nursery, and I occasionally visit the most extraordinary Mommy Dom. (Shoutout to Mistress Morgana
in SF!) For the past five years, I’ve also played online daddy to a very cute adult baby girl who’s my part-time slutty piglet. I’ve arrived at a point where my morning wood distresses me and ejaculating to relieve it makes me unhappy all day. I find the idea of owning smaller, less excitable genitals very appealing. Can you please offer some more detailed advice, other than suggesting that a cage will cause damage to one’s erectile tissue?—Sad About Manhood Penises can and do shrink. It’s not something most men want to happen, SAM, but there are lots of ways you can make it happen for yourself. Before I walk you through your options, I want to disabuse you of your delusion: a smaller penis is not by definition a less excitable one. Lots of guys with smaller dicks are insanely horny, jack off all the time, enjoy great sex lives with satisfied partners, etc. So, while some of the options I’m about to share with you would tank your libido, SAM, let the record show that smaller dicks and low libidos have neither a correlative nor a causative relationship.
Option 1: Anything that fucks with your vascular system—anything that interferes with blood circulation—has the power to knock an inch or two off your cock. So, if you take up smoking and commit to a shitty diet, SAM, you could wind up with diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease, all of which lead to tissue atrophy, weaker erections, and loss of length. I do not recommend this option.
Option 2: Low testosterone can reduce penile tissue elasticity and responsiveness. While this can happen naturally as you age, it can be induced with certain medications that I’ll let you google for yourself. The shrinkage is usually modest, and side effects include fatigue, depression, and muscle loss. I do not recommend this option.
Option 3: Get prostate cancer and treat it very aggressively. Prostatectomy and radiation are among the most reliable, medically documented causes of cock shrinkage. They alter blood flow, disrupt nerve signaling, and damage erectile tissues. (If they’re the first thing you doc recommends when your prostate biopsy comes back positive, you need a different doctor.) You could also wind up incontinent, and you would have cancer, which sucks. Since there’s a proven link between prostate cancer and masturbation—too little masturbation, i.e. infrequent ejaculations, ups your chances of developing prostate cancer—you’re on the right track if this option appeals to you. I do not recommend this option.
Option 4: Get older. This is the slowest, least dramatic route. Since we’re all going to age, my recommendation here is irrelevant. Good luck. Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love! Or record your question for the Savage Lovecast at savage.love/askdan! Podcasts, columns and more at Savage.Love
Legal, Public Notices
Notice of Public Sale Notice is hereby given that the undersigned will sell, to satisfy lien of the owner, at public sale by competitive bidding on www.storagetreasures.com ending on February 13th, 2026 at 10:00 am for units located at: Compass Self Storage 2291 S. Frontage Rd, Plant City, Florida 33563. Purchases must be made with cash only and paid at the time of sale. All goods are sold as is and must be removed at the time of purchase. Compass Self Storage reserves the right to refuse any bid. Sale is subject to adjournment. The personal goods stored therein by the following may include, but are not limited to general household, furniture, boxes, clothes and appliances, unless otherwise noted. Unit 1111 Wayneisha Savoy Unit 2039 Erika Saniago Unit 2162 Anne Noyola Run Dates 1/29/2026 and 02/05/2026
Notice of Public Sale Notice is hereby given that the undersigned will sell, to satisfy lien of the owner, at public sale by competitive bidding on www.storagetreasures.com. ending on February 13th, 2026 at 10:00 am for units located at Compass Self Storage 1685 Hwy 17 N Eagle Lake Florida 33839 . Purchases must be made with cash only and paid at time of sale. All Goods are sold as is and must
be removed at the time of purchase. Compass Self Storage reserves the right to refuse any bid. Sale is subject to adjournment. The personal goods stored therein by the following may include, but are not limited to general household, furniture, boxes, clothes and appliances, unless otherwise noted. Unit 2027 Jessica Riner
Unit 3166 Edgar Brito Unit E411 Lindasia Lawson Unit F501 Isabelino Llanot Unit F510 Leroy Drayton. Run dates 1/29/26 and 2/5/26.
By Merl Reagle
She said, “Little people pay taxes”
69 Tape: abbr.
Outstanding 71 Carefree outing
61 Pine pest
62 Matches the Joneses
64 Leftover recipes
65 Corporate gettogether
68 Chekhov uncle 69 Regrets
73 Word found in the definition of “alee”
74 Nummular finds
76 Atahualpa’s people
77 EEEEE, e.g. 79 Fit in 80 Foreshadowing 81 Swiss capital 82 Mussolini was one
