My column this week delivers the somber pronouncement that Tampa Bay has jumped the shark:
When I first moved to this area in 1988 to be part of the dynamic newspaper war between the Times and the Tribune, Tampa was flirting with its whole “America’s Next Great City” dream. The drinks were cold; the beaches were beautiful. Ybor City was alive and vibrant, with interesting shops, restaurants and artists’ lofts that gave way in late nights to tens of thousands of partiers.
As I walked through Ybor on a Thursday night last week, I was nearly alone.
I thought about many of my old South Tampa buddies who have deserted what was once a great neighborhood to move to a better, more interesting (and more affordable) place, St. Petersburg. That city’s nightlife and arts scene may be small by national standards, but by Tampa Bay’s shrinking yardstick, it seems downright Bourbon Street. Young creatives can afford to live there, even if we don’t give them enough job opportunities to keep them in Tampa Bay for long.
The newspaper war is over.
Neither side won; the public lost. We are more likely to read about the latest local reality show star arrested in some kind of drunken stupidity than we are about, say, how 500 Haitians living in Tampa Bay attended a concert by their national superstar, BéLO.
And I wonder where my — our — optimism went? (I’m guessing it moved to St. Pete along with my former South Tampa circle of friends.)
Read the entire piece here at our redesigned CL website.
