Tampa Bay Street Team

At the last Beer Club, we filmed some of our readers and staffers telling us why they think they’re the “Best of the Bay.” You can see the videos here. At this year’s Best of the Bay Awards ceremony, we’ll be showing some of these videos and we’re also asking our readers to submit their own.  The rules are easy: film yourself (nothing fancy), and upload the video to YouTube. Once it’s uploaded, e-mail us the URL. We’ll take a look, and if it’s chosen for the Best of the Bay Awards Show, we’ll let you know.  

But hurry, the deadline is Monday, September 8.

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Dreaming of being a rock star is as American as dreaming about having sex with a rock star. I’ve read countless interviews with performers who describe how they were always putting on “shows” when they were younger. They use these anecdotes as evidence that performing is in their blood. What these talented, or just plain lucky, bastards don’t realize is that most every American kid puts on “shows” as a way to get attention. I used to chase my parents around the house while strumming a plastic guitar in my underwear and singing the same verse to “Old McDonald” repeatedly. And yes, I too won a talent contest for a rap I wrote and performed with a group of four white boys at camp.

You could say that being a rock star is in my blood. So why the hell am I not on TRL or dating Miley Cyrus. The problem is that though performing maybe in my blood, musical talent isn’t. I was born with an impaired sense of rhythm. Five separate times I attempted to teach myself the guitar and failed. When I was older, I attempted the bass thinking it would be easier to learn considering it only has four strings. My highlight from this venture was being asked to play bass on an intentionally horrendous, mock hard-rock song called “Sewer of Ass Piss.” Since playing an instrument was out of the question, I did what any talentless performer does: I decided to become a singer. I did in fact write and record a few songs with my sexually explicit boy band, 2 Sr. Real, but hearing my recorded voice was painful even for someone as self-obsessed as me.

The fact that I will never be a rock star has been particularly difficult to accept considering that I have so many other attributes that make me overqualified: I can switch leotards within a matter of seconds, play air guitar against the carefully formed bulge in my tight pants, and underage women eat me up. Unfortunately the world will never know my talents, and I will never seduce as many women as the grungiest of rock stars.  I am reminded of this sad fact every time I go to a rock show. I will never be a rock star and so my only hope is to try and sleep with one.  

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I had a long week. I spent it training to be an instructor in Rhetoric at USF. The course work and mandatory sports coat with leather elbow patches didn’t intimidate me. What worried me was that I was expected to be a role model for over 40 incoming freshman.  This is a particularly daunting task considering that my Google identity includes videos of me chugging beer at CL’s Beer Club and an extensive online account of my attempts to pick up women. Let’s just hope that the pictures of me at that bachelorette party don’t emerge. 

After a week of training, one thing was certain: I needed a disguise. Something that would make me look tough. Naturally my mind wandered to actors, whose job it is to obscure their perverse lifestyles in order to appear tough on screen; maybe I needed a six-shooter or one of those mean-looking bandolier belts strapped across my chest. Or maybe I should be a little more subtle.  From experience I know I look particularly threatening in a wig and a fake mustache that would put Charles Bronson to shame.

I thought over these foolproof schemes to appear as a respectable member of society as I drank heavily at Limey’s Friday during this month’s beer club.

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“Everyone assumes skaters are bad kids,” said Bobbie Clothier as a gang of longhaired kids circled her, assaulting each other with firecracker poppers Saturday night. “The bad ones are the ones who don’t skate and hangout outside the skateparks. Nothing good happens after midnight or outside a skatepark.”From my own experience, I knew this was true. The kids who are too uncoordinated to skate sit in the bleachers talking shit or taking walks to the woods to smoke. But, judging by how rowdy these skaters were, I’d hate to run into their bad counterparts. Not that these kids were mean-spirited. They just had the kind of energy that makes you dizzy just watching them run around screaming like ballistic missiles.

“I refuse to medicate my kids for ADHD,” Clothier told me as if reading my facial expression. “Skateboarding is the only effective treatment.”

We were at The Market on 7^th pizza parlor and pub in Ybor for the after-party of the Skatepark of Tampa’s Back to School Bash Contest.

I made the mistake of arriving at the all-ages show early. I felt like I was reliving my middle school Fridays at the skating rink. DJ Colonic was spinning some Jackson 5. A table of young girls sat by themselves giggling and pointing to boys. Dance lights moved over a polished wood floor that had yet to be filled. I used to be so cool I wouldn’t even bring roller skates to the rink. I’d just sit in a sticky booth bumming off someone else’s junk food, trying to hide braces, impressing girls by exchanging punches and gay jokes with buddies, and fighting the urge to strap on some wheels and chase each other around the floor like the teeny boppers we were. That same awkwardness returned to me.

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