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Clipse — \”Intro\”

(Courtesy Complex.com.)

Label drama just goes hand-in-hand with Virginia-born hip hop duo Clipse. To anyone who’s followed the top-shelf rap group over the years, last week’s news that the release date for the pair’s third LP (Till the Casket Drops) is being pushed back till next March came as no surprise. The guys’ previous studio album, Hell Hath No Fury, spent years in label-reshuffle purgatory before finally hitting the streets two years ago. Frustrated with the way Jive treated them, and faced with disappointing sales numbers for Fury, Clipse signed with Columbia Records last year, and I honestly thought everything would go smoothly from there.

Turns out, not so much.

Luckily, no label can block a mixtape, and Clipse consistently releases some of the finest unofficial albums you’re going to find in the hip hop world. The duo’s We Got it 4 Cheap series is now three excellent volumes deep, and next Monday, we get treated to Play Cloths Presents: Road to Till the Casket Drops. Few details about the tape have leaked yet, but the site hosting it, Complex.com, is offering up a free stream and download of the album’s opening track.

“Intro” isn’t much of a departure for Clipse — which is most definitely a good thing.

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Originally from Scotland, Mary and Mark Devlin spent 18 years in Japan, operating Japan’s largest English-language newspaper, among other businesses. Last year, they decided to get out of publishing and move back to the West, and settled on Sarasota. To get a visa, though, they need a business, so Kroaky’s Karaoke was born. This Japanese-style karaoke palace consists of several private rooms where folks can get their groove on with only friends to point and mock, along with beer, wine and food to make everything more convivial. We spoke with Mary just hours before Kroaky’s grand opening last Friday.

On opening a business:

“The thing we really, really missed was karaoke rooms. Somewhere like Tokyo, the typical karaoke place would be about 10 floors high, five rooms on each floor, and there might be four competing places on the same street corner.”

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Austin Kowal holds up a plain gray T-shirt and ponders it like a blank canvas. He strategically places it on the wooden palette and smoothes the wrinkles. He lowers a metal-framed screen like a copy machine lid down on to the shirt, stopping just short so he could eyeball where the design would land. He spoons a glob of thick, black ink onto the screen and scrapes some of it over the design. He lifts the screen and the shirt bears the perfectly stenciled image.

His art is ready to wear.

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"30 Years of Social History: The Dacia" by Vlad Nanca

Ed. note: This article, by Kevin Costello, will appear in next week’s Creative Loafing.

Unpack your telescope and look out through the doors of Andromeda to witness the galaxy of that name spiraling outside our Milky Way. Watch a separate cluster of stars move in a rhythm different from our own, and recognize the immense distance that separates us. But the very act of observation — seeing, witnessing — helps bridge that void.

A similar earthbound connection can be made during a visit to Ringling College’s Selby Gallery to catch Traces: Contemporary Romanian Art. The exhibit is enormously satisfying. Dr. Ann Albritton, a liberal arts faculty member at the College, and Romanian artists Gabriela Boiangiu, Emanuel Borcescu and Delia Popa worked together to curate the show, and settles on work from 16 young artists. Their images are both straightforward critiques of society or ironic parodies of long established societal clichés, and they explore issues of culture and gender through a variety of media: photography, video, hand-sewn projects, small objects and painting.

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Old Heidelberg Cafe and Pastry Shop

3.5 stars
1533 State St., Sarasota, 822-0641 or oldheidelberg.net

The signs were up on the State Street spot for months, teasing me every weekend as I walked to the farmer’s market. A new bakery in a town that’s basically been struggling along with just a few places to get fantastic pastry and bread! Even better, it’s just a block away from C’Est La Vie. I couldn’t wait.

Turns out, Old Heidelberg is worth the wait. The bakery has been in existence for over 30 years, most of that in Colorado Springs under German-transplant Karl Schoenberger. After a stint in Europe to get some classical training under his belt, Schoenberger Jr. took over the family business in 1988. After so long in the mountains, why Sarasota?

“The last couple of winters out there just got to me,” explained Schoenberg Jr. “And my wife’s family is all up and down Florida. We kind of picked a spot in the middle.” The couple flew to Florida earlier this year to scout locations, and immediately felt a connection with Sarasota. (more…)

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“I would love to start a screenprinting business and design my own T-shirts, but these damn screenprinting machines cost so much money! What will I ever do? I know… I’ll just MacGyver one together out of homemade material and set it up above our new shop at 537 South Pineapple Ave.” This was the thought process of Austin Kowal and Evan Ekasala when they developed the business model for their newest venture, Clothesline Tees. The two 20-somethings are coming out with some wicked designs that they are limiting to one-per-shirt-size right now. They’ve only been in the screenprinting business for a little over three months, but they are already getting the hang of it —  the shirts look sweet.

I’m hanging out at the shop today to find out more: Keep checking back to get the full scoop, or just pick up next week’s issue. It’s the cover, bitches.

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“Light-hearted and funny” is how Sarasota County Republican Party Chairman Eric Robinson describes an ad he produced targeting Democratic county commission candidate Jono Miller in a superb article by Rick Barry over on the Pelican Press website. The ad Robinson refers to? It featured “a ridiculously stumbling, bearded man wearing a pink tutu, with the label ‘Jono Miller’ on a black bar above the image.” Sure sounds “light-hearted and funny,” right?

Unfortunately, scouring YouTube to post the “Miller” video here produced no results. That doesn’t mean there’s not plenty of Sarasota slime out there. This ad — which features a fat actor gobbling ice cream as a stand-in for Democrat and incumbent state representative Keith Fitzgerald — wallows in the gutter as well:

In his piece, Barry pegs the local GOP’s ‘08 electoral success to its flurry of negative advertising in the final days of the campaign, estimating that up to $100,000 was dumped into each race in the home stretch. Local Democrats promise they won’t be outspent next time around.

And Fitzgerald’s position will only be stronger in two years: Florida Democratic legislators recently named him policy chairman, which makes him the third highest-ranking Democrat in the Florida House. Not bad for a guy supposedly “giving taxpayers fits.” (Got to admit: I like me some puns.)

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Yep, this sucker’s going up next spring, right along 41 between 4th Street and Boulevard of the Arts (also known as 6th Street), meaning we here at CL are going to get first-row seats to the construction. According to today’s Herald-Tribune, the complex will include a Waldorf-Astoria and a performing arts center. The city commission voted unanimously to approve the project, despite past reservations about the Proscenium’s impact on Tamiami Trail traffic. I guess the chance to create 6,600 local jobs speaks pretty loudly these days.

Let’s hope the Proscenium lives up to its promise and gets built in a timely manner. Pineapple Square was slated to start going up nearly two years ago and, aside from a Brooks Brothers and a Tastings or two, construction has yet to begin.

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Well, Sarasota, it’s been a solid 320 days since you and I last spoke, since I split from the Creative Loafing family because, gosh, you just don’t turn down four months of no rent in Venice, Italy. (For kicks, you can read my “farewell” column here.) So I spent my springtime in Venice, returned to Sarasota in early May, bounced around as a freelancer for a couple months, then picked up work as a field organizer with the Barack Obama campaign. Funny thing about working for campaigns, though: They end.

So, voilà, I’m back. And I’m damn happy to be here.

You’ll hear more from me in the coming days and weeks, of course, and you’ll also have the chance to get to know our new staff writer, Tim Sukits, as well as hear from our cavalcade of regular voices. In the meantime, send me an email (cooper@creativeloafing.com) or give me a call (941-906-7476) and let me know exactly what rules, what sucks and what you want to hear more about. I’m here for you, so let it all out.

Can’t lie, Sarasota: It feels good to be back.

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U.S. automakers are currently panhandling through Washington’s halls of power, seeking a mere $50 billion for a cup of coffee and potential financial solvency. The economy, along with decades of inept adaption to changing auto sale business models, are making GM, Chrysler and Ford shake with need. GM’s stock closed at a 59-year low last week, and they recently walked away from merger talks with Chrysler. GM’s current market value is $1.9 billion. Last quarter profits for Toyota were $1.4 billion. Is there something below “junk” status?

Since automakers’ debt has been devalued, the companies are forced to borrow money at double-digit interest rates from banks. That’s if they can find anyone with the cash and nigh-beatific optimism to throw in with a failing industry. The government already gave the automakers $25 billion in low-cost loans over a month ago (ostensibly to aid the development of fuel-efficient vehicles), after Ford and GM ran through over $16 billion in cash reserves the third quarter. How does a company spend more than three times its total value in a single quarter? (more…)

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