It’s been awhile in this dining suggestion (see back story in Jan. 1 Rants) segment since we just went out for a treat. This week, let’s visit one of the long established, family-owned “treat” spots in Clearwater – the Dairy Kurl on Gulf to Bay just east of Highland Avenue. Great soft serve and shakes.

What’s good for motorists, also good for other road users

First, let us say the writer of this diatribe is a motorist, bicyclist and pedestrian. A few weeks back, predictably, there was a knee jerk reaction in the media over some bicycle advocate being hit by a car on the east coast. This prompted many jurisdictions including Clearwater to say they are going to crack down on violations by all road users. We’ll see. You would expect a lot of citations for folks who jaywalk through Clearwater’s roundabout; bicyclists who blow through stoplights and yield signs with impunity and motorcyclists who do more dumb things than you can imagine. Our guess is there will be a few weeks of crackdowns and then bikers and walkers will go back to doing the same dumb things and worse their brethren in automobile’s do.

Tampa Bay, politics and stuff

1. From a week that was – Hernandez and O’Reilly, just two more names to keep in mind as people who grew drunk with fame.

2. The city has made it official; they will buy a critical piece of downtown land from the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. The aquarium turned down a much larger offer from Scientology. Maybe we should all stroke a check to the CMA for their fortitude and the great work they do on Island Estates.

3. Cool write ups on Clearwater’s marina and some of its tenants in the latest Clearwater Beach Neighborhood Newsletter edited by Bob Griffin. Gosh, we never realized the Double Eagle’s Sandy Haggert once had dark hair!

4. From the 5:05 Newsletter, the hits just keep on coming: Democratic National Party Chairman Tom Perez took over the party with a mission to overhaul the party’s direction and energy and give it new life. He immediately ordered all DNC staffers to resign, causing four network newscasts to go dark.

5. You’ve lived in Clearwater a long time if you remember sitting in spring break traffic while waiting for the draw bridge to open and close.

The diamond, the media and other stuff:

6. With the Lightning season over, the Rays, to no one’s surprise, sputtering along at .500 and little excitement over the Bucs, it’s a safe bet to predict a playoff-free season for Tampa Bay in 2017.

7. A day a year for major league baseball to honor Jackie Robinson is all well and good, but MLB has to either get rid of the confusing concept of every player wearing 42 or spend a few bucks and put name tags on the back of the uniforms.

8. While on the subject of Robinson, maybe it’s time to revisit the idea of universally retiring the number of the most outstanding player from Latin America, both on and off the field – Roberto Clemente. The idea was floated by MLB several years ago but not acted upon. Most disturbing at that time was the Robinson family’s opposition to honoring Clemente.

9. This gem of knowledge from Lou Simon’s Sixties Satellite Survey on XM Radio: with all the big female singing acts of the 60s, Petula Clark, Lesley Gore, Brenda Lee to mention a few, the biggest selling female single record of the 1960s was Lulu’s To Sir with Love. But overall, the most successful female singer of the 60s was Little Miss Dynamite – Brenda Lee – all four foot, nine inches of her.

10. Most interesting thing about the Buc’s 2017 schedule is the tail end. On the last three weeks of the season, they play all three division rivals – two at home. That period will make or break the Buc’s season as well as the other three teams.

Fox News southbound

Left wing news types, both television and print, are turning handsprings over Bill O’Reilly’s fall from grace. And it is with good reason. On cable, O’Reilly was eating every other competitor’s lunch with nearly twice the audience of his closest rival. CNN and MSNBC tried everybody and everything under the sun to dislodge the Fox News giant over the years with no success. In the end, O’Reilly himself did what the other cable companies could not do. It is safe to say that Fox’s bench is about as weak as that of the Democratic Party and they will come back to the field. They had already lost Megyn Kelly. Carlson Tucker taking the O’Reilly time slot is a lightweight. Hannity is about the only bullet left in the holster and he’s no O’Reilly. Look for the other cable news networks to smell blood and redouble their efforts to unseat Fox News.

SNEAK PEEK AT NEXT WEEK: THREE TV SHOWS THAT WENT OUT WHILE STILL ON TOP