Clearwater: let’s buy a post office!

The city of Clearwater is contemplating buying the downtown post office – at least 3 of 5 city council persons are. By a 3-2 vote, the city decided they need to purchase an 80-year-old building for 2.1 million dollars. There have to be some good reasons for this – darned if we can figure out what they are. Just a couple reasons this is not a good idea. If the government decides to sell and not replace the downtown post office, the most western full service post office in Clearwater will be on Hercules Avenue – bad news for downtown residents and merchants not to mention the beach which lost their post office several years ago. Next, we can’t begin to imagine what maintenance issues are entailed in caring for this 80-year-old building. And oh yeah, how does the city plan to utilize the structure that was designed as a post office and nothing else? Again, we tip our cap to Mayor Cretekos and Councilman Jonson for declining this rush to spend a couple million. By the way, one of the yes votes was an employee of the postal service – a vote where he clearly should have recused himself.

Around Tampa Bay

1. Congratulations to the Palm Pavilion’s Ken Hamilton, 2016’s Mr. Clearwater. Ken was recognized for his outstanding community work with Ruth Eckerd Hall and many other civic organizations over the years. Your fellow “Tree House” members are busting their buttons with pride, Ken!

2. Perhaps we should move the Florida State Fair to April – one of the driest months of the year in the Sunshine State – a month when we always need rain. Because as we all know, if the Florida State Fair is underway, it’s going to rain!

3. We seldom agree with Florida’s far left newspapers like the Herald and the Times, but we’re holding hands with them on the subject of open carry laws in Florida. This is a tourism driven state for heaven’s sake. The last thing we need to do is turn Florida into Six Gun Territory.

4. CBS has ordered production of Four Stars, a drama loosely based on activity at MacDill AFB. We can only assume it will be subtitled Kardashians: West Coast Florida.

5. You’ve lived in the bay area a long time if you remember the breakfast suggestions served up every morning by Tom McEwen at the top of his sports column in the Tampa Tribune.

The diamond, the media and other stuff

6. The entertainment industry took a double hit last week with the passing of Maurice White, the guiding light of Earth Wind and Fire – about as unique a band as there was in the rock era. And long before there were shows like the Q Morning Zoo in this market and similar radio “teams” in other markets, there was the highbrow humor of Bob and Ray who made their mark in both radio and TV. Bob Elliot, the surviving member of the celebrated duo died last week at age 92.

7. We lost a bunch of first rate Tampa Bay area media folks to retirement last year – (RANTS – June 8, 2015) in Anne Dwyer, Yolanda Fernandez, Gayle Sierens and John Wilson. This past week, Chip Carter announced he’s stepping down as Channel 13’s sports director after thirty plus years. Another classy individual - we will miss him.

8. The holiday season and the Super Bowl with just a single Clydesdale sighting? A pox on Budweiser and the Lithuanian or wherever company that now owns the former king of beers. Instead of the graceful horses in all the Bud spots, we get some actress who most people have never heard of. And Bud sales are down from last year. Clydesdale lovers would call it karma.

9. Related to the above: What do Dial Soap, French’s Mustard, Lucky Strike Cigarettes and Popsicle have in common? The four long time pieces of Americana are all foreign owned.

10. Yet another gem from the unmatched 5:05 Newsletter: “The world has completely flipped in my lifetime. There was once a time when all the GM jobs were in Flint and you couldn’t drink the water in Mexico.”

Denver’s convincing win

Well, we have the first “What we meant to say” entry for our year end edition of TBRR (Tampa Bay Rants and Raves). Denver proved that wit and guile along with a crushing defense (return of the Orange Crush?) can overcome what appeared, on paper, to be a better team. Two observations from a blog that heavily favored Carolina: while Von Miller was named the game’s MVP, the most valuable people associated with the game were Gary Kubiak and his defensive coordinator Wade Phillips who put together a game plan on both sides of the ball that propelled the Broncos to victory. Meanwhile, despite his many skills, we sometimes forget Cam Newton was playing in only his sixth postseason game (as opposed to 27 for Peyton Manning) and he looked very much the part.