Where do our tourists come from?

As we near the end of our traditional summer tourism season (and it was a good one), here’s a look at where our tourists come from. These are 2015 numbers: the top three feeder markets for our tourists are New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia, putting to rest a lot of our mindset that we draw primarily a mid-west crowd. Actually, the third largest feeder market is Orlando but very few of those folks are actual Orlando residents. Mickey, Universal and the rest help our tourism – the parks are great fun but none have a beach and its related activities like Clearwater.

Tampa Bay, politics and other stuff:

1. There was no surprise in either of the two U.S. Senate races in Florida with Marco Rubio and Patrick Murphy easy winners. The only surprise is that in a state of 20 million people, they are the best two candidates we could muster.

2. On the educational front, the Pinellas County School Board, already weakened by the departure of veteran Janet Clark, took another hit with the razor thin loss of Ken Peluso, a positive force on the board. In Hillsborough, memories proved short as Susan Valdes and Cindy Stuart, the ringleaders of the infamous “Gang of Four”, both were reelected although Valdes’ victory was by less than 300 votes.

3. A few last election notes: Pinellas voters showed their savvy in electing a professional appraiser and a sitting judge over two career politicians although the judicial race was closer than it should have been. And in Hillsborough, 86-year-old County Clerk Pat Frank was re-nominated on the Democratic ticket, but then Hillsborough once elected a dead guy back in the fifties.

4. A comment from political analyst George Will last week: “30 percent of Americans can name their two U.S. Senators”. He did not specify if that included Floridians like us who know who they are but ashamed to admit it.

5. You’ve lived in Clearwater a long time if you dined at Henry Henriquez’ Pelican Restaurant on Clearwater Beach.

The diamond, the media and other stuff:

6. Our bay area television stations need to take a bow for their excellent coverage of Hurricane Hermine. Hard to single one out as all of them were at the top of their game.

7. Interesting baseball thought #1: Marlins color man Eduardo Perez thinks if the catcher is somehow able to catch a ball after it hits a batter, the batter should not be awarded first base. Huh? He wasn’t all that good, but bring back former color man Tommy Hutton.

8. Interesting baseball thought #2: Times beat writer takes future Hall of Fame manager Bruce Bochy to task for allowing former Ray Matt Moore to throw 133 pitches in a quest for a no hitter for a contending team. Two days later, Ray’s pitcher David Archer throws just under 120 pitches in a meaningless 10-4 win over Houston.

9. For the casual Rays follower, it came as stunning news. The Rays released outfielder Desmond Jennings – another Ray’s prospect who never quite lived up to the hype.

10. Looking back: In the 60s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird, and people take Prozac to make it normal.

Achmed looks forward to the NFL season

Our savvy sports prognosticator Achmed Walled (pronounced wall-ED) has, after laborious statistical analysis, selected his Super Bowl teams and made his annual prediction on the fate of the Bucs in 2016 (spoiler alert - he doesn’t think they will be participating beyond their New Year’s Day season wrap-up with Carolina). Traditionalist that he is, Achmed likes two teams with extensive Super Bowl resumes, the New England Patriots and the Green Bay Packers to match up. As for our Buccaneers, the soothsayer from the east sees an improvement to 7-9 under new head coach Dirk Koetter and, almost as importantly, defensive coordinator Mike Smith.

SNEAK PEEK AT NEXT WEEK – THIRD PARTY? RUN, DON’T WALK.