Slim Whitman

In January 1923, the baby who would become known as Slim Whitman was born in Tampa, Florida, under the given name Ottis Dewey Whitman Jr. (What is it with Florida and people and buildings named Ottis?)

He was right-handed but lost a finger on his right hand in an accident, so taught himself how to play guitar left-handed and string his instrument accordingly. (Years later, a young left-handed Paul McCartney would observe Slim Whitman on TV, and learn how to do the same, and fellow Beatle George Harrison acknowledged Whitman as his initial guitar inspiration.)

His big break came in 1948 when he hired Colonel Tom Parker as his manager; the Colonel immediately got him a contract with RCA records. It's perhaps regrettable that the Colonel didn't put Slim in three dozen B-movies as he did with Elvis; I'd be faithfully watching every one of them now.

Slim's 1952 single "Indian Love Call" was #2 on the U.S. charts and 1954's "Rose Marie" was #1 in the UK for eleven weeks. Other hits included "Cattle Call" (1955), "More Than Yesterday" (1965), "Guess Who" (1971), and "When" (1980). He released his final album, Twilight on the Trail, in 2010 at the age of 87.

Whitman bought a lavish (but still modest by superstar standards) estate in Middleburg in 1957, calling it Woodpecker Paradise and living there for the rest of his life. Rather than being made a national shrine after Slim's passing, however, new owners inexplicably chose to tear it down in 2014, with the same disregard for history as the demolition of Jim Morrison's house in Clearwater.

Unlike many performers - especially in country music - who had a shtick or a gimmick, Slim didn't really have one. He's just this guy, you know? Like Marty Robbins, who I suspect was also profoundly influenced by Slim, he was just a nondescript nice guy (even though his sharp mustache and arched eyebrows made him look more like one of the bad guys in an old western movie) who yodeled haunting melodies in three octaves.

What, you were expecting some weird, wild angle or some wacky, crazy anecdote? There isn't one. Slim Whitman just rules, that's all. And if you didn't know, now you've been told. Thank you and goodnight.

(Other favorite Slim sides: "The Wayward Wind", "Pearly Shells", "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain", "From a Jack to a King", and the first Slim 45 I had as a child, "Birmingham Jail". And then there's this.)

The Roosters of Ybor

I've never figured out why, but there are a lot of chickens running loose around Ybor City. This rooster, far from being shy, followed us a great distance, seemingly thinking he'd get thrown a snack.

The Frankland Bridge

A few months ago I had car trouble right in the middle of the Howard Frankland Bridge esstbound to Tampa. And so it was that I obtained a view few have ever seen from my vantage point, standing precariously at the edge of the tall bridge with only the tiniest of shoulders to pull off into. I bet there's some amazing snook fishing to be had here, casting a line down alongside the bridge's pillars...

Triple Breasted Masseuse

So the media is all abuzz today about Jasmine Tridevil, a Tampa massage therapist who recently obtained a third breast after a long search for a surgeon willing to perform the surgery.

"It was really hard finding someone that would do it, too, because they’re breaking the code of ethics," she's quoted as saying, "I called, like, 50 or 60 doctors, nobody wanted to do it." Whatever doctor she did find to do it is probably less than happy that she's reminding the world that he violated the code of ethics - even though she says the surgery is "off the record" with a non-disclosure contract.

Why did she want a third breast? Apparently it's a gimmick that Tridevil hopes will help her to launch a television reality show about herself. She has, according to news sources, hired a professional camera crew to follow her around recording her every move. (Despite this, her promotional images shown in the news are smartphone selfies taken in bathroom mirrors.)

It isn't clear whether she intends to pitch this raw footage to the networks as a example or a pilot, or if she's actually hiring people to film, edit and produce the TV series now on her own and hope a network bites on it later. It also isn't clear if she's hired an agent, or is doing this completely off the grid by show business standards.

More disturbingly, perhaps, than her self-alteration, is her declaration: "my whole dream is to get this show on MTV." Hmmm. Aim a little higher, perhaps?

And if all that's not enough cognitive dissonance for you, she said another reason for the third breast was because she "doesn't want to date anymore" and that she hoped it would make herself unattractive to men. Say what? I would think a triple-breasted masseuse would be every sci-fi geek's wet dream. Then again, she has publicly stated there is no nipple on the fake third breast, just a tattoo of a picture of one. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Okay. Yeah, you know, that does, in fact, sound very very very very unattractive.

Lastly, to add further annoyance to a story that is already annoying on multiple levels, practically everyone covering this in the media is making reference to the triple-breasted woman in the film Total Recall, and omitting mention of the prior character Eccentrica Gallumbits, a triple-breasted prostitute in the 1979 science fiction novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Come on people, give Douglas Adams his props!

The Tampa Smokers

The Tampa Smokers are all but forgotten today, being far less well known even to baseball historians than teams like the Tampa Tarpons (who, as a Cincinnati Reds affiliate, provided them with many of its greatest players like Ken Griffey, Sr., Johnny Bench, Dan Driessen, Rawly Eastwick, and Dave Concepcion.) But I find them to be a perfect symbol of all that was great about Florida in another era. Being headquartered in the cigar capital of the world, their name and logo reflected early 20th century affection for a fine smoke, something you would never ever see today. The same people who have made it their personal crusade to eradicate the name of the Washington Redskins would probably collectively soil their underwear at the notion of a sports team glorifying the demon tobacco.

Did I say "all but forgotten today"? Well, that's not quite so. The Tampa Bay Rays, in 2011, actually celebrated the memory of the Smokers by wearing "throwback" Smokers uniforms. Sadly, however, after some deliberation it was decided by those who decide such things that the cigar on the logo should be quietly removed from the Rays uniforms to better reflect the more enlightened times we are assured to be living in.

The Smokers produced many greats of Baseball, but Alfonso Ramón "Al" López was probably their most famous player, inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977. Al López field is located in Tampa, with the statue of him seen at left.

Al was not a cigar fancier himself, but his father Modesto worked as a selector in a cigar factory - which involved sorting tobacco leaves for use in various grades of cigars.

When the Rays (then the Devil Rays) began playing in St. Petersburg in 1988, López was given the honor of throwing out the ceremonial first pitch, and at the time of his death he was the last living person who had played major league baseball during the 1920s. To this day, Lopez holds the record for having been the longest-lived member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Disappearance of D.P. Davis

Florida real estate developer D.P. Davis, the man who created Tampa's Davis Islands resort and started St. Augustine's Davis Shores, set sail on the luxury liner Majestic in October 1926.

The transatlantic voyage, from the United States to France, had an unhappy ending for Davis. On the night of October 12, Davis went overboard and was lost at sea. And ever since then, speculation continually churns: did he commit suicide, did he accidentally fall, or was he pushed?

The suicide theory is plausible. Davis had just been forced to sell out his shares of the Davis Islands. He'd hoped to turn Davis Shores into a cash cow but was facing setbacks at the fade of the Florida land boom. His marriage was failing, and his wife had fled to France. Some say chasing after her was apparently the entire reason for Davis' ill-fated voyage - Cherchez la femme? - except then it would seem rather strange that he brought along his girlfriend Lucille Zehring.

Was he murdered? A steward claims to have overheard a fight between Davis and Zehring, followed by Davis shouting, "I can go on living or end it. I can make money or spend it. It all depends on you," followed by a loud splash. The steward's story is not very believable, however - when you're inside a giant cruise ship several stories high, you could throw an elephant overboard and not hear the splash.

Could his death really have been an accident? Zehring insisted she didn't push him. According to her version of the story, Davis had been sitting in an open porthole and accidentally fell. Davis was a raging alcoholic and was probably drunk at the time of the incident, whatever that incident was.

I suggest that a fourth possibility, that Davis faked his own death could be even likelier. Davis knew the Florida land boom was ending. He had lost his wife and was squabbling with his new girlfriend. He reportedly was carrying $50,000 in cash on his person, which was unlike him. Just a few months prior, Victory National sold Davis a life insurance policy to the tune of $300,000. Additionally, Davis already held life insurance policies with other companies as well. It was the insurance agencies who first raised the possibility of a fake death, out of suspicion that his body was not recovered after a mysterious disappearance off a ship in the middle of the ocean on a cruise whose purpose no one was really sure of.

Failing finding a surprise confession tucked inside a dusty forgotten book beneath the floorboards in the locked basement of an abandoned building in Gainesville or something, we can't know what happened, and thus we must be left in a mystery forevermore.

The plots of the TV show Mad Men have an uncanny ability to key in on concerns of my own life great and small, and in ways ranging from symbolic to literal. In the current storyline, Pete Campbell's mother has vanished by falling off a ship on a cruise. I'm watching closely this season to see what their resolution is, as "divination by television" is my specialty. Hey, it's either that or ask the Magic 8-Ball.

End of the Davis Islands

Look at the Davis Islands on a map and you'll see it has two peninsulas protruding from the very end of it. The one on the right is part of the Peter O. Knight Airport and not easily accessible, but the one on the left is.

And it's a spectacular spot. One can sit at the edge here and behold a view of Long Shoal, Pine Key, and two huge industrial islands that sadly have no names.

In case you're curious, the Davis Islands are twofold, although it feels like one big island when you're driving on it because you're crossing a bridge over a canal early on. There used to be three Davis Islands but the airport sealed up a dividing waterway to build a new runway. Bastards.

Cannonball Adderley

One of my all-time idols of Jazz is Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, born in Tampa in 1928. His nickname "Cannonball" is actually a corruption of "cannibal", which was his nickname in high school but people often misheard it as "cannonball" and the malapropism stuck.

Adderley and his brother Nat, also a Jazz musician, moved to Tallahassee at a young age and performed with Ray Charles in the 1940s, by which time the Adderley Brothers were already local legends themselves. The Adderleys were greatly influenced by Ray, as well as Louis Jordan and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson.

But it was a day job as a schoolteacher that kept the lights turned on. After high school, he attended Florida A&M University, then taught music to high school students at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale. He moved to NYC in 1955 and quickly parlayed himself into a national career. He brought his saxophone into the Cafe Bohemia because he feared that it would be stolen, and Oscar Pettiford's band asked him to sit in since their own sax player Jerome Richardson was unavailable and his substitute was running late.

Adderley told Down Beat:

"I immediately was scared to death: to be able to play with those cats, heroes of mine. I'm a Floridian, a schoolteacher, a player of rock music, lounge music and that kind of stuff. I said, "Certainly." So I went up to the stand, and I guess O.P. wanted me to prove myself, because we kicked off with I Remember April at what I thought was a fast tempo, because I'd never played it that fast, But I played it fairly well,and they were satisfied that I could play, so they invited me to play the evening with them, even when Jerome came in. My brother Nat and I had heard all these stories about the New York Musicians' Union; how they would fine you for sitting in, so when the clubowner came over to them and said "Who's that guy playing saxophone?" rather than give him my name, Nat said, "Well, that's Cannonball," So I became known as Cannonball once again, after so many years of being just plain Mr. Adderley, schoolteacher."

He joined the Miles Davis Sextet in October 1957, played on pivotal history-altering Davis records like Milestones and Kind of Blue. For many casual listeners, this was their introduction to Adderley's music and is responsible for the attention he continued to garner for the rest of his life.

Talking about the nuts and bolts of Jazz music is as subjectively useless a pursuit to me as say, winespeak. So let's let this clip do the talking:

Adderley died in 1975 (shortly after appearing in an acting role on the TV series Kung Fu with David Carradine) and is buried in the Southside Cemetery in Tallahassee.

Follow That Dream

There's an Elvis for everybody, it seems. There's the skinny Elvis, the fat Elvis, the spy Elvis, the cowboy Elvis, the military Elvis, the Hawaiian Elvis, the Arabian Elvis, etc. And of course, there's a Florida Elvis.

In July 1961 the movie Follow That Dream, set in Florida and starring Elvis Presley and Anne Helm, began shooting on location in Ocala, Tampa, Inverness, and the Inglis/Yankeetown area. And in a colossal juxtaposition of cosmic happenstance, it was here that Elvis met a young 11-year-old boy named Tom Petty, who, some say, went on to be a musician himself.

Follow That Dream was already the ninth in Elvis' mixed bag of 33 films, and the descent into mediocrity from early strong films like King Creole and Loving You had already begun. The plot concerns a family of vagabonds who run out of gas in a desolate stretch of an unfinished road along Florida's Nature Coast, and decide to just homestead there. From there it devolves into typical early-sixties hijinks with casino mobsters, government bureaucrats, and of course musical interludes.

The Follow That Dream Parkway in Inglis commemorates Elvis' time here. You can scope it on Google Maps here and plan your pilgrimage accordingly.

Vincente Martinez Ybor Statue

This statue of Vincente Martinez Ybor stands in the city he founded, Ybor City, annexed by Tampa by 1887. Ybor, in addition to making Florida the cigar capital of the world, achieved many great civic wonders and innovations improving the lives of citizens.

The Red Phone Booth

Tampa's Hyde Park Village is famous for this antique British Doctor Who-worthy red phone booth. You can find it along the incongrously-named Snow Avenue.

Centro Ybor Sign

Gotta love this sign overlooking the Muvico Theatre at Centro Ybor in Tampa's Ybor City, designed to resemble a giant cigar band.

The Vana Vana Society

A curious report in the February 3, 1936 issue of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune tells of a mysterious group of nudists who encountered problems just outside of Tampa's Hillsborough Bay. Their craft, the Fleetwood, ran aground on a reef and damaged its engine. The next day, the New York Post reported the ship was fixed and on its way.

The group called themselves The Vana Vana Society, and consisted of one Maurice Allard, his wife, son, and two daughters. They had no navigator among them, and while in Florida Mr. Allard made inquiries to find one to join them. But as the newspaper article waggishly states, all the local seafarers were too fond of wearing trousers to sign up for the post.

Despite lacking someone on board who could navigate, the Vana Vana Society were sailing to the Virgin Islands, where they had a 1000-acre tract on St. John's Island. Here, the paper says, the family intended to establish a "nudist-socialistic utopia". Refreshingly, the paper made no editorial effort to mock, sensationalize, or judge the group - hell, they didn't even make any bad puns.

But did the family complete their journey? I do not know, but I wouldn't bet the nudist farm on it. The only thing that comes up in a Google search for the Vana Vana Society is a handful of newspaper articles about their Florida mishaps. A story dated Feb. 25 in the St. Petersburg Times says that their journey experience more problems after their Feb. 4 sendoff - they had three separate mishaps before finally setting off, noting that they'd be stopping in Key West to stock up on provisions. They also apparently managed to lure a navigator named Johan Johanson into their ranks.

Weeks passed. Then came the appearance of the article "Queer tales of nudist ship: Captain goes mad and runs amok" in the Straits Times, May 3, 1936. The article's anonymous suthor seems to be blurring some of the facts as reported by the previous papers, and so casts a shadow of doubt on the sensationalist tone of the story. It claims here that Johanson was already helming the ship when the original Feb. 6 accident occurred, and blames that disaster on Johanson's mental instability. It accuses him of chasing the female nudists around and letting the ship go in circles unmanned, and that he finally had to be restrained and tied up.

This piece notes two additional passengers not mentioned in any of the other newspapers: a New York artist named Ross Dodd and a 19-year-old Denver girl named Lucille Robinson.

And then the story goes cold. We're left to only guess what became of this ill-fated cruise to "nudetopia" and if they even made it out of Florida waters at all. Drop me a line if you know more, won't you?

Roland Manteiga Statue

This statue in Ybor City honors Roland Manteiga, the former editor of Tampa's weekly newspaper La Gaceta, founded in 1922 by Roland's father and now carried on by his son. Published in English, Spanish, and Italian, La Gaceta is the only trilingual newspaper in America.

Saxapahaw Sam

Did a double-take when I passed this paste-up graffiti in Ybor the other day. Some sort of parody of noted groundhog Punxsutawney Phil called Saxapahaw Sam, and with the cognitively-dissonant caption "I Will Kill You."

(What is up with Florida and "kill you" graffiti lately?)

According to this:

Richie identified the work as that of Saxapahaw Sam, a well-known Franklin Street tagger in her UNC-Chapel Hill years. He was popular until he took it a step too far, rather than defacing an abandoned or under construction building, as is the case in Durham, he painted on the walls of an open establishment, which was naturally quite upset.

That article, from 2013, made it sound like Sam is retired from the tagging game, but this graffiti is new. New enough that a fellow seeker of arcane lore, one BXGD, took this picture of the very same graffiti in Ybor just days earlier. And then there's this recent aggregation of Sam's oeuvre in other locales.

I haven't delved much further into the matter because it's often the case that finding the story behind enigmatic graffiti is disappointing, and I usually much prefer not having it explained. I just like Sam in all his mystery the way he is, on his own merits.

Parking Lot Honor Box

This parking lot in Tampa has a quaint old "honor box" left over from the 1950s or so, in which you leave payment in the slot whose number corresponds to the one on the space you parked in.

It was originally constructed to take quarters, which is what clearly dates it back to an era when parking here probably only cost 50 cents. Now in the 21st century when parking here is three bucks, they've had to leave some elaborate instructions for the public. The sign instructs you to fold each dollar three times before forcing it into the tiny coin slot and using a key to ram it in. It's not quite an exact science - the dollar is still pretty damn difficult to wedge in there, even after some aggressive folding and flattening.

There's a guy who lingers around here handing out those sign-language cards with the phrase "I am deaf, please make a donation", hoping to pounce on people while they've got their wallet out. I declined his routine, and then after he turned away I felt bad about it and reflexively said "Hey, wait". Equally reflexively, he quickly turned around with a hopeful expression and said "hmmmmm?" - then caught himself too late.

"Never mind."

Stone Soup Company

I didn't come all the way to Tampa to eat Cincinnati-style chili. Well, wait, maybe I did. They sell it at Stone Soup Company in Ybor and I dug it.

The delicious sangria came served in an ice cold metal goblet which was great fun. I have to say, though, if were to pour it into a normal glass like the kind they serve sangria in at Rumba, it wouldn't even fill it a third of the way. Oh well. Living here in a privilege, and sometimes with it comes the tax of parsimoniousness.

They have an interesting selection of primitive Outsider Art hanging on the walls, such as this decidedly Spunt-like rendition of Marilyn Monroe.

The Interzone Sausage Report

Having just spent three months on Siesta Key, I had sufficient time to sort out where all the important stuff is - namely, the good cigars. It's a neverending cigar store safari in Florida, with my selections of smoke being wholly dependent on the vagaries of local sources. And it's frustrating to have to pull up stakes and ship out to another city just when I finally had this town figured out. But as our Solar System is currently hurtling through space at 420,000 miles per hour into the Local Fluff, none of us can stand still even if we try.

After Siesta Key, I took an extended-stay residence in a hotel in Sarasota's Rosemary District. It being not so far from my prior cigar sources, my left-jacket-pocket lineup didn't change so much. I did, however, discover a new place not previously reported on here - Smokin' Joe's downtown. It's a swingin' bar with a kick-butt walk-in humidor and some knowledgeable employees. They carried delicacies like Loose Cannon, Gurkha Cellar Reserve, Alec Bradley Black Market, and Esteban Carreras Aged 12 Years. Best of all, they were an additional supplier of my current favorite cigar, the Alec Bradley Nica Puro.

While in the Rosemary District, I happened to be smoking a cigar in the park when a lovely lady walked past me, smiled, and remarked on how good my cigar smelled. I should have asked her to marry me but was too stunned to speak.

I spent some time in Ocala, and though I'm sure they must have serious cigar tobacconists hidden there somewhere, I never found them. My dwindling supply of sticks leftover from Sarasota carried me through this difficult time. I know you feel my pain. When the X-class killshot solar flare hits Earth, pray for me that I'm not stuck in Ocala.

Then came Orlando, land of Cigarz at Waterfront (and Bubble Tea.) The guy at Cigarz was a swell Johnson who spotted me a free sample of Cordoba & Morales Family Reserve torpedo. I also dabbled in delights as Puro Pinar, Pinolero, San Lotano Oval, and Don Pepin Garcia. A liquor store (whose name escapes me now) carried in its dusty old humidor a neglected box of Nat Sherman which I pounced on like an antique dealer buying a Renoir from a yard sale whose owners don't realize what they have.

Don't think me ungrateful; I do adore hotel living but the biggest drawback about the lifestyle is that everyplace is "no smoking". This means that, now more than ever, my car has become my substitute smoking parlor in lieu of a lanai on which to lounge. As you might expect, this puts a damper on my predilection for pairing my cigar with a fine craft beer or a shot of something funky like Zwack.

Someday this war's gonna end.

Now I've arrived at yet another hotel, this time in the promised land - Tampa, the cigar capital of the world. And as if to herald this momentous event, a supernova exploded in the Cigar Galaxy, a.k.a. M82. Truly we live in miraculous times.

Does it get any better than this? I intend to find out.

Columbia Restaurant

You're probably too young to remember this, but in 1905 the greatest restaurant in the solar system - Columbia Restaurant - was founded in Ybor City. Today it has numerous branch locations around Florida, including St. Augustine, Tampa and Clearwater, but the one nearest and dearest to my heart is on St. Armand's Key. This was the first Columbia's I experienced, so I suppose I've been imprinted on this one.

(Yes, I am a habitual indiscriminate adder of apostrophe-S to places whose names lack them, at will. Sue me.)

If I could choose only one thing to eat for the rest of my life, dear reader, it would be Columbia's Steak Palomilla - and I think it might take a billion years before I began to get bored with it. Maybe two. It's a very holy thing, and words cannot convey the alchemical magic that occurs in this dish, so I won't even try. I'll just say that even if you don't take seriously any other opinion proferred herein on this blog about matters culinary, listen to me on this one. Columbia's is the alpha and omega of Florida foodiedom.

And then there's the drinks. I usually have a pitcher of Mojito or Sangria but sometimes indulge in random stabs like the Absinthe Sazerac (pictured above.) The server sets up a folding table beside you and mixes your drinks (as well as your salads) tableside while you watch. I still remember years ago, watching in awe the first time I ate here, as our server Cecilia squeezed the limes and poured the rum and conjured up a pitcher of Mojito that was more than the sum of its parts. You never forget your first time.

Did I mention that their black bean soup, covered in fresh cut onions, is worthy of being a meal all to itself?

And that their Crema Catalana dessert takes Creme Brulee to a whole new level?

Or that they have their own line of cigars, the mere mention of which has me twitching and jonesing even now? Must cut this short now and step out for a puff by the pool...