Bradenton in the Past

Westgate Shopping Center (pictured above) still exists, by the way (see below.) But sadly, the great 50s-style signage is long gone.

Tootsie

The giant fiberglass Muffler Men of the 1960s were so popular at their peak, that other companies wanted to get in on the act. Uniroyal Tire Co. enlisted International Fiberglass to manufacture a series of giant bikini women to grace their storefronts, and this is one of the few remaining examples left. "Tootsie", as she is locally known as, can be found in Bradenton, Florida, specifically at 6111 15th St. East. There was another in Ocoee, but as far as I can tell, it's now gone.

If you're too lazy to go out there, you can glimpse her on Google Maps (above) and Google Maps Street View (below).

Read more about the "Uniroyal Gals" here.

Me and a Friend

I was recently traipsing around the DeSoto National Memorial Park in Bradenton, and posed for a photo with my good gal Inez.

Okay, actually, she's just a cardboard stand-up. But she's lifelike, ain't she?

The Sarasota Saudis

A disturbing story that's being covered by the relentless Freedom of Information Act pursuit of Broward Bulldog: it seems some Saudis living in Sarasota moved out of their home very abruptly and suspiciously, not even bothering to pack clothing, jewelry and even leaving behind their cars. Why suspiciously? Because their unplanned exodus occurred about two weeks before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The latest documents obtained by the Broward Bulldog enter an even deeper maze of intrigue and weirdness, making oblique references to an "antagonist" from, of all places, Jerusalem.

According to an FBI report dated April 2002, the Tampa FBI office...

"...has determined that [redacted] is an antagonist of the United States of America. [redacted] resides in Jerusalem. [redacted] allegedly has held regular and recurring meetings at his residence to denounce and criticize the United States of America and its policies. [redacted] is allegedly an international businessman with great wealth." In November 2001, [redacted] visited the United States for the first time. He traveled to Sarasota, Florida, opened a bank account and made initial queries into the purchase of property in south central Florida. [redacted] intends to establish a Muslim compound in Central Florida. [redacted] revealed that [redacted] is fearful of [redacted] and fears that [redacted] intends to begin offensive operations against the United States if he is able to purchase property and establish a Muslim compound in Central Florida."

There follows three more lines which are redacted completely. The redacted parts aren't due to be declassified until 2039.

In 2012, the Broward Bulldog sued the FBI after being denied access to files on their once-secret investigation of the Sarasota Saudis: Abdulaziz al-Hijji, his wife, Anoud, and her father Esam Ghazzawi, (who lived on Longboat Key, ran a design company, and was somehow an advisor to a Saudi prince.) The documents obtained via FOIA state that the al-Hijjis fled the U.S., leaving everything behind, shortly before 9/11. The documents also state that further investigation had "revealed many connections" between them and persons associated with 9/11. Photographs of license plates showed Mohamed Atta, other hijackers and former Broward resident and current al-Qaeda fugitive Adnan Shukrijumah had visited the al-Hijji's home in the Prestancia gated community in Sarasota.

And according to wtfrly, there's another disturbing element of the investigation - which was kept secret from the public and even from congressional hearings - dated Halloween 2001:

Deputies were called after a man with a Tunisian passport was observed disposing of items in a dumpster behind a storage facility he had rented in Bradenton.

The man’s name is blanked out, but the report says authorities who searched the dumpster found “a self-printed manual on terrorism and Jihad, a map of the inside of an unnamed airport, a rudimentary last will and testament, a weight to fuel ratio calculation for a Cessna 172 aircraft, flight training information from the Flight Training Center in Venice [Fla.] and printed maps of Publix shopping centers in Tampa Bay.”

The Flight Training Center is where 9/11 hijack pilot Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in Shanksville, Pa, took flying lessons.

So, to summarize, the Bush administration, infamous for its ultra-chumminess with Saudi Arabia (Bush was seen bizarrely taking diplomacy to unheard-of levels holding hands with Saudi King Abdullah and kissing him), kept secret the facts about these suspicious characters, their connections to 9/11 conspirators, and their activities in Florida.

If anything ever became of these investigations, we don't know. This occurred, it's worth noting, during the time when the President's brother Jeb was Governor of Florida.

Like the odd protection the Bushes have given to Florida serial killers, the odd protection given to Florida persons of interest in 9/11 may not mean a thing. But then again, it might. Thanks to the revelations of the Broward Bulldog, a group representing 6,600 relatives of 9/11 victims is now calling on the FBI to come clean about what the heck is really going on here. The FBI under President Obama (who didn't kiss King Abdullah but made an uncharacteristically submissive bow to him) seems just as eager to forget the whole thing as it did under President Bush.

Coquina Beach

It's funny that after over a year with this blog, I haven't written about Coquina Beach yet, even though it's one of my favorite places in the Bradenton-Sarasota area and I've been coming here for years before the move. But some things just can't be described in words. It's just this beach, you know? What makes it different from nearby Bradenton Beach, Cortez Beach or Holmes Beach? I dunno, man, I'm just reporting the action live from the front lines, I'll leave the qualitative analysis to others.

It does have a splendid snack bar, if that helps. (But so does nearby Manatee Beach.) And Leffis Key is right across the street.

Voodoo Funeral Home

A severed hand was discovered washed up on the shore of the Manatee River in Bradenton in November 1997. The Bradenton Police Department fingerprinted the grisly find, and a few months later, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement crime laboratory in Tampa successfully found a match. It was the hand of Willie Suttle of nearby Palmetto. Problem was, Suttle was listed as having died of natural causes at the age of 70 the previous summer and was buried.

Confused and concerned, the police decided to exhume Suttle's body from its grave at the New Memphis Cemetery in Palmetto. Sure enough, the corpse's left hand was missing. But it got even weirder - upon further inspection of the body, the coroner found internal organs removed and small, handmade, fabric voodoo dolls stuffed inside the abdominal cavity, along with some bizarre notes on paper.

"Be gone and may you rot in your grave," said one of the notes, addressing someone named Richard Woodie, who police later determined operated a funeral home in Bradenton. The note went on to invoke Damballah and said "Curse him as I curse him, spoil him as I spoil him, by the fire at night." Even if you don't believe in voodoo, can you imagine the sickening feeling of having Bradenton's finest show up at your door to tell you they just found a piece of paper cursing you, found by accident, sewn up inside a total stranger's buried corpse exhumed at the cemetery?

As detectives pieced together the evidence, they realized that many of the voodoo notes were attacking local funeral home directors. However, Green's Funeral Home wasn't named - and of course, they were the one who performed Mr. Suttle's embalming. Cops interviewed the culprit, one Paula Green-Albritton, who was an unlicensed embalmer. After about an hour and a half of being questioned, Paula finally cracked and admitted the whole thing.

The removal of Suttle's hand was part of what she called a voodoo "Helping Hand" ritual, in which she kept it as a good luck charm to bring prosperity and success. The names of her enemies were written nine times on each note, she explained, because she saw nine as the number of death. In addition to her competitors in the mortuary business, she also had her ex-husband's name included in the curse.

Suttle's hand was placed in a weighted plastic bag and thrown into the river in a second ritual, with various incantations muttered as it disappeared into the water. But she hadn't weighted it enough, and it didn't take long for the plastic bag to tear open and for the hand to wash up on the banks of the river. Had more care been applied to the wrapping of the hand, the crime would never have come to light.

Albritton was sentenced to a year in prison, but an appeals court later overturned the conviction on a technicality. The judge ruled her videotaped confession inadmissable because Bradenton Police had misspoken in promising her that she would not be prosecuted if her acts were found to be part of a religion protected by the U.S. Constitution. For her part, Albritton insisted that the purpose of the ritual was not just for her own benefit, but also to "bring peace" to her friend Willie Suttle, and that the deliberately hyperbolic handwritten notes on the voodoo dolls should not be taken seriously out of context.

One question I haven't heard answered because I haven't heard anyone asking it: how many other instances of this occurred that we just don't know about? Has anyone gone back and checked other burials handled by this funeral home? Apparently not, and why not?

Since you asked my opinion (you did, right?) - although I am very supportive of legitimate practitioners of Haitian Vodou, Santeria, and southern "Hoodoo"-style folk voodoo (which comes closest to what Ms. Albritton was trying to do), I believe the entire idea of going to such lengths to attempt magickal obliteration of one's enemies is completely wrong-headed and has just the opposite effect. You don't have to believe in Karma to understand that on some level, what goes around really does come around, and the only people who really get hurt by being consumed with hate are the haters themselves. If you really believe in the power of intention and the force of will, there's no need for all this convoluted Rube Goldberg ritualistic rigamarole, and by buying into it, one has already admitted their own weakness. In fact, I suggest that by applying all this mental energy - call them "attention units", if you will - one is actually giving energy and granting existence to the very people one is trying to psychically attack. Whether it's writing hate notes pinned to voodoo dolls, carrying a protest sign, or leaving psycho-stalker anonymous comments on someone's blog, you're only empowering the very people you oppose. I figured this out by the time I was twelve; some people will never get it.

The abyss is always going to gaze back, so don't bother gazing in - unless that's what you want.

Decorated House in Bradenton

Back home in Louisville, if you try to make your home a garishly decorated paradise, the city leans on you to get with the program and keep your house boring and normal like everybody's else's. Fortunately, in many areas of Florida, you can just let your architectural freak flag fly. We've given a previous example with this artist's home in Atlantic Beach and now here's a goodly one I've always enjoyed driving by in Bradenton.

Freezy

I first saw him in 2008, at The Shake Pit in Bradenton, and immediately portions of my brain screamed at other portions of my brain. This sign depicting an anthropomorphic ice cream cone named "FREEZY" caught my eye, like literally, and wouldn't let go of it, gripping it in a beam of pure silver radioactive-hot intention.

Freezy's gaze followed me everywhere I walked. Even when I walked out of range of his direct line of sight, I became aware that Freezy emanated a 3-D holographic spherical field of vision that swept up everything within it towards it. I looked around at my fellow ice cream enthusiasts, who obliviously and robotically extended their tongues and rubbed them in a vertical trajectory against their cones like cattle at a salt lick. Don't you see it too? Somebody, tell me you see it too! It wasn't the first time I've felt like the guy with the special sunglasses in They Live and it won't be the last, mark me.

But what did Freezy WANT? Perhaps nothing more than a tithe to his chapel of soft-serve. For, once I stepped up to the counter and made the purchase of a large Coke Milkshake (which the Shake Pit creates by squirting actual Coca-Cola concentrated syrup direct from their fountain-soda tanks - shades of Bart Simpson's consciousness-altering Super Squishy made entirely out of syrup) the man-faced cone quietly nodded his assent and acceptance, in almost Buddhist fashion, and gently released his psychic tentacles.

I've been there a zillion times since. You'd think he'd remember me. But no, we have to go through the same damn rigamarole every time. I say, "Wassup, Freezy? My man!" and he just starts in with the hypno-ray vibes and giving me that Bela Lugosi look with his unfathomable little crescent moon eyeballs all over again. Sigh.

Anna Maria Oyster Bar

Another one of the little ironies of life in the Sunshine State: one of Anna Maria Island's best seafood-oyster joints on isn't actually on Anna Maria Island.

The Anna Maria Oyster Bar is many miles inland, in a strip mall on Cortez Road in Bradenton. (They also have another Bradenton location, plus one in Ellenton, plus a side-project called Halfway - as in, halfway between Bradenton and Sarasota - which looks pretty intriguing to me as its logo depicts a cigar-smoking dolphin, but I digress.)

The monicker comes from the fact that they used to be on Anna Maria Island's City Pier, then relocated to the mainland and decided to stick with the name. Though a strip mall in Bradenton just isn't the same ambience as tranquil island living, the food here is right-on and cures what ails you. Most curative of all is their cocktail selection - my hands-down favorite of which would be the Anna Maria Sunset, pictured here. I think this was my third. What's in it? I don't know, man, rum and stuff, you know.

DeSoto National Memorial Park

For those who genuflect at the altar of political correctness (and if you haven't guessed already, I'm not one of those), it's kind of tricky to have a national monument devoted to a guy who was essentially a marauding pirate determined to leave his mark on the world, but the website for the DeSoto National Memorial gives it a pretty good go:

In May 1539, Conquistador Hernando de Soto’s army of soldiers, hired mercenaries, craftsmen and clergy made landfall in Tampa Bay. They were met with fierce resistance of indigenous people protecting their homelands. De Soto’s quest for glory and gold would be a four year, four thousand mile odyssey of intrigue, warfare, disease, and discovery that would form the history of the United States.

De Soto sailed to the New World in 1514, arriving to kick ass and chew bubblegum - and he had no gum. He quickly set about organizing that which was there to be organized, in the manner he saw fit, and soon came to prominence with his trademark scheme to kidnap the chiefs of native villages and then extort the villagers for their safe return. He did make some historically noteworthy achievements - he led the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States and was the first European documented to have crossed the Mississippi River - but he was notorious around the world for his brutality.

The De Soto National Memorial in Bradenton marks what is believed to be the location of Espiritu Santo, the point of disembarkation for DeSoto's expedition. In May 1539, Hernando de Soto and an army of over 600 soldiers mounted their campaign here, executing the order of King Charles V to sail to La Florida and "conquer, populate, and pacify" the land.

Most of the Florida sites on DeSoto's trail have been built over, but in recent decades two have been documented as definitively associated with de Soto's expedition: the Governor Martin Site (at the former Apalachee village of Anhaica in Tallahassee) in 1986 and the White Ranch Site (in the Potano territory just outside Ocala) in 2005.

But even without all the historical considerations, DeSoto National Memorial in Bradenton is a beautiful park, relatively free of crowds, and provides yet another opportunity to "get away from it all" in the hustle of bustle of wacky, wonderful Florida. But watch out for the crazy creatively-anachronistic gang from Camp Uzita, a living history camp that runs from December through April, and who put on a yearly in-costume re-enactment of DeSoto's landing on the beaches of Tampa Bay.

The Shake Pit

Though there's all sorts of delicious expensive gelatos, fancy frozen yogurts, and exotic smoothies to be had on the Gulf Coast, I find myself immediately drawn to The Shake Pit every time I roll into Bradenton. It's an old mom-and-pop relic that has been dishing out the old-fashioned milkshakes since 1959. Their milkshake selection ranges from the traditional usual suspects to more out-there selections like peanut butter and watermelon. My personal favorite is their Coke milkshake, which is not just a milkshake with Coke added but actually uses the pure uncut Coca-Cola syrup straight from their soda-fountain tanks to provide the flavor.

The Shake Pit was plugged in a 2004 Marvin comic strip. I'm not sure whether this means the strip takes place in Bradenton, or if Marvin's family was vacationing, or if it's just one of those comics-world surrealisms not to be analyzed too deeply.