Tampa Taxi Shots

Tampa Bay Bucs Football May Sell out for A Monday Night Game?

The best situation for a Tampa taxi driver is a sold out stadium. You simply get more action. More people go to the games and more people go to the sports bars to watch on television because the games are not blacked out. Cab drivers can make more money. That is what it is all about. 

I also believe the more any product is put in front of a possible customer base, the more tickets they will sell in the future. Success feeds on itself. The best thing about the Buccaneers going to London this season, is that game counts as a home game and it will be telecast. The things you have to do to avoid a blackout. 

Personally, I think the blackout rule is arcane and was invented in a time when most televisions were in black and white and people used rabbit ears to see only three channels. Today, with alternative media and internet, people can pick up streaming video of the blacked out game, and any other game they want to watch. There is just to much competition now for the NFL. They need to reconsider what they are doing and become more creative and developing fan bases.

 "Might the Tampa Bay community stain of blacked out Bucs games come to an end in 10 days when the Colts come here to face the Bucs on Monday Night Football?

Rick Stroud, of the St. Pete Times, apparently is hearing that good things are on the horizon, so he Twittered this morning.

@NFL Stroud - With a good week of ticket sales, Bucs Oct. 3 Monday Night Football game vs. the Colts will most likely be a sellout and televised locally

 

As Joe has written, there’s something dreadfully wrong if a “football town” with a good team can’t sell out a Monday Night Football game early in the NFL season. That might happen here, and Joe expects this will come down to 11th-hour sales. But Team Glazer really would be missing the boat if it didn’t do whatever needs to be done to make sure Monday Night Football is available for the many hundreds of thousands of locals who will sit home and watch it.

 

Joe’s desperately hoping it gets done by any means."

via www.joebucsfan.com

I was wondering how long this blackout would last. That would be nice on a national televised game, that we could sell out so the announcers will stop talking about how poor Tampa Bay sports fans are.

A United Cab In Need Of Oil

The taxi I am driving has over 300,000 miles on it. The shop changes the oil every month as specified by the the owners manual. These cars will run for almost eternity. They do, however, start to use oil. That is what is happening with my cab.

 The fare I picked up said they could smell oil burning. After I dropped them off, I checked the oil and I could see I needed at least one quart. Considering the oil had been changed last week, that meant I was burning oil. In the sixteen years I have been with United Cab of Tampa, I have never had a new car.

 I see other drivers get a new car every year and I wonder why they treat me any kind of way. I need to ask Paul Hinton That. I would like to have a new taxi by the Fall time of the year.

 You can see a taxi with its hood up at an Advance Auto Parts store on Dale Mabry is not good advertising for the cab company. We need to build up riders who have confidence in the ability of us to get them to where they are going.

 

Borders Books Is Closing...I Take My Coffee Black

The meter is running and the taxi is in park. Normally I’d be outside of a strip club or message parlor, this time it’s a book store. I’m waiting for my passenger to return. 

The large poster declaring 20% - 40% off looms over my cab parked outside of Borders Books on N Dale Mabry which is closing as soon as they sell all their stuff. This well publicized sale has brought customers to this store in record amounts. The idling of my engine cuts through the conversations of happy patrons leaving with newly prized possessions. 

It’s just after sunset. I’d normally be home drinking beer at this hour - a well ingrained habit since the economy fell apart like a two dollar watch.  Habits are hard to change as you get older. 
I turn the radio down as a motorist asks if I can move up a bit. In over fifteen years of coming to this store I’ve never seen it this busy. I guess I’m not the only one that read the newspaper article about the store closing.

Then it hits me - Why does Tampa (whose economy is supposedly tied to tourism) have so many people that read books. We are not supposed to be Boston? 

I think back over the last decade or so. I have spent a lot of time in Borders. Coffee, reading, chess, browsing, music, liberal lap toppers, this place had it all, a great way to kill a Sunday afternoon and relax. You could have a bit of a repose from the ‘real world’ as books took you to other places and experiences that you one day planed to get around too, one of these days. 

The Seattle’s Best Café. Yes, that was the first thing you saw as you walked in the door. Get your espresso and stare at twenty thousand square feet of wonder, knowledge and entertainment. In the next couple of hours, you would walk out smarter and more at peace with yourself then when you walked in. All of this augmented by a fresh cup of Joe (I take my mine black). 

Coffee in a book store is Popcorn at the movies. Would in not be a shame if one day all things are by Amazon or Kindle? To me it would be like going to a prostitute for love or eating steak with a balloon on your tongue. You would still get the same knowledge and nutrition - so what’s your problem? 

I do think it is a problem.

In the future they say you will just take a pill for everything you need or pick you kids out of a test tube (I prefer the old fashion way).

I once met Jack Harris at a book signing here. I once saw happy kids at Harry Potter night with expressions on their faces not seen since the family trip to Disney World. Do we really want all this to just go away?  It is just all about the discount? What ever happened to smelling the roses? 

Anyway, my fare comes back to the taxi and tells me there were at least eighty people in line with all the cash registers ringing. You hear that Borders….You finally figured out how to get Amazons money.  Perhaps there is hope for Western Civilization. 

Anthony Jacondino World War Two Veteran Turns To Pandhandling

I first did a report last September about a man I saw on the corner of Columbus and Dale Mabry holding a sign saying he was a WW11 veteran. I have never seen a dude that old flying a sign before. It is usually the young looking to score motel, beer and cig money. This guy seemed way different. He looked respectful, and I wondered what his story was. Should he be getting benefits at his age? Did something happen? It seems he does have a story to tell. 

His name is Anthony Jacondino (seen in the blow up cell phone image I took in September), and he is a real war hero. He saved a buddy's life in the Pacific by shooting a Japanese soldier that had come into their tent at night. Jacondino has never asked for a thing in his life, now he needs a little help. Here is a news story by the St. Pete Times.

I Picked Up Two Strippers

How could you work all night at a Tampa strip club and only have $100 bills?  Don't the guys give tips to the girls as they dance on stage with $1 bills?  Give me a break.  I am not the 'make change' taxi driver.

 

Watch Your Speed On Sundays

Check This OUT!

The Tampa police know that the only day of the week that you can speed on Dale Mabry is on Sunday. That is why they set up a speed trap north of Mlk Just south of Hillsborough. Now this poor guy just because he was up early Sunday will now have to hire Ty Trayner or pay the fine or go to school. In short, his life is inconvenienced because of the Tampa Police Department being involved in revenue generation for the city of Tampa


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St Pete Pandhandlers Flood Into Tampa - Are They Begging, Or 'Flying A Sign?'

 St. Petersburg, in my opinion, has illegally outlawed free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, in short, civil liberties by banning guys from standing on street corners 'flying a sign.' This is a great country we live in.  At least it used to be. St. Pete does not think so. There is, however, a real danger to doing this.  Let me explain.

In this great country a person with ambition and skill can rise as far as his dreams will take him. But what if his dreams are not to be an astronaut or a CEO or a doctor, or whatever people think you should be. Hell, what if he wants to be A TAXI DRIVER. What if he just wants to 'hang out' and drink beer with his buddies and go no further than that.  In this country that should be his God given right. Sadly, people don't think so. 

The problem with banning anything is that you move just a little closer to the banning of political expressing, and that is where the danger lies. That is why we uphold the rights of Larry Flint and Joe Redner.  That's right - porn is free expression.  If you ban it someone will come along and say they find a cable channel or a political party to be objectionable. Do we ban this stuff as well? 

Hell, we live in a country now where you can't even go into a bar and light up a smoke....WTF?

So when you see the guy on the side of the road and you give him a couple of bucks, you better believe it will go to fast food, a cheap motel, a quart bottle of beer (several) and a pack of cigs. 

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Homeless Work Hard In Tampa Bay

There is a group of homeless people who work the corner of Kennedy and Dale Mabry every day; they show up on time and put in a solid eight hours. That should make them a good employee for any business, if there were any jobs out there.