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Forget The Bad News, Let's Just Show Floyd We're Having A Good Time

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By STEVE OTTO

sotto@tampatrib.com

Published: January 4, 2009

BREVARD, N.C. - I've always loved Brevard. When my folks lived in this small North Carolina college town it was sort of a Mayberry accented by the town's iconic white squirrels.

Things have changed and I'm sitting in a Starbucks inside the huge Ingles grocery store where there is a wireless Internet connection. There may be a Floyd's barbershop somewhere but it seems as if the guys have moved over to the Starbucks.

One table over, a gentleman who could pass for Floyd himself is holding court with two other men who apparently have nothing more to do on this Friday morning after New Year's than to hash over a story in the Asheville paper about rising insurance rates.

Floyd is expounding on the world in general and says, "It is going to get a lot worse this year," to slight nods of agreement from the other two.

You could have taken away their Starbucks, substituted some cafe con leche and dropped them into the West Tampa Sandwich Shop, and the conversation would have been the same.

That's the great thing about the new year. It is exactly that. It is everyone's chance to look around and opine about what's ahead in the coming months.

Forget the experts for now and ignore the naysayers and those bearers of gloom and doom. There certainly is enough of that around, all suggesting 2009 doesn't have much of a chance.
Reality Checks In

And the truth is Reality - that's the ugly guy rearing his head over there in the corner - suggests the experts might be right.

But we can ignore Reality, at least for today, and look forward to what could be in these coming 12 months.

I don't think it would take that much to make a real difference. Start with small things; they tend to add up after awhile.

Start with the Super Bowl. I know, the chamber types and civic boosters don't see the Super Bowl as such a small thing, but can you tell me where it was played two years ago?

Why not go out of our way just a little to let people know it is being played in Tampa and not Tampa Bay? I think if anyone comes to town in the coming weeks and wants to know how to get to downtown Tampa Bay, you should send them to Ruskin. Ruskin is on the shores of Tampa Bay and it's a nice place.

Save The Cuban

Secondly I think we need to start a campaign to save the Cuban sandwich. There are places in Tampa where they have the gall to serve Cubans on French bread or to stick weird things on the sandwich as fillers and still call them Cubans. You want a great Cuban, go over to Michelle Faedo's sandwich shop off 15th Street just south of Lake. Now that's a Cuban.

Third, let's fool the rest of the country when the Super Bowl arrives. Mayor Pam has spent the last few years trying to finish up the Riverwalk so that it can be sort of like the one in San Antonio. The truth is that it's still pretty pathetic.

I think we need to organize Riverwalk teams who will be assigned times when they need to be out there strolling down the Riverwalk pretending to be having a good time.

None of this is really going to change our lives that much, but at least when the rest of the world tunes in to look at us in a few weeks, we'll look like we're having a good time.

Keyword: Otto Graphs, to read and comment on Steve Otto's blog.

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