Come for the game, stay for the fun in the cities by the bay
 Raymond James Stadium, home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, University of South Florida Bulls, and the Outback Bowl, will host Super Bowl XLIII. (Patricia Borns for The Boston Globe) |
In the imaginations of Super Bowl marketers lives a place called Tampa Bay.
In reality, the blue expanse is Florida's largest open-water estuary, whose five bridges connect a lively, at times fractious bunch of sun-washed cities and towns. Take the cultural textures and working-port ethos of Tampa, add the wide streets and casual glam of St. Petersburg, and mix with 12 densely packed, barrier island beach colonies strung along Gulf Boulevard for 26 miles - now, where did you say you were staying for the big game on Feb. 1?
Recently we checked into a boutique hotel bargain, the mission-styled Ponce de Leon, a short stroll from St. Petersburg's Renaissance Vinoy Resort and Golf Club. With leafy pocket parks, elegant museums, and enough brick streets to fill a dozen Beacon Hills, this is a city to love.
On Friday night we stood in line for a veranda table at the next-door tapas restaurant, Ceviche, and within a dozen blocks found a party for every mood. Jazz notes floated from the martini bar beneath the neon sign of the former Detroit Hotel, the city's most historic building. Veteran patrons hunched over the bar at Mastry's downing no-nonsense drinks amid marvels of taxidermy. The dress code turned gothic and ages dropped 20 years as we followed drum kit rolls to Jannus Landing, while the night's best music - a drum trio and trombone - was played on the 2d Street sidewalk for tips.
Ducking into a 1st Avenue alley, we ended the evening at JoEllen Schilke's Globe Coffee Lounge, a low-key salon for everything cool and hip. The Globe's yard-sale sofas and outsider art exhibits have even inspired term paper comparisons with
"Tampa may not be as bohemian as St. Petersburg, but it has a great music scene," says Lee Courtney, WMNF (88.5 FM) music director, who has lived in both. We followed his tips to Ybor City, the historic cigar manufacturing center founded in 1886 by Vicente Martínez Ybor (pronounced EE-bore), where Tampa's Cuban - and Sicilian, Spanish, German, and Jewish - communities got their start. Their social clubs once attracted international music and stage talents, and increasingly, Ybor's nightclubs do that.
Everything is here. Off the main commercial strip of 7th Avenue is New World Brewery, not a brew pub but a casual bar and palm-fringed patio venue for garage rock and folk acts. Go to the Crowbar for metal and the Orpheum for indie bands if you don't mind smoke and a packed house. An association of gay entrepreneurs known as Gaybor has transformed an eight-block area on 15th Street with new venues, including a Manhattan-styled Limelight housed in a former church, and Olivier's, a French bistro opening soon with its own Moulin Rouge can-can act. For those who care about their beer, Tampa Bay Brewing Co. has the sports bar equation down with friendly denizens and well-crafted brews.
As Ybor's immigrant families moved outward, the ritual of coffee, toast, and politics shifted to West Tampa's sandwich shops. Ask any local and you'll get a litany of favorite West Tampa restaurants serving good, inexpensive Cuban food. But beyond the landmark Columbia Restaurant, signs of the old Ybor remain. In the former Ferlita Bakery building housing the Ybor City Museum, Dagoberto Troncoso, 80, gracefully wraps, binds, seals, and trims a perfect cigar.
On a weekday you might meet Patrick Manteiga, who runs the trilingual newspaper La Gaceta founded by his grandfather, whose portrait in a white suit hangs in La Tropicana, where the Manteiga family table is still reserved. Waiting for our deviled crabs, we met Rose Lester, 96, who made cigars for A. Santaella, preferred brand of Winston Churchill and Babe Ruth. On 8th Avenue, Jose Marti Park links Ybor legally as well as historically to Cuba, whose government still owns the plot. At La Seguna Central Bakery, a discussion ensued as to why Cuban bread tastes better in Tampa: "It's the water," we were told. At 10 a.m., the loaves, still hand-shaped, were nearly cleaned out. And then we discovered the guava pies.
Although no longer isolated from Tampa as it once was, Ybor seems like another world from Hyde Park Village 10 minutes away. Along with its $700,000-and-up specimens of Old Florida Craftsman bungalows, the treasure of this neighborhood is a 4 1/2-mile jog along Bayshore Boulevard with a fish-eye-lens view of Tampa Bay.
Later came a moment's excruciating decision: Which restaurant? From a sea of choices including Bern's Steak House in nearby SoHo, we dug in with two hands and hunks of injera (Ethiopian bread) at Queen of Sheba, recently opened by former Bostonians Negash and Seble Gizaw. The earthy African staples are beautifully presented with white tablecloths, walls of Ethiopian folk art, and a hand-washing service.
"Gilligan's Island with music" is how Courtney describes his best entertainment tip. Even Mahuffer's, a shipwreck of a bar in Indian Shores, couldn't rival the salvage decor of Skipper's Smokehouse in landlocked North Tampa. Rooms of exuberant visual chaos ramble from the restaurant serving inexpensive Floribbean favorites, to the outdoor bar and concert stage where a friendly staffer named John Hancock stamped our hands. The headline act, a rock-and-West African fusion band, pulled a crowd to the dance floor that ranged from Dead Heads to a toddler in his dad's arm, while between sets, boys with hula hoops performed. All on an average Sunday night.
Tampa can absorb you in feeding spotted margays and jaguars at Big Cat Rescue or discovering an unexpected trove on the University of South Florida campus, where Peter Foe curates the Contemporary Art Museum. Ask ahead and he can show you the Graphicstudio's archive of images from Robert Mapplethorpe, Roy Lichtenstein, and other printmaking masters who created at the atelier and left work behind.
But if it's sunny and 70 degrees, all indoor bets are off. The bay is laced with barrier island beaches that consistently pull a disproportionate share of Dr. Beach awards. If you're based in St. Petersburg, head south on Boca Ciega Boulevard to Pass-a-Grille or out the Pinellas Bayway to the five islands of Fort de Soto Park for a picnic and hike. From a base in Clearwater, you're a short ferry ride from experiencing Caladesi Island, a rarity in its near-wild state. Halfway between these two points, Indian Shores offers a break in the condo skyline and one of the waterfront's best menus, at Salt Rock Grill.
We managed to make the Sunday sunset drum circle on Treasure Island Beach, recommended by Bonnie Heeman, an expert on the brown pelicans at St. Petersburg's Pier Bait House, which sells herring to feed the birds - and to add the onion rings and grouper sandwich at Dockside Dave's to our favorites things. Then our wanna-do list went into overflow.
Now I know why those clever marketers call it Tampa Bay. A week wasn't enough to fit it all in.
Patricia Borns can be reached at patriciaborns@comcast.net.
