I arrived in Tampa one year after Creative Loafing did, when my parents decided to flee the cold winters (and exorbitant state income taxes) of New York and transplant my family from Long Island to Carrollwood in 1989. It took me a few more years to find the paper, but by my junior and senior years of high school (1992-93), I was picking it up while browsing for tapes and CDs at Spec’s Music and Rock Island.
I’d like to say I was all over the news coverage from the start, but the truth is that my early experiences with CL involved skipping from News of the Weird straight back to the film and music stories. I went to FSU from 1993-1997, but would grab the paper when I came home for visits, if only to read Lance Goldenberg’s film reviews and see if there were any good bands rolling through town.
I moved back to Tampa after college, and distinctly recall sitting with friends in the late 1990s at the Holiday House coffee shop up by University Mall, reading the personal ads aloud and laughing my ass off while chain-smoking Marlboro Reds. By 2002-’03 I was a regular reader — including the news section, where I would gobble up long stories about the folly of the still-developing invasion of Iraq. I was going through a personal conversion around this time, disillusioned by Bush and the war, and CL was often there to provide a little “it’s not just you” sanity in what seemed like a world gone mad.
I started at CL in 2004 as the world’s oldest intern (I was 28 and had already been through two careers) and couldn’t believe my luck. I had crossed the rubicon, going from someone who simply read CL to one who now had a hand in making it. I took this responsibility seriously, and managed to work my way in and up, going from copy editor to associate editor to my current position as managing/online editor. My only hope is that you get as much out of reading CL as I do out of making it.
I’ve now had a hand in roughly 400 issues, and it’s been a constant joyful struggle, one that I wouldn’t trade for anything. In many ways, CL has made me who I am today, and for that I will always be grateful.
Now, on to the next 400 …
“Party” Joe Bardi is Managing and Online Editor of Creative Loafing.
This article appears in Apr 18-24, 2013.