Over the course of three issues (with a fourth on the way next month), CL’s Ask the Locals magazine — the insiders’ guide to Tampa Bay — has published interviews with chefs, artists, actors, entrepreneurs, TV reporters, state legislators, county commissioners, city councilpeople and other local notables, asking them to share their favorite spots to eat, play, and hang out. But we’ve never talked to the people whom you might expect to be the primary source of informed recommendations: the mayors of our three biggest cities.
Well, this being election season, we thought it was time to change that. In the following pages, you’ll find my (mostly apolitical) chats with Mayors Buckhorn, Kriseman and Cretekos, in which they try valiantly not to play favorites when it comes to pointing out their cities’ highlights, but name them they do.
Because if a mayor can’t talk nice about his city, who can?
—David Warner
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2015.