***A suspicious memo on south St. Pete redevelopment, PETA protesters do more tease than strip, and St. Pets sniffs out a weird opportunity for urban promotion. *****
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A Midtown Solution
As with any plan for economic development, St. Petersburg's Midtown plan has a few political and perceptual conundrums that have to be considered. At least that's what an anonymous memo sent to Weekly Planet on June 17 claims. The memo is printed on what appears to be stationery from Goliath Davis' office with the "Midtown, St. Petersburg Continuing the Progress" slogan printed at the top of the page.
"Issue: The Midtown Plan is costly and unpopular with Northside residents as it competes for scarce tax dollars and shifts emphasis to south St. Petersburg," the memo states.
Although the statement might be dead on, Davis' office is not taking credit for the memo. According to his secretary Addie Sullivan, Davis had nothing to do with it. The satirical tone of the memo jibes with the secretary's claim. Davis didn't write the memo, but he could have.
The first solution to the problem, the memo states, is to "Expand Midtown to include the entire city."
Not bad. Those swank Zom apartments and copious other downtown projects would all constitute economic development for Midtown.
And since Midtown is actually a name Rick Baker made up to replace the unpopular label of "Challenge Area," Baker could easily give the entire city the Midtown moniker. It doesn't mean anything anyway.
But this plan would be wrongheaded, the memo states, because "People will catch on."
Probably.
"Possible Proposal II: Expand Midtown to include Kenwood, an area populated with City Planners, yuppie white professionals and a few token blacks."
To support this plan, the memo says the 1996 riots were calmed when the city promised $20-million in improvements to southside residents. The city was able to show the spending by "indirectly allocating costs and infrastructure improvements to this area that were in large part already planned."
The city can do the same by expanding the Midtown area to include Kenwood and then confining improvements to Kenwood. Hey, it's all Midtown.
Davis may have to track down the memo's author and sue him for idea infringement. Including Kenwood in the Midtown area was (and still is) his plan. It isn't quite as sinister as the memo would suggest because including Kenwood would reduce Midtown's crime statistics and increase its median income, helping to attract much-needed businesses like grocery stores. However, the cynicism is well placed because the city could characterize improvements to Kenwood as successes for Midtown, even though the people the economic development plan really meant to help don't live there.
Davis claims residents of Kenwood asked to be included in Midtown's boundaries. Kenwood's neighborhood association president, Sandy Ewing, denied knowing anything about it in the St. Petersburg Times when the idea became public.
That is suspicious.
There are some drawbacks to this plan, the memo points out. "The St. Petersburg Times liberal press types, John Sugg, or others will smell a rat and expose us."
The memo goes on to brush off this concern, based on the theory that reporting on the scam would "affect the newsies' pocketbooks"
It's hard to say if that's true of the "liberal types" at the Times, but the plan is certainly safe from former WP senior editor Sugg, who moved to Atlanta almost a year ago.
The memo's author concludes that including Kenwood in the Midtown area is a swell idea, as long as the city keeps changing the name of south St. Petersburg every few years while trumpeting bold new plans to revive the area.
"It's subtle enough to keep everyone fooled, for this administration at least," the memo says.
The onus is on the residents of south St. Petersburg and the "liberal types" in the media to make sure the author's plan is a clever joke and the city's plan isn't.
—Rochelle Renford
Not Quite Bare Naked Ladies
What does it say about America that a couple of news cameras can draw a crowd more effectively than a couple of semi-nude women?
Responding to a heavily circulated (and rather enticing) press release from animal-rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a gaggle of reporters and camera operators descended upon downtown Tampa's Franklin Street Mall at high noon on June 27. The release's references to "the nude protesters" and "stripper-for-a-cause" undoubtedly fueled optimistic visions of a naked army bringing downtown activity to a standstill in newsrooms across the bay; it certainly did here at the Planet. Nearly every local news outlet, from the Times and Trib to Bay News 9 to WFLA-970 AM, had an agent in place before the anti-leather protest's scheduled noon start.
They were a bit nonplussed to discover that the protest would consist solely of two semi-naked ladies and a strategically placed banner. PETA lifer Lisa Franzetta and French Canadian schoolteacher Luce Marquis (currently on sabbatical as a PETA intern) wore pasties and skin-tone panties, and stood behind a beach-towel-size banner proclaiming "We'd Rather Bare Skin than Wear Skin!" The pair were undertaking a weeklong Florida tour to raise awareness of the mistreatment of cows destined for the fashion racks. The minimal coverage was intended to keep the two young women out of jail along the way, though Franzetta has been arrested in the past during other, more daring PETA exploits.
Still, a little thrill is better than no thrill, and the pair were extensively interviewed and photographed as they posed on the corner of Franklin and Kennedy, waving and shouting slogans at the lunchtime foot and auto traffic. Plenty of folks slowed, but not too many stopped completely, ostensibly for fear of being branded "the perv." Young professional women alternately blushed, grinned and grimaced. Young professional men called their young professional friends on cell phones. Several wondered aloud if Franzetta and Marquis would be arrested. One woefully repressed young lady screamed "Sluts!" from a passing car. The homeless guy on the bench 60 feet away never even woke up.
When the news folks realized nothing else was going to happen, they began packing up. The small crowd took this as a cue to disburse, leaving the reason the media was there in the first place to wave and shout at passers-by for another 40 minutes. People — did we mention they were nearly naked?
—Scott Harrell
Smell the Spin
Get a whiff of that. There. Right over there. Him. That guy. The one with the mullet. The hairy back.
Yes, Tampa Bay, we can rest on yet another laurel. Old Spice, the out-and-out, no-questions-asked old fogy of men's deodorant and cologne, has named Tampa/St. Petersburg No. 8 of the "Top 50 Sweatiest Cities in America."
Sure, you might be thinking, this is just a clever marketing ploy created by some New York public relations firm whose job is to help increase Old Spice's market share by garnering media attention.
You're right. (And — doh! — Weekly Planet fell for it.)
But, if we must defend ourselves, the only stink in the Old Spice story is the spin it received from the St. Petersburg PR machine. The lead story in the June 20 issue of St. Pete Fast Facts, an e-mail newsletter from the city's Web site, lauded St. Petersburg's inclusion on the fetid list, dubbing the odor the "smell of success."
"I'm not surprised that we made the list," Mayor Rick Baker is quoted as saying in Fast Facts. "After all, we work hard and play hard. Breaking a sweat is easy because St. Petersburg is hot right now, enjoying many recent successes."
Even White House Question Dodger — er, Spokesman — Ari Fleischer would be proud of that spin. Here are five more honors for municipal flacks to spin for the next issue of Fast Facts:
1. City Most Likely to Piss Off Residents and Visitors By Bringing Back Downtown Parking Meters
2. City Most Likely to Slash and Burn Important Municipal Services
3. City Most Likely to Regret Buying a Money Hole Known as Sunken Gardens
4. City Most Likely to Have Employees Fearful of Losing Their Jobs
5. City Most Likely to Raise Taxes By Disguising the Hike with Smoke and Mirrors
Can you smell that success? It'll take more than Old Spice to cover it up.
—Trevor Aaronson
This article appears in Jul 3-9, 2002.