Welcome to Tuesday. It's like Monday, only slightly less worthy of your dread.
Yay, popular opinion! The Florida Department of Transportation did a 180 and announced it won't be making one of the Howard Frankland's existing lanes a toll/express lane when it rebuilds the bridge. So apparently we've found the line beyond which local citizens are willing to get out the torches and pitchforks, and that line is "being made to figuratively kick oneself in the genitals by paying to contribute to Tampa Bay's abhorrent traffic woes." Makes sense.
A Sarasota man was arrested in a park during the wee hours of Monday morning for possession of pot, hash oil, cocaine and more than 66 bars of Xanax. He said he was meeting his girlfriend to play Pokemon Go. Oh, dude. We submit to you: which is the greater crime, getting caught with an ass-ton of drugs or being possessed of the kind of self-esteem that allows you to play the Pokemon Go card when it happens?
A story broke yesterday about two men being accidentally shot Sunday at a North Fort Myers gun show. Just start making everybody answer the question "what year were the words 'under God' added to the Pledge of Allegiance?" to get into any gun show, and this whole problem goes away. (Also: "reloading"?)
And finally, rent prices are rising faster in Tampa than anywhere else in Florida, though they're still not as high as St. Pete's. Remember when you could get a two-bedroom apartment in dangerous Hyde Park for $600, and you could get that down to like $50 a person when everybody who was actually sleeping there was working during the same month? Ah, scabies.
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 7, 2016.