Monday was a steampunk tumbleweed rolling in ominous silence through an abandoned cowboy theme park without the help of a breeze.
The USF women's basketball team found out they'll start their potential trip to a Tampa Final Four slot at Amalie Arena in … Tampa, at the Sun Dome. I don't know a whole lot about sports, but I do know something like that can easily go either way in the "superstitious omens" category.
Multiple skimmers — devices used to steal credit and debit card numbers and information — were found attached to gas pumps in Hillsborough County. Consumers in some neighborhoods are actually happy they're here, calling them an improvement over being hit in the face by a shaky kid with the butt of a gun that just misfired.
And finally, Tampa was the only Florida city to make Travel+Leisure magazine's list of the 20 "quirkiest cities" in the U.S. Thanks, Travel+Leisure, for bestowing upon Tampa the kind of adjective that, even when meant as a compliment, often sends young human beings on the brink of attaining a confident adolescence careening instead into years of substance abuse and therapy. Nice work, there.
This article appears in Mar 12-18, 2015.