"What the hell was that?"
Riley smiled like somebody does when they've lost everything, and it was their fault, and there was nothing left to do but laugh about it.
"That was Thursday," he said.
Facing a lawsuit, the Tampa City Council voted to repeal a panhandling ban that included an exemption for those selling newspapers on street corners, and will fall back to a countywide across-the-board ban that prohibits the practice. So, great, it's better that nobody wins? Also, to the advocacy group Homeless Helping Homeless, the one suing the city over the ordinance in the first place, because some homeless people get to sell papers while others can't just ask for change: Forest is to trees as zebra is to YOU'RE BLOWING IT. "All or nothing" is a bullshit play, folks; there's got to be another way.
Heroin! It's everywhere these days, from raided Lakeland homes to the veins of 15-year-olds in Sarasota "flop houses." The world will always have its escapists and addicts, but generally speaking, do you know who doesn't have time to shoot heroin? People with jobs. And hope. And a quality of life that doesn't come from a syringe.
Authorities closed a bridge on Bell Shoals Road in Valrico when a hand grenade was found in the canal beneath it. Which is surprising; not that they found a hand grenade, but that they had to divert traffic, because hand grenades in canals is pretty much just fishing in Valrico.
The City of Clearwater finally unveiled its half-million-dollar centennial monument, and it totally doesn't look '50s sci-fi L. Ron Hubbard-ish AT ALL.
And finally, in Ohio, some fucking waste of blood and air was finally arrested for a crime after he opened up a car involved in an accident Monday morning and, rather than helping the two 17-year-olds inside, filmed them in the hope of selling the footage to the local news networks. (One of the kids died, by the way.) It took this long to pin something on the guy because in Ohio, there's no "Good Samaritan" law against such abhorrent behavior — the dude was charged with vehicular trespassing, and probably won't even spend the maximum 30 days in jail. So, in case you were wondering where we are as a culture, this is where we are as a culture: we're probably going to have to pass a law making it a crime to film accident victims dying, rather than helping them, with an eye toward selling the footage to the local news networks. Just so you're clear on where we are.
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2015.