Inching toward the weekend, looking back over our shoulders as we go.
So the Tampa Bay Rays unveiled a design for a ballpark they'd like to play in in Ybor City. It would only cost nearly $900 million, and if you think none of that money would come out of residents' pockets — not necessarily in new taxes, but likely in money already collected by the city or county that was previously earmarked for other stuff like, oh, roads and sewers and parks and badly needed infrastructure — then I've got a stadium I'd like to sell you.
As if leaving racist notes in hotel rooms for people on vacation wasn't enough, some thieves stole a rented scooter from a couple vacationing in Tampa, leaving them on the hook for the cost of the vehicle. And before you make your little "very slow getaway" jokes, the criminals lifted the scooter into the back of a truck, so there. (By the way, the make and model of the scooter, according to the linked story, was a Dong Fang, which is simply beyond awesome.)
And finally, after members of the Pinellas Suncoast Fire & Rescue crew couldn't remove a jagged and dangerous metal crab trap half-buried in the sand underwater at Belleair Shore Beach, "a couple of young girls and their uncle" in town from Inverness put on some snorkels and pulled the hazard ashore. Yeah, but the firefighters totally loosened it up for 'em. (One of the girls was 9, by the way.)
