There are two kinds of guilty pleasures – the ones you reveal, and the ones you don't.
When the rest of the Planet staff created the Weekly Planet Tampa Bay Guilty Pleasure Hall of Fame (WPTBGPHOF) for me, the newbie, to explore, I should've figured they would come up with a bunch of spots from category one. The WPTBGPHOF was not decided by secret ballot – the staff was forced to announce their guilty pleasures out loud in a meeting.
The list isn't bad, mind you. In fact, most of the spots are guilty-pleasure archetypes. Junk food, tacky Florida, animal brutality – all the favorites made it.
But as I raced around the Bay tracking down the WPTBGPHOF, I realized something.
Not all guilty pleasures are created equal.
Like anything else, they work on a sliding scale – some are guiltier than others, some are more pleasurable.
Taking a crap, for example, would fall on the bottom of the scale. You don't feel guilty, and unless you've got some fecal-fetish I don't wanna know about, you don't take too much pleasure from the experience.
We'll call those Not Guilty.
In the middle of the scale you find what we typically think of as guilty pleasures. Bad food, bad music, bad TV – the kind of stuff you'll find on lists elsewhere in this issue – most of it ends up in this murky Kinda Guilty section.
Rocking out to The Complete Works of Whitesnake, for instance, is Kinda Guilty. You might not wanna break out the box set on a first date – but by the fifth or sixth, if things are going OK, being into Whitesnake becomes sort of endearing. Embarrassing, but endearing.
It's just above this point on the scale where things start to get interesting. Somewhere in between Kinda Guilty and Electric Chair, you hit the point where guilty pleasures become too guilty to tell anyone about.
It's not just watching America's Next Top Model. It's watching America's Next Top Model in a pair of assless chaps, spanking yourself repeatedly and calling yourself "Tyra." That's guilty. And, for somebody out there, it's pleasurable.
Not me, of course. But I wouldn't tell you if it was.
These guilty pleasures – the ones in the Electric Chair category – are so guilty you never tell a soul, and so pleasurable you never stop.
There weren't too many top-of-the-scale activities on the WPTBGPHOF, and there couldn't have been – the office would've gotten way too awkward, way too quickly.
Thus, I present the Able To Be Said In A Staff Meeting Weekly Planet Tampa Bay Guilty Pleasures Hall of Fame (ATBSIASMWPTBFPHOF).
Enjoy.
NOT GUILTY
Florida Estates Winery
To be honest, I'm not sure how this place made the list. It's in a beautiful location, stuck out on a sprawling 3,600-acre plot off of State Road 52 in Land O' Lakes. The specialty fruit wines, which fall somewhere between a Smirnoff Ice and a 1990 Opus One, go down easy as pie (Key Lime is one of the flavors). The laid-back staff is a wonderful surprise, assuming you expect most wine people to be gigantor snobs, as I do. Plus, they give you chocolate to eat with their wild cherry spice dessert wine. Free chocolate? Cheap wine? How can you go wrong? The only thing I felt guilty about was getting back in the car after going through a full-roster tasting ($3.50).
Guilt-O-Meter: 1
Florida Estates Winery features 11 wines, seven of which are made in Florida. 25241 S.R. 52, Land O'Lakes, 813-996-2113. For more information, go to www.floridaestateswines.com.
Ted Peters Smoked Fish
I'm not sure what they do to fish to make it come out as a delicious gloppy spread, but I'm glad someone's doing it. I'll head out on a limb and say smoking is involved, but after that the whole thing is a mystery.
For now, I'm going with a large man in the back, with a wart on the end of his nose, cackling as he stews a giant black pot of mahi and mullet. I was a bit let down by my sandwich -so much fish spread was packed on that 90 percent of it fell out the sides. But with an extra piece of toast (or your fingers), the excess was easily retrievable. I washed it all down with root beer in frozen mugs, which, I would argue, should be served in every restaurant in America.
Guilt-O-Meter: 1
(Only because of where my imagination goes when trying to figure out how one makes fish spread.) Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish, 1350 Pasadena Ave. S., South Pasadena, 727-381-7931.
The Chattaway
OK, this may be a bit low on the guilt scale for the famous St. Pete burger joint. The food is really, really good … and probably really, really bad for you. But you'd have to eat here pretty often to get a full-on artery clog, and the soothing jungle-like back porch makes you feel at least like you're doing something healthy. Much more guilt-inspiring than the food is the often damn fine waitstaff, which is probably the real reason The Chattaway made the list. If you catch the right shift, the place will be manned (and womaned) by a couple of very lithe, very symmetrical, very well-crafted bodies. Extra guilt points if that's the only reason you go.
Guilt-O-Meter: 2
The Chattaway, 358 22nd Ave. S., St. Petersburg, 727-823-1594.
KINDA GUILTY
Sunken Gardens
On the Tuesday morning I went to what we will affectionately call "The Other Amusement Park," I was followed in by a pack of 32 seniors on a field trip. I joined their group, and a tour guide led the 33 of us around the gardens – a gorgeous labyrinth of indigenous and alien plants that dips five feet below street level.
Did you know that the garden was rescued by the city in 1999? Or that bamboo can grow 12 inches in a day? I didn't.
I also didn't know that old folks rock the best sunglasses I've ever seen, call parrots "nasty little critters," and have names like Buster Sharp. The things you learn.
Possible guilt-inducements:
• Sunken Gardens is the perfect place for angsty 13-year-olds to write bad, brooding poetry. If you were one of those angsty 13-year-olds who wrote bad, brooding poetry (there, or anywhere), the gardens gotta make you feel damn guilty. • The place reminds you how little you know about fauna, or flora. (As in you have no idea what the difference is.)
• You don't spend enough time with your grandparents, so you go to Sunken Gardens to see people who look like them. Call Grandma. She misses you.
Guilt-O-Meter: 4
Sunken Gardens, 1825 Fourth St. N., St. Petersburg, 727-551-3100. For more information go to www.stpete.org/fun/parks/sunken.htm.
Mel's Hot Dogs
Now we're getting into the food you feel bad about.
I went to Mel's seven hours ago and had two of the best hot dogs I've ever had in my life. I started with the Reuben Dog, which was considerably better than it may sound. Still hungry, I had a Bacon Cheddar Dog for dessert, which somehow was just as good as it sounds.
As my body begins to digest whatever death-defying preservatives may have been in that 'kraut, I'm about two steps away from hallucinating. Not in a bad way – in an I-just-smoked-pot-for-the-third-time-and-I-think-I'm-starting-to-feel-it way. Lightheaded, woozy – I feel like I just ate 876 KFC biscuits in one sitting. There's gotta be something wrong with that.
But if Mel's is wrong, I don't wanna be right.
Guilt-O-Meter: 5
Mel's Hot Dogs, 4136 E. Busch Blvd., Tampa, 813-985-8000. To check out the menu, go to www.melshotdogs.com.
The Linger Lodge
Thank you, Scott Harrell. It was you, good sir, who sent me down to this restaurant/RV park in Bradenton, and for that I am eternally grateful.
A monument to good eats, good people and good amateur taxidermy, the Linger Lodge is the place I will bring visitors when they first get to Florida. Its walls are covered with the work of Frank Gansky, Linger Lodge's owner, who has mounted hundreds of stuffed snakes, skinned gators and other preserved beasts he's killed on the property. He's even got a gallery of stuffed squirrels, each one posed in a different sports getup. Squirrels golfing, squirrels playing hoops, squirrels bowling – Gansky's made dead squirrels play everything but Wiffle Ball.
I had the gator bites (taste like chicken, only chewier) but the Linger Lodge serves chicken and burgers as well. The food, while tasty, doesn't make this place – the décor and the waitstaff do. Nicest women I've met in a while – the kind of waitresses who call you "honey" and pat you on the shoulder after you order, as though it was some big accomplishment to ask for fried alligator.
And, if you're lucky, you'll get Gansky talking. He's got a story for every carcass on the wall. "That's the one that bit me," he proudly told me as he pointed to a particularly big snake.
As of press time, snake bites weren't on the menu. But I bet if you asked nicely, the folks at the Linger Lodge would whip you up a batch.
It's just that kind of place.
Guilt-O-Meter: 6
(Only because of the obvious karmic issues associated with laughing at a dead squirrel playing golf.) Linger Lodge RV Resort & Restaurant, 7205 Linger Lodge Road, Bradenton, 941-755-2757.
ELECTRIC CHAIR
Derby Lane Kennel Club
Memo to anyone who wishes it were 1947: it still is at Derby Lane. Cheap beer, fluorescent lights, old guys in fedoras yelling "Dagnabit!" when their dogs lose – it's all here. (OK, no guys in fedoras. But you wouldn't be surprised if one showed up.)
It's not a five-nights-a-week kind of place – that's called a gambling addiction. But if you're looking to get out of the house, and you enjoy fried food, losing small amounts of money every 15 minutes and reading racing forms more cryptic than the Torah, Derby Lane's the place for you.
If blowing money on the track isn't your thing, they've also got a full-fledged poker wing, with multiple tournaments every night. Watch out for the jokers pretending they're on ESPN … they're everywhere.
The only reason Derby Lane gets the Electric Chair is the animal cruelty factor, which I was forced to acknowledge after a friend recently adopted a retired greyhound. Aside from being perpetually freaked out, all the dog knows how to do is run in circles, eat raw meat and crap.
That said, the track is fucking fun – even if enjoying it means going to hell and/or getting mugged by a pack of PETA people.
Guilt-O-Meter: 8
Derby Lane's current season ends on June 5, so get there soon. Nightly races start at 7:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 12:30 matinees on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. The $1 admission is waved Tuesday and Sunday. 10490 Gandy Blvd., St. Petersburg, 727-812-3339. For more information go to www.derbylane.com. If you don't get your fix by June 5, head over to Tampa Greyhound Track. Their season starts June 21st.
Pier 60 Sunset Festival
Ahhh, Florida: the only place in the world where people could put on a sunset festival in the same spot every night and not get mocked. I've seen some contrived events – WWF matches, W's "town hall" meetings, the first time I had sex – but the Pier 60 festival tops the list.
I know it's for tourists, but no one in their right mind would keep going back to such a thing. It's like a budget state fair that somehow marooned itself on the beach and stole our oxygen. Annoying street magicians, volumes of generic cheap jewelry, souped-up trampolines – who would actually spend money on this stuff?
(Full disclosure: a friend and I paid $8 apiece to jump on the tramp for all of three minutes.)
They even make you pay to walk out on the pier!
(We threw down for that, too.)
Who would enjoy something so trite? If it's you, you damn well better feel guilty.
(It was actually kinda fun.)
Guilt-O-Meter: 8.5
Nightly festivals run from 6 p.m. until 10 p.m. 1 Causeway Blvd., Clearwater, 727-449-1036. For more information, go to http://www.sunsetsatpier60.com/.
Then clear your browser's history.
Mons Venus
I know, I know, how much more predictable could we be? But here's the catch: Nobody on the staff suggested the Mons. In "The Strip Club Capital of the World" (that was how Tampa was introduced to me my first night in town), it occurred to nobody that a titty bar – any titty bar – had a place on the WPTBGPHOF.
WTF?
So I took it upon myself to add a final, and quintessentially Electric Chair guilty pleasure. In fact, I'm sitting at the Mons right now, typing away in a corner.
(NOTE: Nobody seems to care. Apparently there are better things to look at than the chubby Jewish kid hovering over his laptop).
This defines guilty pleasure. Not only am I at a strip joint, but it's 11 on a Friday night and I'm here alone.
What if someone sees me walk out of this place? How am I going to defend that?
Guilty as charged.
As for pleasure, well, um, I just got here.
Of all the nights to forget my assless chaps…
Guilt-O-Meter: 9
(1 point deduction for being the most predictable entry on the list.) It costs $20 to get into Mons Venus, which is open from noon until 2 a.m. 2040 N. Dale Mabry, Tampa, 813-874-2621. For more "information" go to www.monsvenus.com.
This article appears in May 12-18, 2005.