Is it inevitable that the longer you live in a place, the more you take it for granted? Close to three years ago, I waxed enthusiastic in my first editor's note about everything I was noticing in my new home, Tampa Bay. The clouds, the lizards, the beaches, even the strip malls, all filled me with addlepated wonder. Now the clouds are … OK, better not to go on like Joni Mitchell singing "Both Sides Now," but suffice it to say that as these things lost some of their newness, I lost some of my wonder.
Recently, though, I've started attending to a more circumscribed part of my world: the route I take every morning when I walk the dog. My partner and I obtained a ridiculously appealing Norfolk terrier named Harriet last fall. We'd never owned a dog, so I hadn't been inclined to interrupt my three-newspaper morning routine before with ventures into the outside world. I might have tried — we live in a particularly bucolic corner of St. Petersburg, so the dawn's early light should have held plenty of appeal — but it was not until I was confronted with the irresistible demands of Harriet's bladder that I was forced to get out of the house by 8 a.m. and start walking.
And my god, I realized more viscerally than I ever had, it's pretty around here. And noisy. And smelly, if Harriet's constant sniffing of everything is any indication. One of the people you'll meet in this week's issue comments that dogs have 10,000 times better smellers than humans, and that certainly seems to be so, because Harriet's view of the world is definitely nose-first. But her intensely investigative bent, plus my increased sensitivity to sights and sounds that might offer threat or temptation to her, have made me much more conscious of what's around me in my neighborhood. The amazing variety of yakking birds and the barks of angry squirrels; the rush of water in the creek, which always sounds like approaching traffic; the whoosh of actual traffic, which means it's time to pull the dog in closer; the ominously anthropomorphic shapes of fallen palm fronds; the chicken bone in the grass that Harriet almost gets to before I do; and the fresh views of the landscape I experience when I have to stop, wait for her and look around for a while.
In thinking about this year's edition of the Urban Explorer's Handbook, I was inspired directly by an event and indirectly by Harriet. The event is Creative Loafing's annual multi-disciplinary arts event, Sensory Overload, which is timed to coincide with the publication of the Handbook, one of our biggest issues annually. This year we decided, why not give the issue the same theme as the event? Because, just as the idea of Sensory Overload provided a useful framework for an arts party, it also suggested a new way of exploring our region, a guide to Tampa Bay via the five senses. Ears perked, eyes wide, nostrils alert (OK, I'll stop now, don't want to take this Harriet thing too far), we asked ourselves, and we're asking you: What are the sights, smells, sounds, tastes and textures that say Tampa Bay?
We came up with a wide variety of answers. Some you'll no doubt agree with (the smell of oranges, blossoming or processed); some may surprise you (the Cass Street Bridge in downtown Tampa can produce B-flat chords?); others may leave you with wrinkled brow and/or nose (lap dances and sewage plants, to name a few). You'll meet artists making discoveries about Tampa's physical environs, see St. Pete through the eyes of a blind man, taste some very nasty fruit and even pet a few goats.
Here's hoping you enjoy this year's journey, and that you let us know at senses@creativeloafing.com what your five senses tell you about Tampa Bay. And come by the Cuban Club in Ybor on Saturday, March 24, for Sensory Overload the event. Between the skateboarders, the rumfest, the rock bands and the painters/ sculptors/ filmmakers/ installation artists, your senses are going to be very busy.
– David Warner
Urban Explorer's Handbook 2007
Sensory Overload Edition
Sight
Sound
Touch
Taste
Smell
Sensory Overload: The party
This article appears in Mar 21-27, 2007.