History is revived in Tampa
Transcription
History is revived in Tampa
G Travel Sunday, February 22, 2015 Rick Steves looks at what’s new in Italy and Spain this year, G4 News: [email protected] or 512-445-3690 Subscribe: statesman.com/subscribe URUGUAY GETTING IN THE GROOVE IN ONTEVIDEO Discovering Uruguay’s capital city through its live music scene. SOUNDS OF URUGUAY IN AUSTIN What: Uruguayan showcase at South by Southwest When: March 18 Where: Speakeasy, 412 Congress Ave. More information: sxsw. com and facebook.com/ soundsfromuruguay. If you have a SXSW badge or wristband, that’s great. If not, that’s usually fine, too. Often, these shows are not too packed and tickets are available at the door. Check with the venue before the show and arrive early. ABOUT THE SHOWCASED ARTISTS Hip-hop fusion group Santullo: santullo.com.uy Pop-rock band Boomerang: boomerang.com.uy Rap group AFC: afc.com.uy Rock/ska/punk band Once Tiros: oncetiros.com.uy Folk-pop fusion Fede Graña & Los Prolijos: losprolijos.com Vintage pop-rock fusion singer Max Capote: maxcapote.com ONLINE Listen to a Spotify playlist of these artists on our Cultura en Austin blog: cultura.blog. austin360.com By Nancy Flores [email protected] As I strolled past crumbling colonial buildings in Montevideo’s Old City, I came upon street musicians playing tango. Passersby tucked thermoses with hot water under their arms and held calabash gourds filled with caffeine-rich yerba mate tea. Each sip they took from the stainless steel straws looked ceremonial, and I realized I had arrived at someplace special. Tucked between Brazil and Argentina, it’s easy for travelers to skip over Uruguay, one of the smallest countries in South America. Globetrotters seeking an offthe-beaten path destination, though, are being lured by the deceptively cosmopolitan city of Montevideo. My husband and I grew curious about traveling to Uruguay years ago, intrigued as we noticed more Uruguayan films making their way into U.S. film festivals. Then, Uruguay brought a delegation of musicians to perform at South by Southwest, and I took it as a sign. Despite its size, Uruguay produces a staggering amount of innovative music, from tango fusions to the cool, subtropical music of the band Campo. ABOVE: Tango musicians perform on Montevideo streets. RIGHT: Residents of Montevideo enjoy drinking the caffeineinfused yerba mate tea out of calabash gourds. NANCY FLORES PHOTOS / AMERICANSTATESMAN Uruguay continued on G2 Montevideo’s past and present blend in the modern day Uruguayan capital. JEREMY SCHWARTZ / AMERICAN-STATESMAN FLORIDA TEXAS History is revived in Tampa March blooms with events around state Abandoned buildings have new life as bars, restaurants and hotels. From oysters to rattlesnakes, there’s something for all. By Helen Anne Travis Special to the American-Statesman A few years ago, this strip of riverfront was an abandoned, weed-clogged marsh that few Tampanians had any reason to visit. Today, wellheeled guests sip craft beers while waiting to be seated at a restaurant named by OpenTable as one of the top 100 in America. Ulele Native-Inspired Food and Spirits, a new seafood restaurant located in a former abandoned pump station along the Hillsborough River, is the latest in a series of renovation projects that have opened formerly vacant strips of Tampa to residents and travelers alike. Today, you can spend an entire weekend eating, drinking and cavorting in historic By Mauri Elbel Special to the American-Statesman The marquee of the Tampa Theatre glitters like it did when the venue first opened in 1926. CONTRIBUTED BY HELEN ANNE TRAVIS Tampa buildings where Teddy Roosevelt once slept and Babe Ruth hit his longest home run. Most of the structures have danced with demolition or had been abandoned for years before being reincarnated as restaurants, bars and hotels. “It’s exciting because there have been plans to do things with these buildings for a long time — and now they’re actually coming to fruition,” said Rodney Kite-Powell, curator of history at the Tampa Bay History Center. Tampa continued on G3 Also inside » Tampa’s brew scene excels with local supplies, G3 From floral festivals and rattlesnake roundups to St. Patrick’s Day and Independence Day celebrations, spring in the Lone Star State is chock-full of Texas-style fun. Granbury Feb. 28-March 2: At March 2 Texas, the Texas Independence Day Celebration of North Texas at Granbury, expect everything from a parade and live music to exhibits and professional bull riding put on to celebrate and preserve the rich heritage of Texas. More at march2texas.com. Gruene Historic District is throwing its annual Texas Independence Day Celebration on March 2. CONTRIBUTED Dallas Feb. 28-April 12: The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens presents Dallas Blooms: Deep in the Hearts of Texans, the largest floral festival in the southwest. March continued on G2 Page 3 CMYK AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN | SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015 G3 FLORIDA Tampa’s beer trail: 6 stops highlighted Local brews embrace area’s culture, history. By Helen Anne Travis Special to the AmericanStatesman Fueled by a crop of scrappy and talented local brewers, the Tampa Bay area shot to the top of the beer charts in 2014. It was crowned the No. 2 beer town by USA Today and No. 5 “Best Beer City” by Livability.com. Using local flavors like citrus, guava and even Cuban coffee, Tampa’s brewers are crafting beers that embrace the area’s culture, history and famous residents. And they’re winning prizes in the process. Tampa’s Cigar City Brewing, the granddaddy of the region’s growing beer scene, is repeatedly ranked one of the best breweries in the world by ratebeer.com, a website for ale aficionados. Put on your drinking shoes and get ready for a day exploring these top Tampa breweries, all within a few miles of downtown. Cigar City Brewing This is the brewery that put Tampa on the beer map. Since opening in 2009, Cigar City has used local ingredients to craft delicious beers that tell the stories behind the city’s history and culture. The Tocobaga Red Ale gets its name from the Native American tribe that lived in Tampa before the Spanish arrived. The Jai Alai IPA, its most popular brew, is named after a game that originated in Spain and became popular in Tampa in the 1960s and ’70s. (For those not in the know, Jai Alai, pronounced hili, is kind of like wall ball on steroids, with max ball speeds reaching more than 180 miles per hour.) The Cigar City tasting room has about two dozen taps serving mostly house beers and a few guest brews. In a nod to Tampa’s status as the Cigar Capital of the World in the early 1900s, you’ll find a cigar roller twisting fresh stogies in the tasting room most afternoons and evenings. Southern Brewing and Winemaking One of the smallest breweries in Tampa, Southern Brewing and Winemaking has about two dozen taps pouring craft beers, ciders and meads. The vibe here is delightfully laid back. You can cozy up to the bar or take your brew into the large backyard, complete with a fire pit, cornhole boards and a giant Connect Four game. The brewery also doubles as a homebrewer’s shop, where locals load up on yeast, hops and carboys. Ulele Spring Brewery The Ulele Spring Brewery at Ulele Native-Inspired Food and Spir- THE BEST OF CENTRAL FLORIDA Forget the theme parks. Tampa is the perfect home base for exploring the best of Central Florida, where quirkiness and nature reign supreme. Swim with manatees, dance with mermaids and hunt for ghosts at these roadside attractions, all within a two-hour drive from Tampa. WEEKI WACHEE SPRINGS STATE PARK About an hour north of Tampa sits one of Florida’s best roadside attractions, Weeki Wachee Springs State Park. Here, in an underwater theater carved from a freshwater spring, women wearing seashell bras and fishtails perform“The Little Mermaid”while breathing through hoses and flapping their webbed legs against the current. In the 1960s, being a mermaid was a highly coveted career. Girls came from as far as Tokyo to try their hand. The park has enamored everyone from Elvis to Jimmy Buffet. In 2004, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie taped a segment at Weeki Wachee for their reality show,“The Simple Life.” Today, the park maintains much of its Old Florida appeal. Also included in your entry fee is admission to Buccaneer Bay, a freshwater water park. CRYSTAL RIVER In Citrus County’s Crystal River, about 80 miles north of Tampa, you can legally swim with manatees. The federal government allows for“passive observation”of manatees in the water. This means you can pet and interact with the endangered mammals in their natural environment, provided they approach you first. Every winter, hundreds of manatees gather in the county’s springs to wait out the cold in the 72-degree water. If you stay still long enough, you’ll find yourself face-to-face with these 3,000-pound vegetarians. Some will even go as far as rolling over to let well-behaved swimmers rub their bellies. The regulations around manatee interaction are strict. Undercover wildlife agents patrol the area and are quick to write up anyone who doesn’t follow the rules. It’s best to find a local guide who will travel with you into the water — not sit on the boat and watch — and guide you through the interaction. When it comes to swimming with endangered animals in their natural environment, rules are a good thing. CASSADAGA About two hours inland from Tampa is the century-old Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp, a community of mediums, spirit readers and clairvoyants. Nicknamed the Psychic Capital of the World, this is where you come to connect with deceased loved ones, get a Tarot reading or have your dreams analyzed. The town is delightfully hokey. But the people who make their living charging up to $60 for a 45-minute reading take their work seriously. The Cassadaga Hotel, the only hotel in Cassadaga, proudly reports on its website that it’s haunted. Don’t worry: The hotel assures that only friendly spirits roam the grounds. Keep an eye out for mysterious light orbs in the hallways and spirits roaming the veranda. Tucked away from the road, surrounded by oaks and pine trees, you wouldn’t find Cassadaga unless you were looking for it, which might be just how the spirits intended. perfect place to strike up a game of Cards Against Humanity with strangers while Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” plays in the background. The brewery is in the process of moving its tasting room to a larger space with two patios for outdoor seating. New World Brewery Once an abandoned pump station, Ulele Native-Inspired Food and Spirits now serves seafood and homebrews. CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS BY HELEN ANNE TRAVIS its uses local honey and strawberries to make beers that pair nicely with Ulele’s signature octopus carpaccio and alligator hush puppies. After brewing, the spent grain is sent as food for the cows at the ranch where Ulele gets its beef. The brewery has a beer garden that offers excellent sunset views over the Hillsborough River. Airport ales Ulele Native-Inspired Food and Spirits is the latest in a series of renovation projects that have opened formerly vacant strips of Tampa to residents and travelers alike. Coppertail Brewing Located on the fringe of Ybor City, Tampa’s entertainment district and historic center, Coppertail Brewing is a relatively new player in the bay area’s brew scene. Taking its name from a sea monster that supposed- This 20-year-old Tampa institution stopped making its own beer a decade ago, but the bar remains fiercely dedicated to promoting the work of local brewers. It’s a great spot to sample some of the best of the bay area’s beer makers, including St. Petersburg’s Green Bench and Bradenton’s Motorworks Brewing. New World Brewery’s beer garden also doubles as an intimate concert venue. Catch a performance by some of Central Florida’s best up-and-coming bands, as well as bigger indie names like Kishi Bashi and My Morning Jacket. ly lurks in the waters off Tampa, Coppertail uses local ingredients like kumquat and grapefruit to craft its Free Dive IPA and the aptly named 9.0 ABV Unholy Trippel. The tasting room is simple but comfortable. Oldies blast from the radio; families relax over a table of empty snifters; and locals who biked in from the surrounding neighborhoods cool off with a pepper saison. It’s the End your beer tour at the Cigar City Brewing outpost in Terminal C of Tampa International Airport. This terminal just happens to host Southwest, which flies directly between Tampa and Austin. Order the Tony Jannus, a bright, citrusy pale ale brewed on site and named after the world’s first commercial pilot whose plane landed in Tampa on Jan. 1, 1914. Tampa continued from G1 Downtown gems About a mile from Ulele, travelers roll their suitcases over the marble floors where some of the area’s most important civil rights trials were held and the city’s former mafia bosses took their last steps as free men. The swanky Le Meridien hotel opened last year in the city’s century-old federal courthouse. Before Le Meridien, the building sat empty for about a decade, silent except for the hum of the air conditioners that kept the mold at bay. Around the corner, an investment made by the city more than 30 years ago saved another historic building from the wrecking ball. When the Tampa Theatre opened in 1926, it was designed to transport moviegoers to another world — even when there was nothing on the screen. Inside, the theater looks like a Mediterranean courtyard. Statues and columns flank the stage; taxidermy doves and peacocks perch on fairytale terraces. The ceiling is studded with 99 tiny twinkling bulbs. It was paradise until the 1960s, when the neighborhood went to pot and the theater was doomed for demolition until the city swooped in and bought the building. Today, the theater is one of the most active of its kind, opening its doors more than 600 times a year for indie film screenings, concerts and the city’s local Gasparilla Independent Film Festival. Before each filming, a Mighty Wurlitzer rises from the stage floor for a 15-minute live show. A hotel like no other The jewels in Tampa’s historic-building crown are the sparkling minarets of the former Tampa Bay Hotel. Built in 1891 by railroad magnate Henry B. Plant, the opulent downtown hotel hosted everyone from Babe Ruth — who hit his longest home run on the hotel’s grounds — to bandmaster John Philip Sousa. At its heyday, the ho- The jewels in Tampa’s historic building crown are the sparkling minarets of the former Tampa Bay Hotel. Built in 1891, the opulent downtown hotel hosted everyone from Babe Ruth to John Philip Sousa to the Queen of England. Cigar store Indians guard the streets of Tampa’s Ybor City, once the cigar capital of the world. CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS BY HELEN ANNE TRAVIS tel’s private golf course, 2,000-seat performance hall and heated indoor swimming pool offered a luxury unparalleled in the area. Even the Queen of England came by to check it out. But when Plant died in 1899, his family showed little interest in running the grand hotel. Then, the Great Depression hit. The building sat vacant for a short time before reopening as the University of Tampa. The on-site Henry B. Plant Museum celebrates the school’s history of hospitality. Cigar factories turned indie bars The whole “repurpose a historic building into something new” is old news in Ybor City, just two miles east of downtown. From the 1880s to the mid-1920s, the cigar industry was the foundation of Tampa’s economy. More than 400 million cigars were produced in Ybor annually, earning Tampa the nickname the “Cigar Capital of the World.” Today, the factories and stores that served the workers are home to indie-music venues, tattoo parlors and high-end Italian restaurants. The James Joyce Irish Pub & Eatery dishes out shepherd’s pie and Guinness in the former shell of the Castellano & Pizzo grocery store, one of the first Italian markets in Tampa. It opened in 1892 to serve the Italians who had traded backbreaking work in Louisiana’s sugarcane fields for jobs in Ybor’s budding cigar industry. Around the corner, Cigar City Cider and Mead opened last year in one of the city’s most famed historic buildings. That is, if you believe the rumors. Teddy Roosevelt brought his Rough Riders to Tampa in the spring of 1898 to await orders to ship to Cuba. That much is true. But whether Teddy and his buddies drank beer in a tavern that once stood here, as lore would have it, is debatable. Even more unlikely is the local tale that one Rough Rider fired his gun in the air and accidentally killed a woman — uhm “working” — on the second floor, making her the first casualty of the Spanish-American War. Tampa historians shoot this story down faster than you can say, “I’ll have another round of mead.” But hey, a city can dream. KicKapoo LucKy EagLE casino HotEL Bus Trip to EAGLE pAss pAy $20 TO riDE & GET $20 FrEE pLAy Next Trip: Monday, Mar. 16 Call Coach usA for reservations Today! 800-474-3352