Creative Loafing Tampa — March 5, 2025 by Chava Communications

MAR. 06-12, 2025

CREATIVE LOAFING GROUND ZERO

Egmont Key is a bellwether for sea level rise in Florida.

BY BEN MONTGOMERY AND THE FLORIDA TRIDENT

In January 1898, a group of local visionaries and businessmen escorted 17 visiting Congressmen with their wives and daughters aboard the magnificent steamer "Olivette" on an excursion 30 miles out to beautiful Egmont Key, a 500-acre island in the mouth of Tampa Bay.

The lawmakers, all members of the House Committee on Rivers and Harbors, ate sandwiches and imbibed on “product” from nearby Florida Brewing, according to The Morning Tribune. As they rounded the alluring key in Gilded Age pomp, they would’ve seen the island’s plentiful housing, troops barracks and the new Gulf of Mexico-facing Fort Dade fortifications, which were built to withstand intense hurricanes and which many believed could

protect Tampa Bay from the world’s fiercest navies.

When the "Olivette" stopped near the northern channel with the 86-foot-tall Egmont Key lighthouse at their backs, the local capitalists—with names like Plant, Sparkman and Macfarlane—spread out maps of the shallow 400-square-mile bay before them. They were joined by harbor pilots, captains who lived on Egmont Key and knew the bay bottoms better than anyone.

The pilots “pointed out where the shoals were located and exactly what is needed to give a depth of water sufficient to accommodate the vessels that would come to Port Tampa.”

The city fathers began to convince their powerful visitors of the need to dredge shipping lanes and

PHOTO BY BEN MONTGOMERY

establish a commercial trading port at Tampa, a young Florida city which boasted a population of around 15,000 people.

Over the next 127 years, Port Tampa Bay would grow to be the largest and most diversified in Florida, supporting more than 192,000 jobs, with an economic impact of $34.6 billion. At the

same time, millions of humans moved an enormous amount of wealth and resources onto the coastal wetlands around Tampa Bay—hospitals, airports, highrise hotels, sports stadiums, banks, data centers, U.S. Central Command—calling it progress and maybe it was, but it was accompanied by haunting risk.

THE LITTLE ISLAND HELD LESSONS FOR THOSE MEN IN 1898, HAD THEY LOOKED.

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EDITORIAL POLICY — Creative Loaﬁng Tampa Bay is a publication covering public issues, the arts and entertainment. In our pages appear views from across the political and social spectrum. They do not necessarily represent the views of the publisher.

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Loafingis

Photo by Ben Montgomery. Design by David Loyola.

Mighty ﬁne

By Jennifer Ring

The Raymond James Gasparilla Festival of the Arts returned to Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park last weekend, March 1-2, with more than 250 artists, live music, and interactive art experiences. The 55-year-old juried ﬁne art show draws artists from across the United States, but this lens was focused on Tampa Bay area locals. Since GFA started actively trying to include more local artists about 10 years ago, there are more Tampa Bay area artists at GFA than ever. They bring interactive art experiences, paint live at “remote studios,” show their work in a local artist showcase, apply for (and many are accepted into) GFA’s emerging artist program, and take home awards alongside some of the best artists in the country. See all the photos and get an update on winners via cltampa.com/slideshows.

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do this

Tampa Bay's best things to do from March 06 - 13

Living history

Tampa is home to one of the ﬁnest history museums in the South, but just a short trolley ride from the Tampa Bay History Center is the living breathing artifact Tampeños (and the people who want to be one) call Ybor City. For many, it’s the closest one can get to Cuba without violating a harsh embargo. For others, it is a reminder of the immigrants who helped carve a culture out of a dusty town that seems to welcome a new high rise each month. Five of its notable structures get the spotlight this week thanks to the Ybor City Historical Society’s popular architecture tour, which kicks off this year at J.C. Newman Cigar Company’s recently opened Cigar Worker’s Park. Other sites include the new addition Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, the former mutual aid societies and current social clubs for Italians and Austrians, plus the old Florida Brewing Company that is now home to the ofﬁces of Swope, Rodante P.A. Tickets include the send off party, light bites and beverages at each stop, guided tours and an optional lift to each site via Jolley Trolley.

Buildings Alive! Ybor City Architecture

Hop: Next Thursday, March 13. 5 p.m.-9:30 p.m. $65 ($100 dual ticket available). Meet at J.C. Newman Cigar Company, 2701 N 16th St., Ybor City. ybormuseum.org—Ray Roa

Wine down

There’s never a shortage of wine in Tampa, and this month is especially ﬂush thanks to Busch Gardens’ two-and-a-half-month Food & Wine Festival which includes nearly two dozen concerts from the likes of Hoobastank, Robin Thicke, Flo Rida, Luis Fonsi, and more. And for a one-night only throwdown, look no further than Tampa Theatre, which hosts its annual wine festival, themed this weekend for the “Harry Potter” movie series. Over two days, the historic theatre (which almost met the wrecking ball in the early-’70s) stages a silent auction, Friday wine and restaurant tasting, then the Saturday wine pairing banquet—all to raise money for the venue’s ongoing preservation. Only tickets for the Friday tasting remain.

‘Tampa Theatre and the Goblet of Wine: A Wizarding WineFest’: Friday-Saturday, March 7-8. $80. Tampa Theatre, 711 N Franklin St., Tampa. tampatheatre.org—Ray Roa

Hop to it

Tampa Bay Beer Week runs through Sunday, and includes a kingmaking event at Tampa Bay Brewing Co. where more than a dozen of the Bay area’s top breweries will put forth their hoppiest offerings. Sample for as little as $3, or $30 for all you can drink, at the brewery’s Ybor City location (1600 E 8th Ave.). There’s some good foeder on tap in St. Pete, too, thanks to Green Bench Brewing Co. (1600 E 8th Ave. N) hosting Foeder For Thought, its annual homage to fermentation. From Washington to Georgia, guest breweries include American Solera, Barrique Brewing and Blending, Fair Isle Brewing, Monday Night Brewing and Sapwood Cellars Brewery. For the ﬁrst time ever, Foeder will collaborate with BeyLoved Pairings to match food with each of the ﬁve breweries bringing beer to the party. The pairings will be provided by pastry chef Aliza Vega from LOKO Cuisine. While the BeyLoved pairing are available to VIP ticket holders only, the festival at large is open to the public, with beer available to purchase by the glass in two tasting rooms.

Tampa Bay Beer Week: Daily through Sunday, March 9. Various venues. tampabaybeerweek.com—Julia Saad

and Brewery. will be pairing

‘When the Righteous Triumph’: Select nights through next Sunday, March 16. 7:30 p.m. $50. Jaeb Theater at David A. Straz Center for the Performing Arts, 1010 N Macinnes Pl, Tampa. strazcenter.org—David Warner at breweries you

Last week outside the long-shuttered Woolworth on the corner of Franklin and Polk Streets in downtown Tampa, local ofﬁcials and politicos gathered to honor “the courageous 40” who, 65 years ago, staged a sit-in largely considered one of the most effective civil rights protests in the South (Sen. Arthenia Joyner, pictured, was a 17-year-old Middleton High School student when she sat down.). Other cities in the South had confronted such lunch-counter sit-ins with arrests and brutality. But things turned out differently in Tampa, thanks to a biracial committee led by a white mayor, Julian Lane; a Black religious leader and president of the Florida NAACP, Rev. A. Leon Lowry; and a prominent white attorney known for defending Black clients, Cody Fowler. The revival of a play ﬁrst staged in 2022 brings revisits the series of events at time when the rights of others come under attack again.

Heavy

meddle

Coming to America

Tampa Bay History Center is the first U.S. museum to host an exhibit honoring the cultural impact of Spanish immigration—including how modern Tampa owes a lot to immigrants who started to arrive in our sleeping fishing village in the late-1800s. “Invisible Immigrants: Spaniards in the U.S.” toured Spain for five years and shines a spotlight on the Spanish diaspora with numerous displays of artifacts, official forms and photos, allowing attendees to trace their journey from start to finish. From “Goodbye!” to “Made in the U.S.A,” each section of the exhibit describes the courageous strides Spanish workers and farmers made after leaving their homeland behind to head to the U.S. in search of better lives.

‘Invisible Immigrants: Spaniards in the U.S.’: Daily through Aug. 1. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. $14.95-$18.95. 801 Water St, Tampa. tampabayhistorycenter. org—Grace Stoler

Perry Snell, John Constantine Williams, William Straub, Peter Demens. A lot of dudes get their names tossed out during conversations about the history of St. Petersburg, but not enough people mention Sarah Armistead. Widely recognized as the “Mother of St. Petersburg,” Armistead—also known with the surnames Judge and Craven—passed in 1917 and was the wife of Williams. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union group, which she led for a spell, drew plenty of headlines and mentions in the news, and she even led multiple construction projects in the area (including the Williams Mansion, pictured, built in 1892 and now living at the Bayboro Campus of University of South Florida). This history talk led by Jessy Breckenridge, Archives & Collections Manager at the St. Petersburg Museum of History, aims to shed light on “a meddling woman” who helped build St. Pete.

Sarah Armistead ‘How a Meddling Woman Helped Build St. Pete’: Wednesday, March 12. 6 p.m.-7 p.m. Donations accepted. Clearwater Historical Society, 610 S Fort Harrison, Clearwater. clearwaterhistoricalsociety.org—Ray Roa

RAY ROA

OCTAVIO JONES

Right stu

Shifting sand

Egmont Key is an observable ground zero for local sea level rise.

By Ben Montgomery/Florida Trident

In January 1898, a group of local visionaries and businessmen escorted 17 visiting Congressmen with their wives and daughters aboard the magniﬁcent steamer “Olivette” on an excursion 30 miles out to beautiful Egmont Key, a 500-acre island in the mouth of Tampa Bay.

The lawmakers, all members of the House Committee on Rivers and Harbors, ate sandwiches and imbibed on “product” from nearby Florida Brewing, according to The Morning Tribune.

When the Olivette stopped near the northern channel with the 86-foot-tall Egmont Key lighthouse at their backs, the local capitalists—with names like Plant, Sparkman and Macfarlane— spread out maps of the shallow 400-square-mile bay before them. They were joined by harbor pilots, captains who lived on Egmont Key and knew the bay bottoms better than anyone.

LOCAL NEWS

As they rounded the alluring key in Gilded Age pomp, they would’ve seen the island’s plentiful housing, troops barracks and the new Gulf of Mexico-facing Fort Dade fortiﬁ cations—all built to withstand intense hurricanes and which many believed could protect Tampa Bay from the world’s ﬁercest navies.

The pilots “pointed out where the shoals were located and exactly what is needed to give a depth of water sufﬁcient to accommodate the vessels that would come to Port Tampa.”

The city fathers began to convince their powerful visitors of the need to dredge shipping lanes and establish a commercial trading port at Tampa, a young Florida city which boasted a population of around 15,000 people.

Over the next 127 years, Port Tampa Bay would grow to be the largest and most diversiﬁed

in Florida, supporting more than 192,000 jobs, with an economic impact of $34.6 billion. At the same time, millions of humans moved an enormous amount of wealth and resources onto the coastal wetlands around Tampa Bay—hospitals, airports, high-rise hotels, sports stadiums, banks, data centers, U.S. Central Command— calling it progress and maybe it was, but it was accompanied by haunting risk.

The little island held lessons for those men in 1898, had they looked.

The lighthouse behind them was the island’s second; the ﬁ rst had been clobbered by a hurricane a few months after it was built in 1848, then split by lightning. The tower’s placement, more than 100 feet from the keeper’s residence in case it toppled, was an early example of a building code long before the state standardized them in 1974. And the island itself was shrinking.

Egmont Key is a bellwether, an observable Ground Zero for local sea level rise, our canary in the climate-change coal mine. The island you see today from the top of the Sunshine Skyway bridge is smaller than the island you saw last year. The island you see today is 300 acres smaller than it was in 1898.

In September, Hurricane Helene pushed seawater over Egmont Key. It left a line 15 feet high on that lighthouse wall, killed acres of fauna, trashed the docks, and ﬂooded the small cluster of remaining houses to the doorknobs. Then Hurricane Milton two weeks later blew the mess apart and drove the last of the harbor pilots, who have occupied the island for 150 years, to the mainland.

If we’re charting the epic of climate change and looking for a distinct place and a speciﬁc time to note the beginning of what will be a long and painful retreat, mark it down: Egmont Key, 2024.

A bunch of structures close to the seashore

Early Floridians moved with the water line. We know this thanks to a 2012 discovery in North Florida. In a sinkhole in the Aucilla River, south of Tallahassee, divers found a man-made knife that carbon-dated to 14,500 years ago, the earliest sign of man in the southeastern United States, at a time when the land would have met the sea about 100 miles farther out from where

continued on page 19

COME TO A HEAD: Sabal palms on the western edge of Egmont Key have succumbed to saltwater intrusion.

BEN MONTGOMERY

LIVE MUSIC LINEUP:

12:30PM-1:15PM Cage O’Hanlon

1:15PM-2:00PM St. Pete Irish Dancers

2:00PM-2:45PM Cage O’Hanlon

3:00PM-5:00PM Dave Gilmore and Pat Mangan

5:15PM-5:45PM Isle of Skye Highland Dancers

5:45PM-7:15PM Lucid Druid

7:30PM-8:00PM Suncoast United Pipes & Drums

8:00PM-10:00PM First of The Day

it is today. The sinkhole in the Aucilla would have been a high-savannah watering hole and place to butcher mastodons.

What’s interesting, according to journalist Jeff Goodell in “The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World,” is that the date corresponds to the disintegration of the ice sheets at the end of the last ice age—an event scientists call Meltwater Pulse 1A, when the oceans rose about a foot every decade for 350 years.

Scientists don’t know what rapidly melted the ice caps and caused the rapid rise, but in ﬂat Florida, the water would have moved inland fast—about 500 to 600 feet per year, or a mile of coastline per decade. The humans who abandoned the watering hole might’ve even seen it encroaching if they sat there long enough.

The difference now, of course, is that modern man has built a bunch of structures close to the seashore and ﬁlled those structures with goods. And there are a lot more of us so we’ve

established laws regarding the rights to the goods and structures, and to the land under it, and we thought up ways to mitigate act-of-god losses communally with insurance, with little regard for the lawless, ever-encroaching water.

So we put off the retreat as long as we can. We strengthen seawalls and pump sand to build up barrier islands. We’ve done this for decades on the coasts. But at some point, if the sea keeps rising, it’s no longer feasible to expect those protections to work.

This is the harbor pilots’ predicament since this summer’s storms.

An eerie backwater

Capt. John Timmel moved to the key in 1989, when his son, Jack, was a toddler. John is retired, and Jack is Captain Jack now, president of the Tampa Bay Pilot Association, and technically the island’s last resident. He and his wife Monica have relocated to Davis Island full time.

John and Jack and their wives led an excursion to the shuttered island on a recent Friday morning

to board up broken windows and salvage keepsakes. They shuttled a team from the University of South Florida, which has been documenting Egmont Key’s history for ﬁve years, working on a book and a virtual reality history tour before it’s too late.

There used to be 18 homes on the Egmont Key, but most of them are in pieces now, or have ﬂoated far from their foundations.

“When we came out here after Helene, you couldn’t see through to the other side,” said Monica, Jack’s wife. Now you can stand in the pilot’s village on the east and look west through scorched sabal palms to the cobalt rise of the Gulf.

lap and his head resting on an embroidered throw pillow that says “IT’S 5 O’CLOCK SOMEWHERE.”

For several years, the pilots have been expecting a storm to dislodge them. Their resiliency plan—to relocate operations to a spot under the Sunshine Skyway—has been expedited. They’re temporarily operating out of a mariana at Tierra Verde, in Pinellas County.

LOCAL NEWS

The island feels a little like an eerie backwater outpost lately. Two big bald eagles ﬂy menacing patrols around an enormous nest high in a cedar tree. Someone has used driftwood and beach scrap to build primitive forts around the island.

On the east side, a crash-test dummy sits upright in a lounge chair, a mandolin on his

There were 18 pilot homes on Egmont—all owned by the association and assigned to speciﬁc pilots. All were badly damaged if not destroyed. Until the storms, when the weather was right, Jack and Monica stayed on the island four or ﬁve nights a week. They loved the spotty cell service and laid-back lifestyle. They loved the keepsake turtle shells and rattlesnake skins and triple bunk beds in their assigned cottage, built in the 1890s. Friends who visited signed their names and we-had-such-a-nice-times in a guest book and watched “Titanic” on VHS.

continued on page 21

Monica pictured her naked babies playing on the beach.

The house is solid wood—no sheetrock or insulation to grow mold. It could be rehabbed and livable with some work. John and Jack think maybe it could next be a museum, or a home for a Florida Fish and Wildlife ofﬁcer, but so much is up in the air.

The island has a purposefully complicated ownership structure to stymie development. But in 1928, Hillsborough County purchased some land on the east side and leased that land to the Tampa Bay Pilots Association. The lease was for 100 years.

That lease is up in three years, so the pilots must now decide whether it’s worth renewing for another century. Will this island be here in 2125? That’s partly why the USF team came out, to continue to scan the land and structures to preserve digitally what is now disappearing.

“We need to scramble to ﬁgure out what the future looks like,” Capt. Jack Timmel said. “The pilots have been out here for over 150 years, and if this is the end of that—and we don’t know that yet—but if this is the end of that, all the scans are going to be valuable in telling that story in the future.”

‘Hurricanes are going to happen’ “At some point,” said Rita Youngman, “nature is going to win.”

The Seminole singer-songwriter grew up in South Florida—Rita now lives in Lake Placid, in south central Florida—and didn’t know anything about Egmont Key until the early-2000s, when the Army Corps of Engineers told the Seminole Tribe of Florida the island was washing away and asked whether it should be renourished with sand pumped from the sea ﬂoor onto the beaches during a dredging project.

The Seminoles, unaware of their full history on the island, started exploring and, according to “Egmont Key: A Seminole History,” published by the Seminole Tribe, learned the key had been used as a stockade for captured Seminoles in the 1850s, until they could be relocated west with the Trail of Tears.

The relocation, at the end of the U.S. Army’s third Seminole War, gave the Seminoles the story of Polly Parker, who escaped captivity in St. Marks and walked by moonlight all the way back to Fish Eating Creek on Lake Okeechobee, where she set about repopulating the decimated tribe, which remains proudly unconquered, according to the Seminole Tribe. The tribe encouraged the Corps to proceed with the renourishment and it did, in 2014 and 2015, pumping 676,000 cubic yards of sand on the island. The sand created 39 acres of new shoreline for nesting turtles, then quickly washed away.

A ﬁre in 2016 burned away a thick blanket of detritus and gave Seminole historians a chance to explore the key for mass burials using

ground penetrating, the Seminole history says, and they found artifacts dating back to the time Seminoles were imprisoned, but no graves.

Youngman was moved to write a song, titled “Egmont Key,” about the voices of her ancestors calling out from the dunes on Egmont Key, but she doesn’t believe the island should be saved. “The earth is alive, especially here in Florida,” she said. “Hurricanes are going to happen. Fires are going to happen. If the ocean wants to reclaim this island—if the ocean wants to reclaim Florida—it’s going to happen, I don’t care how much money you spend on it.”

Stuck waiting

says the man who has watched the topography change over ﬁve or six years.

And the deterioration is likely to speed up, even with supplemental sand. Average sea-level rise in nearby St. Petersburg is 7.8 inches since 1970 and scientists say it’s increasing quickly. Most climate models predict another 5 to 8 inches in the next 25 years.

LOCAL NEWS

We continue to try to “save” Egmont Key. In fact, the Corps has plans to pump up to 5 million cubic yards of bottom sand onto the

That’s just sea-level rise.

Climate experts expect hurricanes to increase in intensity and frequency as the planet warms. In

“The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming,”

David Wallace-Wells reports that the ensuing devastation will feel something like extended nuclear war.

Hard to imagine? Think of the tens of thousands of residents of the Pinellas County barrier islands and Hillsborough’s lowlands who are stuck waiting on insurance checks, or inspec -

key as part of a project to deepen the shipping channels in 2027, much more than previous dredges.

Rather than renourishing the north end, which tends to wash into the channel, the plan calls for spreading the sand at the center of the island and returning it to its 1950s dimensions, with upland habitat and vegetated dunes.

Patrick Mundus says it can’t happen soon enough. “That’s probably the only thing that will keep the island from splitting in half,” he said. Mundus monitors the island as a board member with Friends of the Tampa Bay National Wildlife Refuges and has noticed a long valley forming in the middle, near the pilot’s village. “It’s amazing how fast it’s going,”

tions, or permits, while teetering on the brink of ﬁnancial ruin.

James Adair, a South Tampa realtor, said FEMA’s 50% rule—if repair costs exceed 50%, a homeowner must fully comply with new ﬂood codes to get an insurance payout—will make coastal living a luxury in an area long-known for affordability.

“...sometimes ﬁrsthard experiences are the only way for people to take things seriously.”

said. “Residents want to save their homes, but for many, the reality of storms and rebuilding is forcing tough choices.”

Only a matter of time

Meteorologist Jeff Berardelli calls this “forced retreat,” when a chunk of the population has no choice but to bail. He says it’s already changing the demographics in places like St. Pete Beach, Madeira Beach and Indian Rocks Beach.

“What’s happening is we’re being gentriﬁed,” said Berardelli, WFLA News Channel 8’s chief meteorologist and climate specialist. More and more, the only people who can live on the islands are those who can afford the exposure, he said. “That’s happening in front of our eyes. And every storm is going to take another chunk of people out.”

Add this to the equation: new studies suggest Florida experienced a lull in hurricanes between the 1960s and 1990s because industrial pollution actually kept the North Atlantic cooler for several decades, masking the century-scale greenhouse-gas warming contributions to North Atlantic major hurricane frequency.

The next one is only a matter of time. Berardelli saw the future in a study he did recently using fresh data from the Department of Energy. His research found that Florida residents can expect three times the number of intense hurricanes to make landfall. “Instead of one major storm every 100 years, we’ll get one every 30 years,” he said. “It changes the whole game.”

He reported this to viewers a few weeks before Hurricane Helene.

“There are a lot of people second guessing living here,” he said. “In this day and age, when there’s so much noise, sometimes ﬁrsthard experiences are the only way for people to take things seriously.”

In the early 1900s, a few years after the lawmakers visited, some 300 members of the military were stationed on Egmont Key. There were 70 buildings: spacious bungalows, a general store, power plant, movie theater, tennis courts, and even a bowling alley. Little of that remains. In 2017, the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation listed Egmont as one of the most threatened historic properties in Florida due to erosion.

“The storm didn’t discriminate, but those with money recover faster,” he said.

Most post-storm sales he’s seen so far are longtime homeowners who have no mortgage or ﬂood insurance and they sell quickly for cash. He expects the next wave of sales to be folks who have mortgages and are waiting on insurance claims.

“With delays in payments, many are stuck in limbo, unsure whether to rebuild or sell,” Adair

Dr. Brook Hansen, a University of South Florida anthropologist specializing in cultural heritage at risk, and Dr. Laura Harrison, an archaeologist and director of USF’s Access 3D Lab, have been 3D scanning the remaining structures on the island—the lighthouse, the cemetery with 19 crosses, and the Mellon Battery—to preserve the key in a book and in digital form before it’s too late.

If the island fully disappears, they told me, we can still visit inside virtual reality goggles.

HARBOR MASTER: Capt. Jack Timmel is technically Egmont Key’s last resident

WUSF presents the Longest Table. Join us on April 3rd for an epicurean experience right down the middle of Bayshore Drive in St. Petersburg. Details available online at wusﬂongesttable.org or by calling (800) 741-9090.

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Digging in

As

session starts, Rep. Fentrice Driskell sees no cracks in GOP armor.

By Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix

As Fentrice Driskell prepares to lead her fellow Democrats during the Florida legislative session that opened this week, she faces her greatest challenge since ﬁrst elected House Democratic Leader by her colleagues three years ago.

Following another bruising election night last fall and the stunning defection of two members to the Republican Party in December, the Hillsborough County representative leads a caucus of just 33 members—compared to 86 Republicans, the largest GOP conference in the history of the Florida House. (One seat is open pending an election to ﬁll it following the session).

Speaking to a group of around 60 constituents during a town hall meeting at the New Tampa Performing Arts Center last Wednesday night, Driskell previewed of some of the bills she personally has ﬁled this session, as well as others by both Republicans and Democrats, adding that the normal pace of the Legislature’s work has been set back because of the multiple special sessions held this winter addressing undocumented immigration.

dying breath—yeah, in private conversations they’ll be like, ‘I know it’s not constitutional, but it’s what the White House wants.’ That’s what we’re dealing with now. I don’t see any cracks in the armor. … I don’t see windows of opportunity to get them to move off message.”

Higher education

Several members of the public voiced concerns about Gov. Ron DeSantis’ interventions into higher education during his tenure, referring to his purge of progressives at New College of Florida in Sarasota and some of his appointments to Florida public university boards of trustees.

LOCAL NEWS

The governor’s appointment of Scott Yenor to the University of West Florida board in January has come under ﬁre, most recently from the Florida Legislative Jewish Caucus. The bipartisan caucus has asked the governor to reconsider Yenor’s appointment, in part because of a recent thread of social media posts in which he commented on politicians’ sexual orientation, race, and “non-Jewish” status.

“Typically, we would know what the big priorities are by now,” she said. “We would be moving. By next week we’d be having ﬂoor sessions, maybe even hearing bills, and we’re really, really behind. The legislative leadership and the governor were duking it out to see who could come out on top with their respective immigration bills, and it’s caused the rest of the entire Legislature to be behind.

“So, I think we’re going to be playing a lot of catch-up; I think that we’re going to have a lot of very busy committee meetings and late nights potentially on the ﬂoor to get through the people’s agenda.”

Driskell didn’t touch on that appointment, but did refer to the comments made last week by James Uthmeier, the governor’s former chief of staff whom DeSantis appointed to succeed Ashley Moody as Florida attorney general.

“He promises to work on that agenda to stamp out the liberal incursion into our colleges and universities,” she said—adding that if citizens feel that “what we’re seeing is not reﬂective of your values, just remember there’s an election coming up in 2026. We’ll have an opportunity to elect a new governor.”

“I think we’re going to be playing a lot of catch-up.”

Taking questions from the audience, Driskell was asked by one citizen whether any of the Republican members she talks to ever express different viewpoints privately than they do publicly regarding issues they contend with.

She brought up the debate in the recent special session. Driscoll voted against the legislation earlier this month, citing a provision that says that immigrants in the country illegally in Florida who are convicted of ﬁrst-degree murder or raping a child would face a mandatory death sentence is unconstitutional.

“Some of those same folks who defended that bill and probably would defend it in their

Another speaker cited “the attacks on colleges and universities.”

“There’s a sense of fear and dread at USF that I’ve never experienced before, especially among professors of social sciences, humanities, and sociology professors,” said University of South Florida sociology professor Will Tyson.

“And a lot of the word coming out obviously nationally and out of the state is purposely vague … kind of paralyzing the work that we do, making us second-guess our syllabi. What we discuss in class. The grants that we apply for. I’ve heard everything from faculty deleting banned words from their faculty proﬁles as not to get targeted to cancelling classes so that they won’t be under the lens from the state.”

‘Challenging times’

“I’ll acknowledge that it’s a very challenging time for higher education,” Driskell said, referring to the governor’s announcement on Monday of his plan to implement a Florida “DOGE” program that in part calls for Florida’s universities and colleges to go under independent audits.

“I think again this is smoke and mirrors designed to be very political and to keep professors like you second guessing,” she said. “It’s unfortunate. I don’t like it. We have spoken out against it but, in these uncertain times, just please follow the advice of counsel and keep yourself safe.”

Driskell concluded by saying that despite the bleak landscape for Democrats statewide, she

remains optimistic the party’s fortunes could change in 2026 and 2028.

“I want to make sure that our public democracy is preserved for the generations to come and, for the young people, that we were doing all that we can to maintain this country, which is amazing, but we’ve got to take action—I truly believe—to make sure that our institutions hold,” she said.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonproﬁt news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@ﬂoridaphoenix.com.

WAITING GAME: Rep. Driskell remains optimistic that Democrats’ fortunes could change in 2026 and 2028.

“In order to really threaten academic freedom, you have to threaten the professor and the instructor as a worker.”

Busting moves

Republicans ﬁle bills to make it harder for government workers to form and keep unions.

By McKenna Schueler

Building on an anti-union law that the state Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis approved in 2023, Florida state lawmakers have ﬁled new legislation that would make it harder for local and state government workers to form unions, and to keep the unions they already have alive.

More than 68,000 public employees in Florida have lost their union representation and union contracts as a result of the 2023 state law, which required more public workers to pay union dues, while simultaneously making it harder for them to do so.

Legislation ﬁled last Wednesday by Florida Sen. Randy Fine (SB 1328) and Rep. Dean Black (HB 1217), to be considered during Florida’s 2025 legislative session that begins this week, aims to go further.

If approved, the legislation would, for instance, get rid of statutory language that allows public employers in local and state governments to recognize a union, in lieu of an election, if the union can provide signed cards demonstrating a majority of the workers support joining the union.

This process, known as voluntary union recognition, has been disincentivized in other GOP-controlled states in recent years at the urging of right-wing special interest groups organized under the umbrella of the American Legislative Exchange Council. Described by critics as a conservative “bill mill,” ALEC is a network of groups that creates policy templates (like this conveniently similar one) for state lawmakers to introduce and enact in their own state Legislatures.

The Florida legislation would also make it even harder for public sector unions in Florida to become certiﬁed, remain certiﬁed and thereby represent the interests of workers such as teachers, public utility workers, bus drivers, and parks and recreation employees.

The bill would speciﬁcally require that a majority of workers vote in favor of either forming or recertifying their union in a union election in order for the union to prevail. Currently, winning a union election requires a vote of support from a majority of workers who vote—not the number of workers, total.

impossible” for his union at UCF in Orlando— representing roughly 1,600 university faculty and staff—to get that kind of voter turnout.

LABOR

Cassanello, an associate professor of history, sees this new proposal as another effort to target Florida educators, who are unionized at higher rates than most others in the workforce and who have become a “punching bag” (in Cassanello’s words) of the Florida GOP.

University of Central Florida professor Robert Cassanello, a vice president of the statewide faculty union United Faculty of Florida, told Orlando Weekly it would be “almost

“In order to really threaten academic freedom, you have to threaten the professor and the instructor as a worker,” Cassanello said in an interview Thursday. “I think these bills, you know, stripping workplace protections, stripping [union] contracts, really make professors much more vulnerable in the classroom.”

HOUSE RULES: Proposed legislation builds on anti-union law passed in 2023.

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Unions representing law enforcement, firefighters, correctional officers, and other public safety workers such as paramedics and emergency medical technicians (EMTs), would be exempted from the bill. Private sector workers, and workers employed by the federal government, also wouldn’t be affected.

Outlining the stakes

The difference in the level of support that is required for a union to prevail in an election matters.

As a result of a 2023 anti-union law, more than 100 public sector bargaining units in Florida (groups of workers represented by a union) have been dissolved by the state, simply for having low membership. Under the 2023 law, at least 60% of workers represented by a union need to be dues-paying members in order to remain certiﬁed.

If unions have a lower percentage of dues-paying members, they are either decertiﬁed (dissolved) or are forced to petition the state, annually, for a recertiﬁcation election. Workers then get the opportunity to vote to keep their union alive, or get rid of it.

over disagreements on things like funding for public education, taxpayer-funded school vouchers, and the fact that education has the highest unionization rate of any U.S. sector.

They’ve also largely been unaffected by the mass wave of union decertiﬁcations that has hit Florida’s public sector so far. Casualties of the 2023 anti-union law so far have included all of the state’s adjunct faculty unions, nurses’ unions, unions representing attorneys for various state agencies, in addition to unions representing thousands of blue-collar workers such as school bus drivers, utility workers, janitors and others who choose public service despite often earning less than their similarly-educated peers in the private sector.

Maintenance and other workers at the University of South Florida saw their jobs privatized (and their pensions frozen) after the dissolution of their union.

LABOR

Public sector workers belonging to all but one union so far have overwhelmingly voted in favor of keeping their unions, which can negotiate things like guaranteed pay raises, more affordable healthcare coverage, paid maternity leave, and workplace safety protections.

But voter turnout in these elections—particularly those involving hundreds, or even thousands of workers—has in many cases admittedly been low.

Andrew Spar, president of the statewide teachers union, the Florida Education Association, told Orlando Weekly earlier this month that local teachers unions forced to recertify, due to the 2023 law, have won their elections by an average 93% vote of support.

The 2023 law has also threatened hundreds of millions of dollars in federal transit grants for local transit authorities, and has unduly burdened the state’s under-resourced public labor relations agency. The state Public Employees Relations Commission saw its caseload triple last year, directly as a result of the law, and has asked for more than $1 million in additional funding speciﬁcally to continue carrying it out.

Sen. Fine, who’s currently running for U.S. Congress, claims his new proposal will protect taxpayer dollars—echoing his colleagues’ argument in 2023. “This legislation will not only protect taxpayer dollars, but it will also help protect government employees from activist unions who aren’t supported by the majority of their union members,” Fine stated in a press release.

“The way that we were able to stop union-busting bills in the past has been collective organizing.”

“So what does that tell us? Well, that tells us that people want to keep their union, that we are just jumping through hoops that have been created by this legislation—and by the Governor’s ofﬁce—and there’s no real value [to it],” Spar argued.

The Florida Education Association, a teachers union afﬁliated with the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, represents more than 150,000 educators and other school staff statewide. It was considered the target of Florida’s 2023 law, as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis prepared to launch what ultimately developed into an unsuccessful U.S. presidential campaign.

Teachers unions have historically drawn the ire of the right-wing (and their billionaire allies)

Public records obtained by Orlando Weekly show that the Freedom Foundation, an out-ofstate dark money group that has backed similar anti-union policies in other states, pitched this 2025 legislation to a different state lawmaker, Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, last year.

Ingoglia, a DeSantis ally who sponsored Florida’s 2023 anti-union bill, didn’t bite.

The Freedom Foundation, in addition to other groups—including an anti-union legal defense fund led by labor consultants who have done union-busting for Amazon—have publicly claimed credit for the 2023 law, too.

An unoriginal proposal pitched by special interest groups

This new proposal from Fine—a Republican known for sponsoring culture-war bills—and Black isn’t original. It’s similar to a policy drawn up by ALEC, called the “Union Recertiﬁcation Act.” Similar legislation was also successfully enacted in Iowa in 2017.

As the Center for Media and Democracy points out, there’s a strategic purpose to peddling these kinds of copy-cat proposals across GOP-controlled states. “Model bills like those developed and promulgated by ALEC serve a dual purpose: they both advance a cookie-cutter, pro-corporate agenda at the state level and create avenues for impact litigation whereby state laws are strategically implemented in order to generate court cases that can force a reshaping of federal regulations and protections,” writes Juliana Broad, a writer and researcher for the CMD.

Project 2025, a policy handbook from the right-wing Heritage Foundation that the Trump administration is swiftly adopting through various executive orders, has also targeted public sector unions and voluntary union recognition.

Democratic state lawmakers in Orange County, Florida last month vowed to ﬁght their colleagues’ anti-union proposal. “It’s incredibly problematic,” said Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani,

speaking to a crowd of more than 100 at a legislative town hall organized by the Orange County Democrats.

State Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a former Florida House member who ran a successful bid for the state Senate this past year, emphasized the importance of organizing as a way to ﬁght back. “The way that we were able to stop union-busting bills in the past has been collective organizing and it has been showing up in Tallahassee,” he said.

“It shouldn’t just be the labor community. Everyone should show up with labor,” Eskamani argued. “Even if you’re not in a union, we need you to show up for our union partners.”

Leadership for the Florida House and Senate did not respond to a request for comment from Orlando Weekly on whether they support the legislation.

This story ﬁrst appeared at our sibling publication Orlando Weekly.

BAND TOGETHER: Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith has ideas on how to ﬁght back.

RESTAURANTS RECIPES DINING GUIDES

Gone ﬁshin’

By Kyla Fields

When diners walk through the heavy doors at 1202 N Franklin St., they now have a choice between two different concepts from the same Michelin-starred chef. Swedenborn Ebbe Vollmer, who debuted his ﬁ rst Tampa concept Ebbe in 2023, quietly opened an 18-seat bistro right next door in December of last year.

“Fisk” in Swedish translates to “Fish” in English, and it’s on the forefront of Chef Vollmer’s menu, in addition to a few homestyle, Scandinavian classics that reﬂect the cuisine that he grew up with.

Fresh salmon, cod, red snapper, bluefi n tuna and turbot are the stars of Fisk’s constantly-evolving menu, cooked using a variety of both homestyle and high end techniques. Just a few of its fish-oriented dishes include caviar with sourdough waffles, fish pie croquettes and a longtime family recipe of curried cod with pressed potato and cucumber.

Chef Vollmer opens 18-seat Tampa restaurant located next to Michelin starred-Ebbe.

passion, and these ﬂavor proﬁ les are ones that I’m very familiar with.”

Vollmer says that Fisk offers more “housewife cooking,” with reﬁ ned, yet straightforward recipes, simpler plating and larger portions, while its one Michelin star counterpart is a contemporary, tasting menu with several small courses.

OPENINGS

While Ebbe’s “prestige menu” runs for $295 per person, Fisk offers a la carte appetizers and entrees at a range of affordable price points— from its $8 smoked salmon eclair and $18 tuna tartare to its $32 red snapper accompanied by green salsa and horseradish. “One of the best parts about Fisk is that guests don’t have to spend two and a half hours to get full like at Ebbe,” he adds.

The Fisk menu is organized by tartares, appetizers, charcoal-cooked entrees, “Classics” and pastry and cheese.

“It’s interesting that in America I feel that people are interested by my heritage. Those six dishes are very similar to the kind of food I cooked when I ﬁ rst started my career 30 years ago. It’s very ﬂattering that the customers take an interest in Swedish food,” Vollmer says.

Another classic entree, Fisk’s ﬁsh soup with cream and lemon, is another best seller thus far, despite being a straightforward and approachable dish. But if folks are willing to lean into a higher price point, they can also indulge in caviar with sourdough wafﬂes, a $95 turbot entree or a fancy slab of Vacherin Mont d’Or cheese with a sommelierrecommended bottle of wine.

comfortable position running both Ebbe and Fisk, and would rather host exclusive events and encourage his chefs to start their own locallyowned concepts instead of helming more himself.

“My grandfather always said that you can judge the success of a restaurant by how many customers you have on a Tuesday night. Until we’re booked out every single night, it doesn’t make sense to grow,” Vollmer explains. “I’d rather build a platform that is sustainable over time, for sure. At one point back in Sweden we ran six restaurants and had over 150 employees—that is not something I want to go back to.”

“It’s very ﬂ attering that the customers take an interest in Swedish food.”

“I couldn’t understand why a place like Tampa, that’s located right next to the sea, doesn’t really have any adventurous fish places. You can get fried fish pretty much anywhere, but we wanted to push the boat out a little bit when it comes to flavor and style,” Vollmer tells Creative Loafi ng Tampa Bay. “Fish is truly my

There’s a New York strip if grilled ﬁsh isn’t your jam, or you could always opt for a classic Scandinavian dish like Swedish meatballs with lingonberries and cucumber or schnitzel with apple salad. Vollmer says that the classics portion of the Fisk menu will always stay the same, playfully describing them as “dishes that everyone has been asking me for.”

The newly-opened Tampa restaurant also offers an $85 set menu that starts with a smoked salmon eclair and crab-grapefruit salad, continues with its best-selling ﬁsh soup, red snapper entree and ﬁnishes with baba au rhum, a syrup-soaked yeast cake with French origins.

While the teams behind Ebbe and Fisk share the spacious kitchen in downtown Tampa, Vollmer says it can be challenging to manage the ﬂow of both an a la carte and tasting menu-style service.

When it comes to the further expansion of either of his restaurants, Chef Vollmer is in a

“I love cooking and that’s what I like to do,” Vollmer adds with a smirk.

Head to @ﬁsk_tampa on Instagram or for updates on Chef Vollmer’s event lineup for the rest of the year, though the Michelin-starred chef admits that he’s “not great with PR stuff.”

In a few months, Vollmer plans to announce the 2025 rendition of his prized Chef’s Dinner event, where he ﬂ ies up to a dozen renown chefs from around the world for an ultra-exclusive, ticketed meal in Tampa. Other slated events include pop-ups from Ebbe and Fisk chefs, and perhaps even a special breakfast service.

STOP AND FISK: N Franklin Street’s 1200 block has a two great options at one address.

“It doesn’t seem that it’s slowing down at all.”

MOVIES THEATER ART CULTURE

Big laughs

Amalie Arena is on the forefront of comedy’s push into the biggest venues.

By Michael Murillo

On a cool night last December, thousands of fans pile into Amalie Arena to see a favorite artist perform. The crowd is excited, and they ﬁll seats in the highest sections while the opening acts are on stage. Finally, the headliner appears to raucous cheers and everybody is ready for a fun, fast-paced show. It sounds like a typical concert in Tampa, except there are no singers or musicians. It’s stand-up comedy, and the headliner is Sebastian Maniscalco, whose exaggerated cadence and sarcastic look at family life have made him famous. And Amalie, which used to only host the occasional comedy superstar, such as Kevin Hart or Dave Chappelle, is opening its doors to more standup acts than ever.

SNL over past comments about Asians—plays a sold-out show.

A facility that used to be reserved for hockey, music and Disney on Ice, and maybe the rare comedy show, is now a regular host for standups who’re dominating their industry.

COMEDY

Shane Gillis

Friday, March 7. 8 p.m. Sold-out Amalie Arena. 401 Channelside Dr., Tampa amaliearena.com

So what’s going on? According to Kelli Yeloushan, Vice President of Event Management at the Vinik Sports Group, which oversees events at Amalie Arena as well as the Yuengling Center at the University of South Florida, comedy has been growing steadily as a hot-ticket item since the pandemic.

might not have the national name recognition of stand-up superstars to reach their audience quickly and increase demand exponentially.

the added effort and cost associated with it. “And the $17 beer,” he noted.

In just the first two months of 2025, comedians such as Jim Gaffigan, Katt Williams, and Jo Koy have already performed there. Nashville comic Nate Bargatze plays the room in November. This weekend, Shane Gillis—now in Bud Light commercials with Post Malone and infamous for his firing from

“Since coming out of COVID there’s just been a steady increase, and it doesn’t seem that it’s slowing down at all,” Yeloushan told Creative Loaﬁng Tampa Bay. “I think it’s become more popular over the last few years. It’s doubling almost every year.”

Yeloushan attributes part of that growth to comedians connecting with fans on a variety of internet platforms. Netﬂix specials, clips on social media, and even the paid video greeting platform Cameo have allowed comedians who

Gillis embodies that theory. If you like the 37-year-old, then you probably helped the arena his March 7 show sell out within hours of it going on sale—a feat he’s accomplished across the continent (last year in Toronto, he topped the rock band U2 for most tickets sold for a live event at Scotiabank Arena).

A traditional comedy layout at Amalie would feature a stage with seats in front of it and accommodate 10,000 -12,000 fans. But Gillis chose an in-the-round layout, where the stage is in the center and fans are seated on all sides, increasing capacity to 17,000-18,000 fans.

Tampa resident James Serrano sat in the lower level of Amalie Arena to see Maniscalco’s in-the-round show late last year. The weather was nice, and he wanted to get out and have a good time. He’s seen all of the comedian’s comedy specials, so making the trip to Amalie Arena was an easy decision.”We felt like doing something fun. We love Sebastian,” he told CL.

It’s not Serrano’s ﬁrst time seeing standup comedy in an arena setting (he’s seen Katt Williams, too), and he acknowledges that it’s a little different than a comedy club. One advantage is the crowd itself. With a large audience, there’s stronger energy and it makes the experience better when everyone is laughing together, he said.As a result, Serrano enjoys the arena setting for comedy, despite

Pricey beverages and parking aside, an arena comedy show can offer a different experience than a club. In addition to the cumulative laughter of thousands of people, Yeloushan said that arena comedians do a good job of adjusting from an intimate setting, where a back-and-forth interaction with the audience might be a large part of the act, to a show that will appeal to everyone from the ﬂoor to the third level. That adaptation has increased the appeal of standup comedy in a larger venue, which helps create more opportunities for those performers.

Bargatze is deﬁnitely taking advantage of the format, with shows at Amalie this Nov. 13-14. Coupled with two dates last year, the clean comedian will perform four shows at Amalie in about a year, and that doesn’t count his Aug. 16 date at Orlando’s Kia Center. In May, Amalie will also host the “We Them Ones” comedy tour, featuring comedians such as Mike Epps, Kountry Wayne, Lil Duval and Tony Roberts.

While nothing has been announced yet, Yeloushan said she’s working to add more comedy to the schedule. She’s seen many arena comedy shows herself and expects plenty more to be booked in the future.

“I think comedy is going to continue to grow,” she said. “We’re deﬁnitely doing lots of comedy shows, and every time I go to one they’re always good and I’m always impressed to see what kind of talent is out there.”

KICK THE TIRES: Shane Gillis’ in-the-round setup allows him to pack up to 18,000 fans in an arena.

PHOTOCREDIT

Woman’s Furisode, 1917, Silk, Collection of Peter Kuhlmann and Diane Gilmour

Thursday, Mar. 6, 2025 • 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Brass Key Book Club: Circe @ The Brass Key 1702 North Nebraska Avenue Tampa

Tickets start at $8 shorturl.at/m6mGz

Thursday, Mar. 6, 2025

Doors at 5:45 PM, Show at 7:00 PM

Charleston White @ The Funny Bone

1600 E 8th Ave C-112, Tampa

Tickets start at $37 shorturl.at/pTvrZ

Thursday, Mar. 6, 2025

Doors at 7:30 PM, Show at 8:00 PM

PSYCH MONTANO’s “Skeleton Key”Album Release Party @ Crowbar

1812 N 17th St Tampa

$27 GA crowbarybor.com/calendar/#/events

Friday, Mar. 7, 2025 • 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM

FIRST FRIDAY HAPPY HOUR @ The Italian Club 1731 E 7th Ave, Tampa

Free to the public italian-club.org/events/

Saturday, Mar 8, 2025 • 11:30 AM - 3:00 PM

Las Damas Tea @ Centro Asturiano de Tampa 1913 N Nebraska Ave Tampa

$30 per adult, $15 per child under 12 years old shorturl.at/BIBUL

Saturday, Mar 8, 2025 • 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM

Rooftop Day Party @ 1920 Ybor

1920 East 7th Avenue Tampa

Free to the public 1920yborcity.com/

Sunday, Mar 9, 2025 • 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

YARD SALE + FREEEEE COMEDY SHOW @ THE GIMMICK 2213 East 6th Avenue Tampa

Free to the public with RSVP shorturl.at/RDqGg

Sunday, Mar 9, 2025 • 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

CHURCH Sessions BIGGIE Party @ Crowbar

1812 N 17th St Tampa

$10 Cover Charge crowbarybor.com/calendar/#/events

Thursday, Mar 13, 2025 • 5:00 PM 13th Annual Buildings Alive Ybor Architecture

Hop @ J.C. Newman Cigar Company 2701 N 16th St, Tampa

$45 Ybor Historical Society Member, $65 GA & Up shorturl.at/kNG9K

Thursday, Mar 13, 2025 • 8:00 PM - 12:00 AM

BUNT. • in the round tour @ The Ritz Ybor

1503 E. 7th Ave – Tampa

$30 GA

bit.ly/bunt0313

Rollin’ Through History

Mobile Museum Program

Coming to your community

Presented by the Ybor Historical Society, The Rollin’ Through History is a newly added program to expand and enhance our mission of preserving, promoting, and celebrating the unique cultural heritage of Ybor City. ybormuseum.org/copy-of-programs

Grand Cathedral Cigars

2201 N Florida Ave, Tampa

A membership & public facility featuring a variety of cigars with live music at the piano bar. grandcathedralcigars.com/ The

Last Weekend!

WHISKEY

REVIEWS PROFILES MUSIC WEEK

Love and marriage

Feminism, international collaboration help CAMPGround25 redeﬁne live music.

By Grace Stoler

Eunmi Ko has been surrounded by music her entire life. A beloved teacher and musical mentor at the University of South Florida, the highly accomplished recitalist and chamber musician has founded and directed multiple musical projects, ensembles and collaborations. One of her biggest ventures is the Contemporary Art Music Project (also known as CAMPGround25), a nonproﬁt organization that encourages international musical collaboration by bringing musicians together from all around the globe.

“We have this huge gathering of the best players I know every year,” Ko told Creative Loaﬁng Tampa Bay. “They all come and have this week of music making, and it’s really inspiring how much they care about music. It makes me keep doing what I’m doing for the entire year.”

According to contemporaryartmusicproject. org, the three-day event includes over a dozen performers showcasing new music, including some world premieres; it features talent from Eastern Asia, Europe and right here in Tampa Bay, spanning a variety of genres. These groups include the East Asian ensemble PAN Project and Tampa’s own Tempus Projects and street dance group, the Disfunktionals.

Ko is excited to reveal this year’s Project theme: musical marriage—an idea that goes deeper than you might expect. “It’s a marriage between East Asian music, western music and the Disfunktionals, and it’s also a marriage between art, music and street dance.” said Ko.

To show its love for Tampa, CAMPGround25 organizes each day of the festival in different parts of the city: Day one will be held in historic Ybor City at the Tempus Projects, a venue that supports local music and artists by hosting captivating and experimental exhibitions year-round. The next day takes place in Tampa Heights at The Red Door No. 5, an old firehouse known for its historic design and pivotal architecture. The third and final day will have two big concerts: The first show is at the Seminole Heights Garden Center followed by a final house concert at the Campground in East Tampa.

Redeﬁning love for music

This year, CAMP is about celebrating love just as much as music. Performers Arda

Cabaoglu and Sini Virtanen are celebrating one year of marriage during the event. The pair ﬁrst met during CAMP the previous year, and have been together ever since. Love is what keeps Ko motivated to continue working everyday.

“It’s not like you have this concert, go to the concert hall, sit down and listen to music,” Ko explained. “It’s a very rich experience; the collaboration has been my favorite part when we put these kinds of events into the community.”

It’s also what inspired Jehoshaphat Jacinto to bring Tampa’s street dancing com-

“Women can have their works without relying on anyone…”

“I found a spot right by ﬁnancial aid and began dancing,” said Jacinto. “Street dancing is one of the only styles offered outside traditional dance styles.”

He later decided to start offering free classes, welcoming anyone who wanted to learn the craft.

“Our main thing is inclusion,” said DisFunktionals’ treasurer Fernando Contreras, also known as Myxo. “Out in the world, people want a space where they feel they belong. We’ve had people feel that welcoming energy and felt comfortable in the classes.”

munity together with the founding of the DisFunktionials, a nonproﬁt street dancing group devoted to welcoming everyone who wants to be a part of the street dancing community. Jacinto, who’s known as JepStar amongst other street dancers, has been breaking it down for over 15 years since he moved to Tampa from the Philippines. The group came to be after Jacinto and his friends decided to avoid rush hour trafﬁc after work by dancing in the breezeways at USF’s main campus.

In addition to founding the DisFunktionals crew, Jacinto also participates in other nonprofits that help fund local youth cultural programs centered around dancing, such as the Prodigy Cultural Arts Program and She’s Got It. Ko’s innovative use of matching the energy of lights with the music’s frequency is what originally piqued Jacinto’s interest in joining the festival. Now, street dancing continues to add depth and an entertaining physical element to complement CAMPGround’s live music performances,

CAMPground25

Next Thursday-Saturday, March 13-15

Various venues. $15 & up contemporaryartmusicproject.org

making sure the event will have something for everyone.

“We don’t choose how we come into this world,” said Contreras. “But the DisFunktionals help us create a sense of belonging.”

A timely event: Women’s History Month

While CAMP is about celebrating incredible musical talent from all backgrounds, it’s also taking place during a month that’s historically signiﬁcant for female musicians: Women’s History Month.

The annual celebration began after the creation of Women’s week by California’s Sonoma County Commission back in 1981 to remember the New York City garment workers’ strikes that occurred more than ﬁfty years prior.

In addition to being the president and treasurer of CAMP, Ko was also the assistant director of the Women in Music Festival, which takes in Rochester, New York, and hosts more than 100 female performers each year. In this year’s Campground lineup, about half of the performers and composers are female.

“[Female composers] have a really bright, promising future,” said Ko. “When I think about my time in college, we knew [of] some women composers from 200-300 years ago.”

She went on to explain how many female musicians, such as Clara Schumann—celebrated for her groundbreaking piano recitals and compositions in 19th-century Germany—are often overshadowed by their husbands or other prominent male relatives.

“In college, we learned about her husband [Robert Schumann] ﬁrst, and that’s how people explored her music, because of her husband,” she said. “That’s how we considered women’s music at the time.”

With over a decade’s worth of global performances, Ko has seen how the treatment of women—particularly in the evolving world of orchestral music—has changed overtime.

It’s events like CAMP that not only foster global cooperation but promote gender equality and empowerment for female musicians.

“It’s not like that anymore,” she said. “Women can have their works without relying on anyone, and I think they have a really bright future. It’s very exciting.”

COME TOGETHER: Eunmi Ko is bringing the best players she knows to CAMPground.

Take ﬂight

The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn talks sea shanties, The Headlights, more.

By Josh Bradley

If we look deeply into the life of a favorite artist or two, it’s pretty easy to see a little bit of ourselves. The shy but brilliant ones might connect with Dylan, and the bubbly ones that always get picked on may feel similar to Taylor Swift. Having something in common with one of the insanely-well-documented Beatles can be normal enough to not qualify as something to brag about, but in Roger McGuinn’s case, there’s a deeper connection: George Harrison and the Byrd both chose the same Gene Vincent riff to be the ﬁrst thing they learned on guitar, years before meeting each other.

12-string axes in tow, telling obscure stories of his fabled career and playing the songs associated with them. “I just like the whole theatrical aspect of it,” he told Creative Loaﬁng Tampa Bay. McGuinn cites his fascination with a oneman show from John Lithgow as a big reason why he plays unaccompanied.

INTERVIEW

Roger McGuinn

Saturday, March 8. 7 p.m. $39-$75 Bilheimer Capitol Theatre. 405 Cleveland St, Clearwater. rutheckerdhall.com

“Cool stuff,” McGuinn told Creative Loaﬁng Tampa Bay after playing a quick runthrough of the “Woman Love” lick on one of his many guitars. The 82-year-old, whose celestial voice and jangly Rickenbacker 12-string helped give The Byrds their harmonious aura, is more than comfortable revisiting the old days, but has long been focusing on his own projects. His oneman show, which has been going since at least the Obama administration, sees him sporadically travel across the country with a few of his

“It was about his father, and a book that his father used to read from to him,” he explained. McGuinn—a Gulf of Mexico lover who has been calling Florida home since 1991—used to play with backing bands all the time post-Byrds, though. One of the later ones was vintage Tampa Bay rock outﬁt The Headlights, which he ﬁrst saw at a club with concert promoter legend and Jannus Landing co-founder Rob Douglas in the late ‘80s.

“I’d just done Back From Rio, and I needed a backing band to tour with,” he told CL, later adding that he was “jazzed” by the group. In the same way The Headlights took inspiration from the Byrds—who had just been inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before they were given the gig—McGuinn cites your standard

‘50s rock stars as his biggest inﬂuences. You know, Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers, and Gene Vincent. But a little later in the game, he was inﬂuenced by a more niche style of music: Sea shanties.

While on tour with The Byrds in 1970, Gene Parsons gave McGuinn an album made up entirely on shanties by Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd. “I forget what it was called, but it was all songs of the sea, and I really got into them. I love the lore of the sea,” McGuinn reminisced.

His favorite shanty off the top of his head is “Go To Sea Once More,” which The Byrds rockiﬁed into “Jack Tarr the Sailor” on a 1969 album Ballad of Easy Rider. “It’s a cautionary tale of a guy that drinks too much and gets in trouble,” he chuckled.

As his career went forward, shanties made their way into McGuinn’s regiment, and he even did a 23-track album called CCD in 2011, made up entirely of those “work songs,” as he described them.

After The Byrds, McGuinn carried on as a solo artist, going on to tour and record with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers—some of his biggest fans as a matter of fact—and even playing backup for The Rock Bottom Remainders, a supergroup comprised of authors that didn’t necessarily play music seriously, but wanted to just have fun with their instruments for a few hours.

“Dave Barry is just so funny all the time,” he said, also shouting out fellow members Mary Tan, Ridley Pearson, and Stephen King. And shockingly, no one really talked books backstage.

“They were talking music, and it was great.”

In more recent years, Byrds die-hards were left disappointed when their version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” wasn’t mentioned in the Oscar-nominated Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown.” At ﬁrst, McGuinn—who hasn’t seen the ﬁlm yet—heard the news and agreed with the sentiment, but has since read into it a little bit more, and understands the totally unintentional exclusion of the band.

“I said that before I realized it was just about Dylan’s trip to Woodstock, and that was the end of it.” he admitted. “There really wasn’t a whole lot of room to put the Byrds in, so it’s not really a valid complaint.”

And speaking of invalid complaints, if you were in downtown Clearwater when McGuinn and fellow ex-Byrd Chris Hillman, along with Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives (whose latest album Altitude McGuinn is enjoying so far) played The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo for one of the last times ever in December 2018, don’t expect a repeat of that show this weekend. He didn’t feel closure with the country-rock pioneering record at those shows, but McGuinn just feels like taking a break from the songs for right now. “I do plan to put [those songs] back in the set pretty soon, but I’m not going to be doing that in Clearwater,” he explained.

But you know something? Hearing some stories from a Byrd instead of him playing “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” for the millionth time over will probably do us some good this weekend, so tune in. Maybe you’ll ﬁnd something obscure to have in common with him.

MAKE ME A BYRD:

Roger McGuinn is coming to Clearwater this weekend.

JOHN CHIASSON

FRIDAY MARCH 7 SUNDAY MARCH 9 WEDNESDAY MARCH 12

SEVEN YEAR WITCH

SATURDAY MARCH 8

MARCH 10

By Ray Roa C CL Recommends

THU 06

C Cardiel w/Hovercar From Mexico City, this duo redeﬁnes metal. Singer and drummer Samantha Ambrosio alongside guitarist Miguel Frano originally wanted to make music skateboarders could jam to. What they ended up with is an epic blend of punk, psychedelic and a hint of stoner rock that embodies the feeling of racing through an obstacle course at full speed.With its dark vibe and history of hosting metal bands, Deviant Libation is the perfect venue to amplify Cardiel’s raw sound. Another heavyhitting duo, Tampa’s own Hovercar, molts into a trio at this show. (Deviant Libation, Tampa)—Grace Stoler

C Psych Montano album release w/ Sponatola/Finesse the PoetAcoupstix/ Midaz the Beast Dig up your best explorer outfit because Psych Montano wants folks to dress the theme (“Tomb Raider,” “The Mummy,” “Indiana Jones”) for this Skeleton Key album release. Three years in the making, the album features locals (Shevonne, DJ Qeys), plus national emcees (Alfred Banks), and is produced by Bay area producer Spontonola, who’ll warm up the crowd with a beat set. After that, a live band joins the Tampa rapper to play the album in full, just hours before it arrives on streaming services. The album’s latest single, “Vice City” includes Shevonne and is an allusion to the temptations the album’s main character must navigate. “The song builds from apprehension about people and my own shortcomings, evolving into more of a state of self-reflection and acknowledging that not everyone is your friend,” Montano told CL. “However, that doesn’t mean you can’t find your tribe and ultimately where you fit in.” (Crowbar, Ybor City)

FRI 07

C Miller Lowlifes w/The Eradicator/ Debt Neglector/Bad Bad Things Selfproclaimed as “the Dive Bar of Bands,” Miller Lowlifes actually landed on a storied Tampa label, A.D.D. Records, which released the quartet’s new album in April. With a sound that would’ve risen to the top of any Pre-Fest lineup (the band is an alum of the Gainesville punk-rock bacchanal, Fest), Pinch Hitters collects the anger and humor of frontmenguitarists Richie Schnellbacher and Matt Shumate and turns it into anthemic blue-collar pop-punk sung by guys with white-collar jobs. A trio of the best punky rock bands in Florida play support. (Deviant Libation, Tampa)

C Shovels & Rope w/James Felice Two decades after its inception, Dualtone and New West alum Shovels & Rope is still on the

road and relevant as ever. Wife and husband Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent—who also curate the High Water Festival in their hometown of Charleston—spent the fall of 2023 playing a bare bones acoustic tour, but are ready to turn the volume back up as they play songs from a 2024 album, Something Is Working Up Above My Head , a collection of tunes that doesn’t veer from the band’s signature, garage-rock, Americana sound. One of the Felice Brothers, James, opens. (Crowbar, Ybor City)

SAT 08

C Dropkick Murphys w/The Menzingers/Teenage Bottlerocket With a new single called “Sirens” signaling more to come this year, we can’t help but wonder if the Massachusetts-bred Celtic punk outﬁ t had trouble shaking the rust off of any lyrical skills that have been at rest for the last few years. With the help of Woody Guthrie’s family, Dropkick Murphys put out two albums full of new melodies married with the folk legend’s long-unused lyrics. It’s anyone’s guess if any of those tracks will make it to the setlist for the band’s Clearwater debut, but Saturday’s gig is part of an annual tour honoring one of the biggest drinking holidays of the year, so don’t be afraid to down a Guinness—or whatever’s on tap at The BayCare Sound—nine days early during “Rose Tattoo.” (The BayCare Sound, Clearwater)—JB

C Gaijin w/Losing Vision/Vulture Raid/ Vespid/Blockade/Concussion Protocol Old dudes, stay out of the pit for this one. Gaijin plays an almost reckless, barbaric style of slam-ready hardcore that sounds like a torn muscle waiting to happen. Influenced by everything from nu-metal to pop, rock and even hip-hop, Gingey Fanning, vocalist for the Port Charlotte band, recently told No Echo that his group also draws influence from anime (“Deathnote” inspired the song “Kira”). Trashy Bradenton band Losing Vision (among the many outfi ts coming to Brandon this year for FL Rules Fest) opens in support of a tough 2023 album, Vessel of Violence, produced under the masterful ear of homegrown hardcore hero Prison’s Austin Coupe. (Deviant Libation, Tampa)

C John Moreland w/Jordan Foley

Moreland loves bringing Sallisaw to Safety Harbor. Outside of one show at the old New World Brewery location, the Okie songwriter has exclusively played his Bay area gigs at the small town’s quirky art and music center. Moreland, 39, returns once again, still armed with a devastatingly sad—and life-afﬁ rming—songbook that spans 10 LPs unafraid to push the listening habits of Americana fans (the electronics on 2022’s Birds in the Ceiling make it one of that year’s sleeper hit LPs). Last year’s outing, Visitor , was recorded at his home in Bixby, Oklahoma, in just 10 days and even features his wife Pearl Rachinsky. Moreland is headed for the Cayamo

music-fest-as-cruise with the likes of Jeff Tweedy and Emmylou Harris and plays this long sold-out show you’re probably going to have to experience from outside the SHAMC gates. (Safety Harbor Art and Music Center, Safety Harbor)

SUN 09

C Ani DiFranco DiFranco has an album for a lot of this bullshit we’re going through right now. Over the summer, the 54-yearold American songwriting icon released a new album, Unprecedented Sh!t , where she stepped outside of the norm and worked with a producer, BJ Burton, for only the second time in her career. The Bon Iver and Charli XCX producer charted new territory for DiFranco, who saw her signature vocal get manipulated with effects and ﬁlters. While the sound may be new to listeners, DiFranco is still using her voice to speak to the political and social landscape of the world (the lead single is called “Baby Roe,” guys). “We ﬁnd ourselves in unprecedented times in many ways, faced with unprecedented challenges. So, our responses to them and our discourse around them, need to rise to that level,” DiFranco, added. This show is sold-out. (Jannus Live, St. Petersburg)

Alter Ego Over Easy Music Pop-Up: DJ Casper It’s a busy weekend for the Alter Ego crew led by DJ Casper. On Monday night, he and Sam E Hues are curating one of two local Notorious B.I.G. tributes (another unafﬁliated happening is at Crowbar the night before as part of the venue’s new “Church Sessions” series). On Sunday morning (10 a.m.), however, Casper & friends take their tastes South of Gandy for the launch of Alter Ego’s “Over Easy Music Pop-Up Series.” The four-stop run of pop-ups ﬁnds local tastemakers spinning

90-minute sets at some of the Bay area’s best places to get breakfast see the full lineup via cltampa.com/music. (We Vegan Cafe, Tampa)

C Florida Strawberry Festival: John Fogerty

The CCR icon is two months away from turning the big 8-0, but considering his physical condition, his mighty-as-ever guitar work, and how he just now got his songs back after a decades-long legal ﬁght, you would never guess that. Fogerty, who played the 10th-ever concert at Clearwater’s BayCare Sound two summers ago, closes out the Strawberry Festival while keeping CCR’s family aspect alive by having his sons Tyler and Shane play backup in his travelin’ band. No telling if the boys’ own band Hearty Har will play a warmup set before their dad hits the barn stage, but really, the only thing anyone should hope is that “Who’ll Stop The Rain” won’t be taken literally on Sunday, when the forecast calls for scattered thunderstorms. But on the other hand, it rained at Woodstock too, so what the hell? (Florida Strawberry Festival, Plant City)—JB

C Tampa Jazz Club: Michael Ross Quartet w/Fred Johnson There aren’t many other local jazz duos as iconic as Ross and Johnson. The bassist and vocalist have been ﬁ xtures on the scene since before the turn of the century and celebrate 25 years together at this matinee where saxophonist David Pate makes a rare appearance along with drummer Walt Hubbard and Tampa Bay’s Dean of Jazz Guitar, LaRue Nickelson. Expect the ensemble to draw from its 2000 album Doghouse and play new stuff, too. (Mainstage Theatre at Hillsborough Community College, Ybor City)

See an extended version of this listing via cltampa.com/music.

Miller Low Lifes

Organizers didn’t know it then, but the Hello In There Foundation was going to have to help Gulfport out in a big way after its successful John Prine tribute weekend last spring.

“Right after the storm, the foundation kicked into action, raised money from all over the country and donated to Gulfport, St. Pete, and surrounding beaches,” Gail Gilchrist told Creative Loaﬁng Tampa Bay. “Most of the money went to hospitality and gig workers, low income families displaced, and seniors.”

On thehellointherefoundation.org, the nonproﬁ t founded by surviving members of John Prine’s family lists its updated total raised as just south of $210,000. It’s no surprise to see Hello In There jump in to help the community where the Prines have kept a home since 2005.

Last year was the ﬁrst time Hello In There was involved with the local tribute to Prine, who passed away in April 2020 during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic; Gilchrist, a friend of the Prines, said the nonproﬁ t’s presence helped make the weekend of fundraising concerts the biggest yet. And the organization returns to our paradise again next month for another round.

Concerts will happen Friday-Sunday, April 4-6 in St. Pete Beach, Gulfport, and Safety Harbor, respectively according to Gilchrist (see the details in the listing below). Lineups have yet to be announced, but the Gulfport show at North End Tap House will feature more than a dozen musicians—and have concert posters for sale along with a 50/50 drawing to help raise funds for Hello In There.

Remembering John Prine Day 1 Friday, April 4. Cover TBD. 1 p.m.-4 p.m. Twisted Tiki, St. Pete Beach

Remembering John Prine Day 2 Saturday, April 5. No cover. 2 p.m.-6 p.m. North End Tap House, Gulfport

Remembering John Prine Day 3 Sunday, April 6. Cover TBD2 p.m.-3:30 p.m. Crooked Thumb Brewery, Safety Harbor

Tommy Prine w/Matthew Fowler Friday, April 18. 7 p.m. $20. Skipper’s Smokehouse, Tampa

Stick Figure w/Stephen Marley Thursday, July 3. 7 p.m. $56.50 & up. MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre, Tampa

Big Time Rush w/Katelyn Tarver/ Stephen Kramer Glickman Sunday, July 13. 7 p.m. Prices TBA. MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre, Tampa

“While we gather to honor John, these concerts also offer a signiﬁ cant opportunity to come together in celebration of a place and a community of friends that are dear to the Prine family’s heart,” Celine Thackston, Executive Director of the Hello In There Foundation, told CL, adding that she’s grateful to Gilchrist and the community for once again coordinating the logistics.

“Additionally, we are thankful for the chance to keep supporting local nonproﬁ ts that assist individuals during times of need. As we did last year, we will match all proceeds in support of chosen Gulfport and St. Petersburg area organizations, and look forward to announcing the beneﬁ ciaries at the concerts,” Thackston noted.

April will be a good month for local Prine fanatics, too, since John and Fiona Prine’s son, Tommy, has booked an April 18 show at Tampa’s Skipper’s Smokehouse. See Josh Bradley’s short list of new concerts coming to Tampa Bay—along with info on the Prinerelated concerts coming to town.—Ray Roa

Coheed and Cambria w/Taking Back Sunday/Foxing Saturday, Sept. 6. 7 p.m.

$40.50 & up. MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre, Tampa

Right on Time w/Run The Riot/High Press/If I’m Lucky/Bad Lungs Saturday, May 3. 8 p.m. $10. Music Hall at New World Brewery, Tampa

Benise Friday, Sept. 26. 7:30 p.m. $29 & up. Mahaffey Theater, St. Petersburg

Jason Aldean w/Nate Smith/RaeLynn/ Dee Jay Silver Friday, Oct. 3. 7:30 p.m.

$67.45 & up. MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre, Tampa

The Lumineers w/Chance Peña Wednesday, Oct. 8. 7:30 p.m. $59.50 & up. Amalie Arena, Tampa

Tedeschi Trucks Band w/Duane Betts & Palmetto Motel Sunday, Oct. 12. 6:30 p.m. $49.50 & up. The BayCare Sound, Clearwater

Team fantasize

By Dan Savage

Dear Readers: I haven’t felt so good since visiting a rustic pluck-your-own chicken place for dinner last week and—doctor’s orders—I’m not allowed to operate my advice column until I’m feeling better. Please enjoy this column from Feb. 17, 2017 and look for a brand-new column in this space next week.—Dan

I am a straight married man. My wife and I have a four-year-old and a three-month-old. We’ve just started having intercourse again. For Valentine’s Day, we spent the night in a B&B while grandma watched the kids. We had edibles, drank sparkling wine, and then fucked. It was amazing. After we came and while we were still stoned and drunk, my wife mentioned she was open to inviting others into our sex life. I asked about getting a professional sex worker. She said no. But maybe if we were in a bar (we’re never in bars) and met someone (a unicorn), she might be into it. Anal came up. She’s always said she’s up for trying anything once. I have a desire to experiment with anal. (Not just me entering her, but her pegging me as well.) I asked if she would use the vibrator we brought on me, just to experiment. She said she was too high to do anything. I felt let down. I feel she unknowingly teased me with fantasies I have, not knowing I actually have them. We have a good sex life, and I’m willing to write off the fantasies we discussed while high and drunk. It’s the teasing that drove me crazy.—Having And Realizing Desires

sections of your ﬁner sex-positive sex-toy stores everywhere are ﬁlled with couples who used to be on opposite teams—one from Team Fantasize, the other from Team Realize—but they’re both on Team Realize now. And what got them on the same team? Continuing to discuss and share fantasies, even at the risk of frustrating the Team Realize spouse.

SAVAGE LOVE

So, if you ever want to have that threesome or experiment with anal, HARD, you need to keep talking with your wife about these fantasies—and you need to tell her your fantasies too! Tell her you’re not pressuring her, of course, but let her know these are things you would actually like to do, and the more you talk about them, the more you want to do them. If she keeps talking with you about them, that’s a sign. Not a sign that she’s a cruel tease, HARD, but a sign that she’s inching closer toward pulling on a Team Realize jersey.

P.S. If your wife doesn’t know you have these fantasies—and is consequently teasing you “unknowingly”—that’s your fault, HARD, not hers.

got up in the morning, saw her panties wrapped around his hooves, peeled them off one by one, and returned her panties to their drawer. All without waking Perv Hooves up.

Scenario 2: Your friend got a little pervy with this guy—a thing for feet and/or panties isn’t that pervy—wanted to tell you about this guy’s kink, but was too embarrassed to admit that she’d gone along and possibly got into it.

While Scenario One is entirely plausible— it could’ve unfolded that way—my money is on Scenario Two because I’ve heard so many variations of song over the years: “I met this pervert who did these perverted things in front of me while I was asleep, and I wasn’t in any way involved and I wasn’t harmed. Isn’t that pervert crazy?” In most cases it only took a little drilling down—a little pointed questioning—for learn that person relaying the story played an active role in the evening’s perversions but edited the story to make themselves look like a passive bystander, not a willing participant.

at making me come. But the sex is vanilla and routine, and I would like us to go beyond that. Nothing extreme, I just want to switch things up a bit. Talking about sex makes my husband REALLY uncomfortable. If I ask him what he’d like me to do to him while we’re having sex, he shuts down. He’ll say, “Everything you do is good,” and leave it there. In the very few conversations we’ve had about this stuff, he’s said that he feels intimidated and doesn’t know what to say. This is incredibly frustrating for me. How do I get him to loosen up and feel more comfortable about talking to me so that we can eventually progress to some new experiences?

Why Husband Is Prudish

P.S. I’m in no hurry. We just had a baby, and I don’t want to pressure my wife right now. My fear is that she may only like the idea of exploring our sexuality together and not the reality of it. Some people think about, talk about, and masturbate about certain fantasies without ever wanting to realize them. Let’s call them Team Fantasize. Some people think about, etc., certain fantasies and would very much like to realize them. Let’s call them Team Realize. There’s nothing wrong with either team. But when someone on Team Fantasize is married to someone on Team Realize, well, that can be a problem. Knowing your spouse is turned on by fantasies you share but rules out realizing them—or sets impossible conditions for realizing them—can be extremely frustrating. And sometimes a frustrated Team Realize spouse will say something like this to their Team Fantasize mate: “Talking about these fantasies together—this kind of dirty talk—it gets my hopes up about actually doing it. If it’s never going to happen, we have to stop talking about it, because it’s frustrating.”

The problem with that approach? Swingers clubs, BDSM parties, and the strap-on-dildo

I wanted to tell you about something that happened to my friend. (Really!) She was going to bang this dude from OkCupid but wasn’t getting a great feeling, so she went to bed and let him crash on the couch. She woke up the next day to ﬁnd her underwear drawer empty on the ﬂoor and all of her underwear wrapped around this dude’s feet. She stealthily removed all the panties from his perv hooves and put her shit away. When the morning actualized itself, they parted amicably with no mention of the underwear slippers.—Men In Alaska

Ask yourself, MIA, which is the likelier scenario:

Scenario One: Perv Hooves stumbled around your friend’s dark apartment in the middle of the night, managed to ﬁnd her underwear drawer, pulled it out and set it on the ﬂoor, made himself a pair of pantie-booties, had himself a wank, and fell back to sleep. All without waking your friend. Then your friend

I’m a 30-year-old straight woman who has been with the same guy (highschool sweetheart!) for the last 13 years. We love each other deeply, best friends, etc. The problem isn’t that the sex isn’t good—he’s very good

Have you told him what you want? If you haven’t—if you’re as vague in your conversations with him as you were in your letter to me—you’re essentially asking your husband to guess at your undisclosed interests or kinks. Your husband is rightly terrified of guessing wrong. He doesn’t know what to do, he doesn’t know what to say, but he’s told you he’s fine with whatever you wanna do. So, stop asking him what he wants to do to you, WHIP, and start doing (or telling him to do) whatever it is you wanna do. Take the initiative! Be the change/switch you want to see in the sack! Lean in! Or bend over! Or whatever! From your sign-off, WHIP, I’m guessing you’re interested in some type of BDSM play, most likely with you in the sub role. So, lay that kink card on the table… but maybe offer to dominate him first. A lot of subs do some topping, i.e., a little doing unto others as subs would do unto them, and some subs become tops exclusively. Gently topping your husband—baby steps—is a good way to show him what you want since you’re finding it hard to talk about it.

P.S. Doing things you haven’t discussed isn’t ideal. So, emphasizing again the importance of taking the tiniest of baby steps here. You wanna give him a small taste of what it is you want, WHIP, not shove the whole roast down his throat. And insist on talking after.

Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love! Or record your question for the Savage Lovecast at savage.love/askdan! Podcasts, columns, merch and more at Savage.Love!

Legal, Public Notices

Notice of Public Sale Notice is hereby given that the undersigned will sell, to satisfy lien of the owner, at public sale by competitive bidding on www.storagetreasures.com. ending on March 14th 2024 at 10:00 am for units located at Compass Self Storage 1685 Hwy 17 N Eagle Lake Florida 33839 . Purchases must be made with cash only and paid at time of sale. All Goods are sold as is and must be removed at the time of purchase. Compass Self Storage reserves the right to refuse any bid. Sale is subject to adjournment. The personal goods stored therein by the following may include, but are not limited to general household, furniture, boxes, clothes and appliances, unless otherwise noted. UNIT 1033 Lacarsha Robinson, UNIT 3166 Alicia Vaughn. Run dates 2/27/25 & 3/6/25.

65 Turnaround pass

NOTES:

Be more popular than, in

Have ___ in one’s

Completing a pass, or completing a call

Alphabet section

Solzhenitsyn’s birthplace

“I don’t know who ___ any more”

sesame”

Like the wd.

Joke hearer’s

Tight end, or “hand

Enthusiastic, as a Marine

“... ___ o’clock scholar”

Misdeals, e.g.

The Red or the White

Lacking a sharp end

Falling between two zodiac signs

Singing section

Cries