I Hate Tampa! I #$*&ing HATE IT!

The BBQ Pit
1

Tampa, you have to be one of the shittiest places in Florida. At least Yeehaw Junction has character. And more intelligent locals than you do.

I had a job interview in this rotten hell hole this morning, but I forgot to add an extra 15 minutes to my travel time because TAMPA’S STREET SYSTEM WAS DESIGNED BY RETARDED MONKEYS.

No, I apologize. That’s an insult to retarded monkeys.

I don’t think your streets with E/W designations actually run east to west, for starters. And then you have stupid windy roads in the middle of downtown, for no fucking reason. I can only assume that halfway through building the road, they realized it really ought to go somewhere else. WTF? And then, when I finally found the road I was looking for, after spending 10 minutes trying to get to the part of it that wasn’t a one-way street in the opposite direction (after dodging blocked-off streets and that one street that looks like a normal street, but after you drive on it for a block you can’t continue any further, it’s just for fucking buses- we have that in St. Pete except, oh yeah, it’s only one lane, not the whole fucking street you jackass), your numbering system for addresses is the most retarded thing I have ever seen in my life. Praying to Og that the same logic applies in Tampa (HA!) that odd addresses are on one side and even on the other, I look for 1344. I keep an eye on the street signs at every intersection, because they list the block on the sign. But something odd happens. I’m looking at the sign, and it says I’m on the 1500 block. But the address on the corner is 1702. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? Kindergarteners could point out the flaws there. Your street system defies all logic, and I hate you for it.

Even more than I used to hate you. Treating us like we’re some annoying little step-brother because we live in Pinellas County. Fuck off. You may have the bigger city physically, but who the fuck wants to go there anyway? We’ve got, what, 8 museums in downtown St. Pete, and that doesn’t include things like the Gulf Coast Museum of Art in Largo. Not to mention the 50 different art galleries I have in walking distance of my apartment. We’ve got 2 airports, not just one, although yours, admittedly, is much larger. But what do you have to offer the world besides ditch-digging jobs for illegal immigrants? Oh, you’ve got the Tampa Museum of Art. How’s that working for ya? I hear the Dali Museum has twice the visitors, and it’s a hellluva lot smaller. That’s the only museum you got besides MOSI, way out in BFE. Oooh, you’ve got the Performing Arts Center. And the St. Pete Times Forum. Did you ever stop to think about that one? Your biggest venue is named after our paper, because no one would want to be associated with that conversative propagnda rag you call a paper. That’s right, us hicks over in Pinellas have Florida’s Best Newspaper. And you’ve got no beaches, you have to slum it over in Pinellas for the day to hit the beach. I even hear that office buildings are sitting vacant because employers would rather set up shop in St. Pete, where people can actually live (gasp) near their job and not waste time in the mornings sitting on 275.

So fuck you Tampa. No one likes you anyway. What tourists go to Tampa? Idiots that are afraid of culture, that’s who. I’m sick of the rest of the world knowing your name and not ours. And why is our sports team called the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? There’s no such fucking place!!! Was that some condescending move so we wouldn’t feel “left out”? Well, thanks but no thanks.

Oh, and that job interview? The asshole wasn’t even there. Typical Tampa bullshit.

:mad:

2

Sure there is.

It’s a body of water, of course, but just because a place is wet, doesn’t mean it’s not a place. :smiley:

3

Well, I’m a life long native, I do realize that Tampa Bay exists, but not as an area of land that you’d name a team after. There aren’t any Puget Sound Platypus(es/i), for example. Or the English Channel Fightin’ Tigers or something. It’s a silly silly thing to name a team after.

:stuck_out_tongue:

4

Hmmm. I’ll go along with the traffic/street rant. Took us way too long to get to the Forum Thursday evening, what with one way streets and other peculiarities. You have to go way south to find my favorite beach, though. :slight_smile:

5

Well, there’s no Carolina either, but there’s the Carolina Panthers.

6

Tampa Bay teams are somewhat unusual in that they are not named after an actual city or state. The only other North American sports teams I can think of that do that are the Carolina Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes (while there is a North Carolina and a South Carolina, there is no Carolina) and the curiously named Golden State Warriors.

Even weirder are Japanese baseball franchises, which in most cases are named after corporations, rather than the places they play in.

Just thought I’d toss a little trivia in there.

7

I personally have many fond (if drunkenly blury) memories of certain areas of Dale Mabry. Despite the truth in all you say, there are saving graces.

8

Man I can’t believe everyone got all hung up on the Bucs comment, as opposed to my bitching about Tampa’s lack of culture, horrible traffic problems, and general suckiness.

I’m still waiting for Tampa natives to come in here and get all pissed off at me.

9

What about the New England Patriots?

10

St Pete, eh? Your rant sounds like typical Tampa envy. Go back and play with the blue hairs and stay the fuck on your side of bridge. Oh, and clean-up all those damn shells on your beach. Sand shouldn’t hurt when you walk in it.

11

I don’t have much to add to your rant, my experience with Tampa being limited, but for a fairly large city I find Tampa to be a whole lot of not much. My company has an office there and I hate to visit there, traffic and roads are just awful.

But your rant has made me want to visit St. Pete.

12

I understand Washington, D.C., isn’t a real place, either, yet it has three pro teams.

13

My brother had a job interview in Tampa last year. He was completely underwhelmed. And he was coming from Dallas, so it’s not like his standards were all that high.

14

You do not know bad street-numbering schemes. You may think you do, but only folks who have found themselves on a certain residential “Loop” (::looks at Google map:: I’m thinking Kimberly Lane?) in White Rock, suburb-offshoot of Los Alamos NM, know from truly bad numbering schemes.

Self-explanatory sketch.
Now, for really badly thought-out approaches to street naming, I’ve never seen any place other than Athens GA pull this. Picture yourself at the designated intersection and not familiar with the area, and just confused enough after a few U-turns to be unsure of which direction you came in from…

15

Tampa envy? No, I’m quite glad that St. Pete is nothing like Tampa- we have better museums and art galleries and prettier views.

And a logical friggin’ street system! Avenues run east to west, streets north to south. The streets are numbered, in sequential order. I am still amazed that anyone asks directions if they have the address- I can tell you exactly where an address is, even if I’ve never been within 2 miles of it. 6601 9th Avenue? Why, that’s at the intersection of 66th Street and 9th Avenue. 530 1st Street? That’s between 5th and 6th Avenues on 1st Street.

I understand that’s unusual, as far as cities go. Most cities were founded hundreds (sometimes thousands) of years ago when city planning was unheard of. But Tampa’s about the same age as St. Pete, and we’ve got it, why don’t you?

And yes, I would recommend visiting St. Pete to anyone looking for a warm vacation getaway. It’s hot as balls in the summer, which I hate, but if you like art and museums and ethnic foods and local character and historic districts, it’s great. And beaches. We have some pretty beaches (actually we have America’s Best Beach, although I totally disagree with that- Fort Desoto is kinda… well, whatever, somebody likes it alot). We’re the Sunshine City, too- we set a record with 768 consecutive days of sunshine.

No, I don’t work for the Chamber of Commerce, I’m just a native 'Burger and love my hometown.

16

This gives me the opportunity to ask about a frequent drunken debate an ex-roommate and I would have. He (a much bigger sports person than me) always argued that the team was not the Tampa Bay “Buccaneers,” but was really the Tampa “Bay Buccaneers”…as in pirates that primarily prowled the waters of the bay.

Any truth to this? Seems daft to me, but what do I know?

17

Must be a Foolridian thing. In Orlando 2700 28th Street is directly across from 2625 28th Street. The odd/even numbering will swap sides instead of being consistent throughout the city.

I expect to see matchbooks with the question:
Can’t draw a straight line? Consider a career with the Department of Transportation!

18

Nashville, TN’s entire road network is similar to that.

19

There may be exceptions but Nashville’s street naming (based on the suggestion of little girl’s letter) is great.

Avenues run NS starting at 1st downtown and numbers go up as they go west.
North of Broadway/West End is ‘Ave N’ south is Ave S.
Across the river the same thing except they’re streets and numbers go up to east.

So you know where to go when someone says 3 Ave S or 3 St N.
But there are exceptions like 11th Ave N which doesn’t connect to cross streets.

20

Actually I like St Pete too. One of the benefits of Tampa is having St Pete and Clearwater so close. I wouldn’t bash any of them.

As far as the “Streets and avenues” thing or the (albeit pretty neat) numbering system. A person visiting St Pete wouldn’t know this. You know this system because you are a life-long resident. I’ve lived in Tampa practically my whole life and I used to work in St Pete. And I was never aware of their system. I’ve been lost over there pleanty of times.

Seems like it only works if you’re a resident or otherwise aware of it in the first place.