# I Hate Tampa! I #$\*&ing HATE IT! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 26, 2007, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551 "2007-03-26T15:14:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/c4cdca/32.png) [@Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quiddity_Glomfuster)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/41 "2007-03-26T20:28:54Z")
I’ve visted Tampa a couple times and like it a lot. St. Pete OTOH is kinda small and dullish. ---
**Author:** ![TroubleAgain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e480ec/32.png) [@TroubleAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroubleAgain)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/42 "2007-03-26T20:33:47Z")
[QUOTE=AHunter3] Now, for really badly thought-out approaches to street _naming_, I’ve never seen any place other than Athens GA pull [this](http://home.earthlink.net/~ah3files/Stuff/Athens.jpg). 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… [/QUOTE] I think Irvine, CA has a street like this. I could swear it does, because I remember seeing a street sign with the same street name on both parts. ---
**Author:** ![Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/c4cdca/32.png) [@Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quiddity_Glomfuster)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/43 "2007-03-26T20:34:59Z")
Forgot to add it’s a really good idea to check out your final destination on Google Maps or Yahoo Maps and use the satellite + map view to really see where you’re going. Doing that has saved my bacon plenty of times. ---
**Author:** ![joemama24\_98](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ce7236/32.png) [@joemama24\_98](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joemama24_98)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/44 "2007-03-26T20:49:30Z")
[QUOTE=Baron] No one wants to live in Pinellas and commute to Tampa, because the sun in your eyes both ways will drive you insane. [/QUOTE] Hey now, I leave in Clearwater and commute to Tampa, and while you’re right about the sun, the traffic actually works out pretty well. The Causeway is always wide-open in the morning heading east (westbound is jam packed). Ditto for the Howard Frankland - going home, I always see the eastbound traffic jammed up to the hump, but I average 70 MPH on bridge heading westbound home. I think its much better to live in Pinellas and work in Tampa than the other way around. ---
**Author:** ![Sean\_Factotum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/50afbb/32.png) [@Sean\_Factotum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sean_Factotum)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/45 "2007-03-26T20:58:44Z")
[QUOTE=Polycarp] There are, or were, the [Tidewater Tides](http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Tidewater_Tides), minor league baseball. [/QUOTE] They’re the Norfolk Tides now. We’ve got a problem with region identity 'round here. Don’t know whether to call ourselves residents of Hampton Roads, Norfolk, Tidewater (which, I believe, is also used by an area up in Maryland), Virginia Beach - you get the picture. And we have a weird stretch of road, an interstate no less. For about 10 miles, I-64 East runs primarily in a western direction, and of course I-64 West runs eaternly for the same amount. As for Tampa, I was there once, visiting my sister, when she lived in Hudson. Can’t say I remember too much of the layout there, but then again we were only there for one day. But since my ex-wife lives down there now, there’s no way I’ll see that town again anytime soon. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/46 "2007-03-26T21:03:47Z")
[QUOTE=Will Repair] I think we have a winner here. [/QUOTE] Not even close. Look up Woodinville, Washington. Go ahead, zoom in. Make sure the Tylenol is close by. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/47 "2007-03-26T21:20:26Z")
[QUOTE=Quiddity Glomfuster] Forgot to add it’s a really good idea to check out your final destination on Google Maps or Yahoo Maps and use the satellite + map view to really see where you’re going. Doing that has saved my bacon plenty of times. [/QUOTE] That’s especially useful if you’re going to a big retail area with several different malls or mini-malls and you just have an address. It can tell you, oh, it’s in the shopping center with the Wal-Mart, or it’s one of those free-standing places next to the banks. Really helpful. Of course, Google can’t help you if you have your Peachtree Avenue confused with your Peachtree Road. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/48 "2007-03-26T21:27:37Z")
[QUOTE=Terrifel] That was Bradenton! They’re not even in the same county! [/QUOTE] His letters home were all postmarked “Tampa”. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/49 "2007-03-26T23:43:44Z")
[QUOTE=RickJay] Not even close. Look up Woodinville, Washington. Go ahead, zoom in. Make sure the Tylenol is close by. [/QUOTE] OK, that’s pretty fucking awful. ---
**Author:** ![Darryl\_Lict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7cd45c/32.png) [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2007, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/50 "2007-03-27T00:27:45Z")
[QUOTE=friedo] [Queens](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=astoria,+ny&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=16&ll=40.768078,-73.928204&spn=0.010775,0.027122&om=1). Just try telling a guy you live “near 30th.” 30th _what?_ There’s like six of 'em in one place! [/QUOTE] Do you have the same fucked up address scheme as Manhattan, where there is zero correlation between numbered streets and the addresses between them? [QUOTE=RickJay] Not even close. Look up Woodinville, Washington. Go ahead, zoom in. Make sure the Tylenol is close by. [/QUOTE] That’s fucked up. I knew even before looking it up that it must be one of those satellite communities around Seattle. Every frickin’ town has the same stupid numbering scheme, and each seems to start with a new numbering scheme that’s just off enough to completely screw you up. The streets are not even close to being orthogonal, plus almost none of them go all the way through so why go with a precise street numbering scheme when the topography is absolute chaos? ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2007, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/51 "2007-03-27T01:06:25Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] His letters home were all postmarked “Tampa”. [/QUOTE] Well of course they were! Would you want anyone to know that you’re staying in Bradenton?! Modern historians hypothesize that de Soto took the opportunity to mail his letters during secret visits to the Tampa area, where the local Tocobaga people had developed the most sophisticated lap dancing practices of any New World culture (a tradition that continues even today). ---
**Author:** ![Wile\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c37758/32.png) [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2007, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/52 "2007-03-27T02:15:13Z")
_applauds RedRoses rant_ Yay! I’ve had to go to downtown Tampa a couple times … it’s usually requires medication afterwards. I agree with the sports team rant as well, I wouldn’t care if the Bucs were just the “Tampa Bucs” if we had actually been able to name _our_ baseball the St. Pete Devil Rays\* instead of having to follow that stupid “Hey! Let’s share!” naming convention. They’re our [sub]sucky[/sub] baseball team! I have a theory, maybe they wouldn’t be sucky if they didn’t have to carry that “Tampa Bay” around. \*Actually, Devil Rays, is a stupid name too. Who voted for that? ---
**Author:** ![RedRosesForMe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/91b2a8/32.png) [@RedRosesForMe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedRosesForMe)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2007, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/53 "2007-03-27T02:19:08Z")
[QUOTE=Wile E] _applauds RedRoses rant_ Yay! I’ve had to go to downtown Tampa a couple times … it’s usually requires medication afterwards. I agree with the sports team rant as well, I wouldn’t care if the Bucs were just the “Tampa Bucs” if we had actually been able to name _our_ baseball the St. Pete Devil Rays\* instead of having to follow that stupid “Hey! Let’s share!” naming convention. They’re our [sub]sucky[/sub] baseball team! I have a theory, maybe they wouldn’t be sucky if they didn’t have to carry that “Tampa Bay” around. \*Actually, Devil Rays, is a stupid name too. Who voted for that? [/QUOTE] The Mutiny, however, was an awesome team name. Too bad no one likes soccer in America. ---
**Author:** ![Wile\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c37758/32.png) [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2007, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/54 "2007-03-27T02:25:07Z")
[QUOTE=RedRosesForMe] The Mutiny, however, was an awesome team name. Too bad no one likes soccer in America. [/QUOTE] Hey, Red, I see you’re still a guest. Gonna stick around? ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2007, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/55 "2007-03-27T02:58:50Z")
Sadly, Tampa’s street system never fully recovered from the ill-fated “Gasparilla Experiment” of 1943, a top-secret project by military and civic leaders to harness eldritch otherworldly forces in an attempt to transform Tampa into a worthwhile place to live. Rumor has it that the experiment, conducted in a secret hangar at Henderson Army Air Field, utilized powerful electromagnetic fields to induce a highly distorted region of local spacetime. The results were catastrophic; whole city blocks were rotated through parallel dimensions, their streets and avenues physically warped into a strange and terrible labyrinth of non-Euclidean geometry. Several miles of Florida Avenue and Nebraska Avenue materialized in the same place, fused at the molecular level into a completely new entity, Floribraska Avenue. Civil engineers from the Department of Public Works were driven mad as they struggled vainly to comprehend the chaos, raving of streets which seemed to \*twist \* and _writhe_ unnaturally, intersecting at impossibly hideous angles. This legacy of heritable insanity can be observed to this day in such dread manifestations as the I-275 ‘Malfunction Junction’ downtown expansion project. ---
**Author:** ![RedRosesForMe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/91b2a8/32.png) [@RedRosesForMe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedRosesForMe)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2007, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/56 "2007-03-27T03:03:43Z")
[QUOTE=Wile E] Hey, Red, I see you’re still a guest. Gonna stick around? [/QUOTE] I hope that means you _want_ me to stick around. 🆒 But yes, as soon as I have money, I plan on getting a subscription. Assuming, of course, I can leave my house to go to work, because currently I am unemployed and sitting on my ass on the SDMB all day. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2007, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/57 "2007-03-27T03:28:16Z")
> [@](#): > > **Red** : …currently I am unemployed and sitting on my ass on the SDMB all day. Yep. Red is showing signs of Goat Syndrome. It won’t be long now. My husband and I had trouble finding our way through Tampa one night. There just weren’t enough road signs. We were looking for a bridge. Finally the road curved sharply to the left and ahead of us we could see what appeared to be numerous pairs of headlights descending from the sky. Freaking Tampa Bay Bridge! It was even worse in daylight. The bridge was new at that time and had been built to replace part of the bridge which had collapsed after a vessel of some sort hit it. The old bridge was still there and you could see where it stopped and cars went over. I don’t know why they left that up. It was sickening. ---
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2007, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/58 "2007-03-27T07:22:47Z")
[QUOTE=Zoe] Yep. Red is showing signs of Goat Syndrome. It won’t be long now. My husband and I had trouble finding our way through Tampa one night. There just weren’t enough road signs. We were looking for a bridge. Finally the road curved sharply to the left and ahead of us we could see what appeared to be numerous pairs of headlights descending from the sky. Freaking Tampa Bay Bridge! It was even worse in daylight. The bridge was new at that time and had been built to replace part of the bridge which had collapsed after a vessel of some sort hit it. The old bridge was still there and you could see where it stopped and cars went over. I don’t know why they left that up. It was sickening. [/QUOTE] That’s the [Sunshine Skyway](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Skyway_Bridge). Actually never touches Tampa – connects St Pete to Terra Ceia via I-275. The old bridge has had its center spans removed completely and the remaining approaches have been converted into fishing piers. As far as **RedRose** goes, I’m not much on Tampa either and am firmly convinced that I live on the better side of the Bay. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2007, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/59 "2007-03-27T07:24:46Z")
[QUOTE=Will Repair] 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. [/QUOTE] You’re talking about the _heart_ of downtown, I’m talking about the whole rest of the city, where you can be on the same street, but have it change names every other block, or where a highway suddenly turns into a city street, then back into a highway again (Briley Parkway, anyone?), or how they decided to “solve” a traffic problem, by changing the _number_ of the interstates on one stretch (I-65 became I-265 and I-265 became I-65). I won’t even get into their habit of spending 50 years building a 5 mile stretch of road, or how they tear up a section of the street, putting up barrels and those concrete walls of death[sup]TM[/sup], and then just _leave it_ like that for _years_. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2007, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551/60 "2007-03-27T11:13:43Z")
[QUOTE=RedRosesForMe] I hope that means you _want_ me to stick around. 🆒 But yes, as soon as I have money, I plan on getting a subscription. Assuming, of course, I can leave my house to go to work, because currently I am unemployed and sitting on my ass on the SDMB all day. [/QUOTE] Having a job is by no means a requirement to post on this board. What kind of employment are you looking for? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-tampa-i-ing-hate-it/397551.md?page=4)