I guess POWW’s decision to hire me wasn’t so bad after all…from the SHROCK: There will not be a ballpark on the downtown waterfront. The Tampa Bay Rays say they have altogether abandoned thoughts of an open-air stadium at the site of Al Lang Field. “It’s pretty clear people did not want a ballpark down there,” Rays senior vice president Michael Kalt said Friday. “From what we’re seeing, we’re probably in that camp, too. “For us, Al Lang’s not an…
St. Petersburg native and US Navy veteran Jason Diviki filed paperwork on Monday to run for the District 4 seat on the St. Petersburg City Council. The seat is currently held by Leslie Curran. Diviki is currently the president of the Crescent Lake neighborhood association and had served as chair of CONA’s committee on energy and the environment. Reached by phone, Diviki says he is running to refresh city government “with a new generation of leadership.” Asked if he was…
It’s all a mess now. No second second-chance. I left New York a year to the day after I left St. Petersburg. I felt rejuvenated, restored. In my first weeks back, I lectored at my church, joined the Friends of North Branch Library, saw old acquaintances never forgotten. Life was grand. I wrote an article for Creative Loafing. I won the fang-and-claw at Tiger Bay. I was back. I mean baaaccckkk. Then He came knocking. My old friend Politics. For…
St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Jamie Bennett is pitifully ignorant or disappointingly complicit when it comes to a series of campaign mistakes and second-rate dirty tricks. He has fired the campaign manager he never should have hired, but if he stays in the race that will not end the questions or remove the stains. Sorting out who knew what when between Bennett and his former campaign manager, Peter Schorsch, may be an exercise in futility. But some of their maneuvers cannot…
This was an unwise marriage, the too-easygoing City Council member running for mayor of St. Petersburg and the wild-card political consultant. Now it’s an ugly divorce. After James Bennett’s campaign got caught handing out tickets to the city’s suite at Tropicana Field for political purposes, Bennett and adviser Peter Schorsch parted ways, blaming each other. In turn, Schorsch went public over the weekend with a laundry list of dirty campaign tricks and violations that he says Bennett knew about. Bennett…
I’ve been asked about 200 times what I think Jamie Bennett should do next. My answer is unquivocal: he should announce that he will stop running for Mayor of St. Petersburg. Put aside his actions or involvement in “Ticketgate,” although that is pretty hard to do. Bennett was fully aware that the tickets were being distributed to advance his political campaign. Him saying he had no knowledge of this or that is an insult to the voters of St. Petersburg.…
In order to help make their neighborhood a cleaner and safer place to live, residents of Bartlett Park, Keep Pinellas Beautiful, and the City of St. Petersburg’s Sanitation and Police Departments are sponsoring a neighborhood clean up in Bartlett Park on Saturday May 9th from 9:00am to 11:00am starting at St. Petersburg Neighborhood Housing Services (SPNHS) located at 1600 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701. Please meet in the back parking lot of St. Petersburg…