SS American Victory lives out her retirement years proudly flying the flag and welcoming visitors at the Port of Tampa

The SS American Victory is docked just behind the Florida Aquarium in Tampa’s Channel District. She was built in Los Angeles and delivered to the U.S. War Shipping Administration on May 24, 1945. She was named after American University in Washington, DC, to honor the school’s contributions to war training and weapons research during both World War I and World War II. As you can just barely see from the photo, she is 455 feet in length and 109 feet tall. (In her younger days she would do 17 knots.) The ship was assigned to the U.S. Army and sailed to cities on the West Coast to load military cargo. Her inaugural trip was to Manila in the Philippines and then on to Shanghai, China. During World War II, she sailed the world’s oceans and saw the ports in Calcutta, Port Said, Egypt, the Caribbean and South America, including Trinidad, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Montevideo, Uruguay and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Following her service during the war, she sailed under the American Export Lines flag to Europe, Russia and the Near East in support of the American Marshall Plan. Over the years SS American Victory earned a reputation and very proud history which also included service during the Korean War and Vietnam. After being placed into our reserve fleet, she was facing the scrap yard. In 1996, one of Tampa illustrious harbor pilots, Captain John Timmel, first conceived the idea of snatching a ship away from the scrap yard and bringing it to Tampa as a museum. The entire history of the SS American Victory and how she finally got to Tampa is an amazing story. (Their website, here, is very well done and has tons of information, lots of historic photographs and the full tale of how the ship actually got to Tampa. It should be made into a movie.) In September 1999, the SS American Victory sailed under the Skyway Bridge into Tampa Bay and arrived at her new port. These ships were vitally important to our winning World War II and then they continued for decades to perform a major role in the U.S. merchant fleet. Tampa can be proud that she is at our dock and open today as a museum. It is a fun tour and only after walking and climbing all over the ship do you even begin to get a tiny inkling of what it must have been like to sail as a member of the crew. Incredible skills and heroism.

Cephas West Indian Restaurant in Ybor City dishes up heaps of Jamaican delicacies and a touch of the Caribbean right here in Tampa

As fun and extensive as the menu may be for the Cephas West Indian Restaurant on East Fourth Ave. in Ybor City, nothing can touch the incredible exterior of the restaurant. It is wild and colorful beyond belief. Cepha Griffin owns this Caribbean/Jamaican restaurant and is extremely proud of the reputation he has built. It is impossible to drive by without noticing the place as it literally screams at you for attention. I understand that the Jerk Chicken is very good and that delicious veggies are in abundance and are a big favorite. To experience Jamaica and the flavors of the islands it doesn't get more authentic than this. Located just 3 blocks south of Ybor's 7th Avenue, it is hard to miss. They do have take-out if you're overdressed in black-tie and want to enjoy your soul food, oxtail or curry goat at home. Cepha's is decidedly casual and a delight to both the eye and the stomach.

SkyWatch FRIDAY #52

I have never before taken photographs from Tampa International Airport, but several times it has occurred to me that it might have an excellent vantage point from which to capture the ever-changing sky over our city. Our airport is one of the very best in the nation. 18 airlines serve over 18 million passengers a year. Amazingly to me, there are roughly 260 daily departures with over 30,000 passengers.This airport opened in 1971 and has six beautiful, very modern airsides - all connected by Disney-like shuttles - and 3 runways; the longest is 11,000 feet in length. Of all the airports I have flown through in the world, it is #1. Because today is SkyWatch FRIDAY and, from glancing up at mid-day I couldn't tell if it would stay 90-degrees and blue sky or turn black and pour thunderous rain, I decided to go out and take a look. With that said I drove to the airport and circled up to the top of the main terminal in Short term parking. (The first hour's free.) Tampa is a very large city of just over 100 square miles in size. Our county, Hillsborough, is over a thousand square miles. Pretty big. When I looked through the camera from the top of the airport the city is flat, FLAT, and everything that's interesting to see looks as though it's about 100 miles away. Tiny. But the sky was doing its daily dance of building and changing and moving between black, gray and puffy white. The rooftop also provided several fun elements that came in bright shades of reds, oranges and blues. Plus huge white arrows and directional signs - and WARNINGS - for the directionally challenged. Warning: Do NOT drive off building. (Only kidding about that one.) I had a lot of fun shooting and found enough inanimate subjects to almost convince me to camp out on the parking garage roof and run through my camera's battery life.

Do visit Skywatch Friday to see the beauty and wonders of the world's most magnificent skies. It's an amazing show.

Tampa Bay Hotel: Henry B. Plant's 19th century Florida resort retains its Victorian gilt and grandeur after more than a century

My monochrome post on July 6th of the minarets of the Tampa Bay Hotel and the family history and photographs shared by Lois of Tallahassee Daily Photo prompted me to show an entirely different view of the original hotel that is not visible in the photo of the minarets. This scene is taken facing the West Veranda entrance to the original hotel lobby. Guests would arrive here by train rather than on the other side facing the Hillsborough River. The tennis courts and horse racing track were also on this side but are long gone. The Florida State Fairgrounds took the track years ago and and now the campus of the growing University of Tampa has expanded well beyond those original hotel grounds. (We are proud of the university, one of the best private schools in the country.) The other photo - do click to enlarge - is taken from this side (the black and white was from the east) and the bottom shot is of the breathtaking domed ceiling of the hotel's Fletcher Lounge. This is where guests would dine. It is an incredible space and looks just as it did when the hotel opened in 1891. A dinner was held in this room in 1998 to commemorate and celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Spanish-American War. We were greeted by re-enactors portraying Colonel Teddy Roosevelt and Mr. and Mrs. Henry Plant They were entertaining, very authentic and helped to transport us back in time. They used an original hotel menu to recreate an exquisite meal. This is where Lois' grandparents would have dined. The menu and many other items from the hotel are in the collection of the Henry B. Plant Museum. The men were given gifts of Tampa cigars and the women beautiful Spanish fans. I hoped to show you what incredible architecture and decoration greeted hotel guests when they arrived more than a century ago. The place still delivers on its promise after more than a hundred years. (But it doesn't have rooms for honeymooners any longer.)

It's simply painted steps, a tall cactus and dualing blue trash cans (and rain drops)

Do you sometimes see a combination of design, shapes, colors, and objects that in your mind's eye make for a good composition? And you really can't explain why? This residence, and I think it is someone's home (or studio), is in an old warehouse building buried in the Channel District. The brick on the wall above the awning shows what remains of an old painted sign. It is sandwiched between multi-million dollar projects under construction and several modern, finished buildings that contain apartments, condominium units, office space and even a performing arts theater. There is plenty of empty space in the district for sale or lease and it all seems to be awaiting a turn around in the economy. It is prime for discovery and some pioneering souls have made the decision to go ahead and move in. The entire area is a intriguing mix of the old and the new, the vibrant and the empty, and it's encircled by Channelside Drive, the port and cruise terminals, the Florida Aquarium, the Shops at Channelside, and the city's downtown business district to its west. It is without a doubt a very interesting place to call home and definitely shows tons of promise. It may take awhile to attract the hundreds if not thousands of residents and business owners who could conceivably move here. It is ready and once it explodes it will make for one of Tampa's most desirable and fun places to live and work. (Ybor City is less than five minutes away and the trolley runs nearby.) I love the painted steps of this place; that's probably the thing that caught my eye, but the blue trash cans even seem to belong and anchor a decided place in the finished composition. It just called to me. You explain it. (It must be today's rain popping in and out of the sunny sky.)

The Wave: Playfully crashing before the blue, cloud-filled sky on Bayshore Boulevard

On Mother’s Day I featured an artwork entitled Family of Man, a sculpture created by the artist Geoffrey Naylor. It is installed just immediately east of Gandy Boulevard in the median of Bayshore Boulevard as part of the City of Tampa Public Art Program. If you take a look at it again, it is a spectacular metal sculpture and Tampa's piercing sun hitting its surfaces has a powerful effect as the light moves through the cracks and around the edges and seams and plays on its polished surfaces. I felt that the subject of family became very clear to me as the artist had intended.

The Wave, another acquisition of the city's Public Art Program within the Arts and Cultural Affairs Department, is an altogether different visual experience. Much more accessible, playful and welcoming, it is located at Bayshore and Rubideaux Street across from Fred Ball Park and the Tampa Garden Club. As you pass it for the first time in a car it does make you look and grin widely as your brain tries to sort out what it is you are seeing. But to enjoy and really appreciate it you must walk around it and literally under and through it as the artist intended. Watch the light as it slides and almost dances over the surfaces and puddles in ringlets on the base below. Scenes of Tampa, of the balustrades along the Bayshore seawall, of the water in the bay, and even Davis Islands, look very different when framed by the Wave. Created by artist Mary Ann Unger (1945 - 1999) and installed in 1989, the Wave is a 15 feet-long by 10 foot high steel arch that to many people strongly resembles a giant Slinky®, the metal, spring-like toy that is known to generations of kids. To be affectionately called the Slinky isn't all bad. It is a term said with a smile and child-like impishness. (Over 300 million have been sold since their introduction in the 1940s, and can probably be found in some office cubicles entertaining big kids.) Unger, best known for her sculptures, received her bachelor's degree from Mount Holyoke College and her Masters Degree in Fine Arts from Columbia University School of the Arts in 1975. She was also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her artwork is in the collections of the Smithsonian's Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Fields Sculpture Garden of the Omi International Arts Center, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. [To see Unger's piece, The Temple, installed in the Sculpture Garden of Lehigh University Art Galleries click HERE.]

The Wave might represent white waves breaking onto a beach, a shell or even the inner ribs of a boat’s hull, but I like having a huge Slinky making its way through the grass of Bayshore's median. Even though it shows no progress during its twenty year "slink," I know it is having a great time entertaining us and making us smile.

Marvel at the minarets of the amazing Tampa Bay Hotel: A study in black and white

The most recognizable icons on Tampa's skyline are the magnificent minarets of the Tampa Bay Hotel. A gentleman named Henry Bradley Plant is solely responsible for dreaming the almost unimaginable. Tampa was a very small town in the 1890s. The population was only about 700 in 1880 while Ybor City, just east of Tampa, was already a larger town, more affluent and a major player in the cigar industry. Thousands of men and women were employed in every aspect of the manufacturing and selling of cigars. After Ybor City was incorporated into Tampa in 1887, Tampa grew to over 5,500 residents. And most made their living from cigars. Into this small town came Henry Plant. A wealthy man who had made his fortune with hotels, railroads and steamships, he planned to build a hotel that would lure visitors and guests who would travel on his railroad from points north. Tampa would be at the terminus and they would step from their train car onto the west veranda and into the lobby of his grandiose hotel. Plant succeeded in bringing a level of luxury to his tropical resort unlike any in the state. (It is still awe inspiring today.) The hotel rose along the banks of the Hillsborough River, right across from the town of Tampa. The hotel's Moorish architecture was as startling and magical in the 1890s as it is today. Open only from December to April each year, the hotel's staff entertained their wealthy guests with every kind of diversion from game hunting, fishing, and boating on the river and bay to horse racing and tennis. The minarets atop the hotel were distinctive and memorable a century ago as they greeted the trains and passengers who must have stood in the lobby in disbelief. Today, the Tampa Bay Hotel, recognized as a United States National Historic Landmark, is part of the University of Tampa and is carefully preserved and maintained to provide a view of our city's and nation's history during the turn-of-the-century Victorian era. Headquarters to the United States Army during the Spanish American War in 1898, the Tampa Bay Hotel welcomed many famous guests over the years. If your curiosity has been tweaked, please visit the Henry B. Plant Museum website. It's a great story. And the minarets, which so proudly represent Tampa, still amaze everyone who sees them on our skyline. (And, yes, you can go up inside them but I'm told it is very hot and humid. ) Please visit Monochrome Weekly for other images of our world as seen in black, white and subtle shades of gray.

Brazilian Jeans Win for Best Tampa Mural

OK, you guessed it, it was my contest and I chose the winner, of which there was only one entry. Brazilian Jeans from Feranda. It was a tough decision but, in the end, she, I mean this mural, won. It was the graphic design. Use of color and crisp photography. Typography. Use of exterior mural materials. All of these individual elements contributed mightily to my awarding this street mural, hidden as it is on a west-facing wall on Platt Street, as the newly-crowned winner. Ever since this company was uprooted from Hyde Park Village I wondered where they had moved. The owner is super nice. Even though I personally cannot wear their clothing, it doesn't mean I can't appreciate its creative use of fabrics, its rich style and good fashion taste - you know my wife isn't buying even one word of this. I'm sure you would agree that we should be celebrating the culture, food and music of our South American neighbor. Come on, isn't this the country that brought us the "Girl from Ipanema" and the movie "Blame it on Rio"?) Every evening as HRH Porter, the Peke, gets walked, he would insist on passing the windows of Feranda Jeans, just to see if any cute, fluffy pocket poodles (his favs!) had been carried inside by their frou-frou owners looking to wear a bit of Brazil on the streets of Tampa. He had missed the store tremendously. (And doesn't know I've found it.)

Teddy loved to celebrate the 4th and because of him we have a lot more to celebrate about. Happy 4th of July America!

I really enjoy searching out colorful, handpainted murals that seem to adorn every hidden place, wall and garden in Tampa. This one is entertaining picnickers today at Ballast Point. Lt. Colonel Theodore Roosevelt is best known in Tampa and in American history for having recruited a group of volunteers to travel here with their horses in 1898 to join in the war with Spain. The group, the Rough Riders, and many other illustrious men and women from around the world, found a hot, dusty, sand spur welcome at the end of Henry Bradley Plant's railroad line. Passing within feet of our house on their way by train car to Port Tampa, and their embarkation to Cuba, Roosevelt and his men would gain fame that they never dreamt of. Well, actually, the terribly ambitious young colonel very likely did dream big. Very big. His two terms in the White House introduced a new foreign policy and brought conservation to the nation's consciousness. He made land and environmental changes for which we should be forever grateful. Yes, we won the war with Spain, and gained territories and land, and an image of power and prestige on the world stage, but the land that President Roosevelt acquired to create many of our national parks, saved some of the most important and awe inspiring natural resources in our country and in the world - in total 230 million acres.

Thank you sir for making our 4th of July picnics so much better. Without you we'd be staring at the backyard year-round. Tampa loves Teddy Roosevelt like a native son, but we are extremely proud to share his lasting impact and legacy with the citizens of the entire United States. This is definitely Teddy Roosevelt's kind of American celebration. Happy 4th of July.

SkyWatch FRIDAY

After the heavy rains and flooding we have had in the Tampa Bay area over the past couple of days, I am actually surprised to see it dry. Except for the darkening and threatening clouds overhead, and black in some places, we have not seen a drop today...yet. This scene is of the small prams and rowboats tied to the dock at the boat ramp. They are left here and only used by the sailors to get to and from their boats that are tied up in the basin. At the moment the water is calm and the boats are playing the lonely game of bobbing along at the dock until an owner decides to going out and sail. Before this 4th of July weekend is over I'm sure the sails on several of these boats will fill with wind. Do visit Skywatch Friday to see the beauty and wonders of the world's most magnificent skies.

Transformers world-over beware: Metal football monsters are ready to attack and block with a vengeance

Dominigue Martinez, born in France and raised in New York, is the driving force behind Rustic Steel Creations. The operation, begun in 2003, is inside (and outside) a 7,000 sq. ft. space that sits smack in the heart of Tampa's Channel District. Sometimes called the dragon guy because of the huge, incredible creature that stands guard out front of the studio on 12th Street, Martinez and his team of creative and talented metal artisans take on every challenge that's thrown at them by the art gallery crowd as well as the builder, architect and homeowner who has big, outlandish ideas for projects formed in metal. I posted a shot of the very tall and entertaining dragon on April 12th, Tampa's Channel District is filled with unexpected surprises. It really draws visitors to the otherwise quiet street. Rustic Steel is filled with positive energy and enthusiasm. I was warmly welcomed into their world and every member of the team, highly-skilled artisans all, exudes a confidence and genuine pride in their combined talents and abilities. A tour of the showroom and studio workshop reveal the wide range of client requests and projects in various stages of completion. Finely crafted railings, by the dozens, were being worked on as I walked through. Machinery and work benches were filled with works in progress and the entire shop area is filled, floor to ceiling, with metalworking machinery for cutting, drilling, welding and final fabrication and finishing. The space is a wild and eclectic collection of projects past and present, utilitarian objects and almost indescribable and unique metal artwork on the walls, hanging from the ceiling and just lounging around. The football player is just one oversize example of the fascinating steel and wrought iron creations they can bring to life. Found objects of every kind and description are reused and recycled into hard-to-believe artwork. Their philosophy, taken from their website, reads, "We believe in making something out of nothing, in turning trash into treasure. Whether we're forging cold steel into decorative art, or transforming found objects into real treasures, we return to this metaphor again and again in our endeavors." If you study football guy, the use of a shiny chrome radiator grill is obvious, but all of the other bits and pieces are harder to identify. A complete inventory of his many parts and their origin would be difficult (by this lay person) but like a scavenger hunt, the closer examination and discovery would sure be fun. Tampa is not the only city that boasts such great talent but we should be thrilled that Rustic Steel Creations is a viable business, perfectly combining our desire for sturdy steel and iron elements in our homes and offices, and our basic and innate human need for right-brain and creative stimulation in our lives. Football guy would like to offer his opinion. He says he is utilitarian. (Who's going to step up and argue with him?)

Empty

There is something sad, lonely and gray about an empty restaurant. Especially one with a popular bar, music and a big outdoor, covered patio area. This place is usually packed and crowded with party-goers enjoying its close proximity to the St. Pete Times Forum and its Lightning hockey games and year-round concerts. (Cirque du Soleil - Saltimbanco is performing there right now.) Catching this place so empty means one of two things: you've either arrived way too early or you should have left long before now. Click here to view all of the EMPTY CDP July Theme Day participants