Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Life in Florida, continued

A few cool and a few crazy things to do & see in Florida. I’ll let you decide which is which.

  • The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are an atrociously inept franchise, and they play in a stinking dome named after an even stinkier brand of orange juice… but the Tribe make it down to Tropicana Field at least once a year.
  • Sarasota is a stuffy, rich white geezer kind of town, but it does offer a plethora of cultural opportunities, including an opera company, a museum established by a circus maven, and the Burns Court Cinema, a gentrified warehouse that’s a surprisingly excellent venue for independent and foreign films. Since I discovered it accidentally a few months ago, I’ve seen a French movie (La Môme), an Italian movie (Nuovomondo), and a Swiss movie (Vitus) there. Shades of the Cleveland Film Festival!
  • Theme parks are a dime a dozen, especially in Orlando. For an unusual experience, though, you’d be hard-pressed to top this living biblical theme park and museum, located just minutes from DisneyWorld and Universal Studios.
  • Smack dab in the middle of the Everglades, Clyde Butcher’s Big Cypress Gallery showcases his phenomenal photography. Butcher himself is around the gallery a lot of the time, and he sometimes leads lucky visitors on guided tours of "his backyard."
More to come when I actually get a life and am able to indulge in a little bit of R&R.

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