In Stunning Turnabout, Man Visits Florida, Learns Things

Plus dogs & books

Last week’s comments were outstanding, so much so that we’ve got two subscribers earning ‘comment of the week’….

What can I say, it pays to suck up to me! Seriously though, thanks Kelley Greene and Jenna Vandenberg 👊🏼.

I recommended this book about a year ago, but most of you weren’t with me quite yet. Shout out to Matt Cyr and Bill Southern as I know you read that post. You’ll see why I am recommending it again later in this piece.

Yes, Darla is winking at you.

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🌴 In Stunning Turnabout, Man Visits Florida, Learns Things

Last week my family and I visited the Tampa Bay area over the Thanksgiving holiday. If you’ve been reading my ramblings for any length of time, you know that we enjoy traveling, and I enjoy writing about it. Heading into this trip however, I had a feeling that coming up with something interesting might be a challenge.

Because when I think of Florida, two things come to mind:

Old people…

And dumb people…

If you don’t know the “Florida Man” game, it goes like this: Google “Florida Man” + your birth day, then see what pops up. Here’s the first thing that popped up when I did it with mine…

As so often happens in my life (just ask my wife), I was wrong. When viewed through the lens of a simple sightseeing trip, our visit was anything but extraordinary. However, a few serendipitous sightings really intrigued me. And the funny thing is, I didn’t put it all together until the end of the trip. And it has to do with that book I recommended above.

You see, the book is about the first Spanish explorers who landed in Florida (basically, the first non-Native Americans to set foot there). And the word ‘landed’ is generous, as they were actually marooned. Initially heading west from the Caribeean, they were en route to Mexico when strong Gulf winds pushed them north and east. They thought they had landed north of their intended landing spot in Mexico, but still in Mexico. In reality, they had landed in what is now Tampa Bay.

On the first day of our visit we took a golf cart tour around the area to get the lay of the land. One of the first things we learned was that the original name for this area wasn’t Tampa. Native Americans referred to it as ‘Tanpa’, which, depending on interpretation, meant “sticks of fire,” “place to gather sticks,” or “wood place.” All of this referencing the large volume of lightning strikes in the area. The Tampa area has the most lightning of any place in the US.

Hence the name of the hockey team:

Tampa Bay Lightning. Oddly, I couldn’t find a graphic with the word Lighnting actually in it.

Later in the tour we visited the Ybor City section of Tampa. This is a brick-paved time capsule, where Cuban cigars, strong coffee, and free-range chickens all coexist. It was built in the 1880s by cigar mogul Vicente Martínez-Ybor and quickly turned into a rowdy, multicultural mash-up of Cuban, Spanish, Italian, German, and Jewish immigrants. The Cuban and Spanish working in the cigar factory, and the others rounding out the ancillary businesses that supported the factory.

Today it’s part history, part nightlife, and part time capsule.

Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders rolled through here in 1898, using Tampa as their staging ground before shipping out to fight in the Spanish-American War.

The amount of signs like this in the area was intoxicating. If you are new to SilentPunt you should know, I have an insatiable appetite for historical markers.

We also learned that the Cuban sandwich was founded here. The ingredients in the Cuban represented the ethnic diversity of the city:

• Cuban bread: The Spanish

• Pork & Ham: Cubans / Spanish

• Salami: The Italians (duh)

• Swiss Cheese: German Jews.

• Dill Pickles: Jews & Eastern Europeans.

• Yellow mustard: The Americans (leave it to us to be the most boring part).

If you’re a Cuban sandwich aficionado, the inclusion of salami may be a surprise. Because, if you order the sandwich in Miami (where most folks believe the Cuban originated), it will not come with salami. Apparently my paisans weren’t as plentiful in 19th century Miami as they were in Tampa.

🥪 🥪 🥪 🥪 🥪 🥪 🥪 🥪 🥪 🥪 🥪 🥪

We did a bunch of other fun stuff while we were there as well:

We fed giraffes.

How it started…

How it ended (pre & post the giraffe licking my face)….

Ate at some super cool restaurants. Of which, I only took one picture:

If you read this as ‘wheat fart’ then you’d fit in nicely with our family.

Saw some interesting people. Like this man, eating lunch with his pet parakeet:

…and petting it like a dog…

…and kissing it like a flippin’ weirdo…

I’ll spare you the picture of the mess the bird made beneath them 🤮

Took a boat ride and walked on the beach:

And lastly, we topped off our trip by attending a Tampa Bay Buccaneers game. The atmosphere at the game was electric, and everything about the fan experience was first-class. We were really impressed by the entire day.

One thing I noticed over-and-over was the use of the word ‘Krewe.’ It seemed like the Bucs were using it in the same way you would use the word ‘crew,’ as in a group of fans.

When I took the photo above I wasn’t looking at the Krewe word, so here is a zoomed version….

That is basically the only photo I have of it, because at the time I just chalked it up as an oddity. But it was everywhere.

It wasn’t until after we returned from our trip that I realized the significance of the spelling of that word. And wouldn’t you know, it was because of a picture of a historical marker I took earlier in the trip…

In short, Tampa stole the idea of a ‘krewe’ from New Orleans. During Mardi Gras (which started in the mid 1800s) different krewes from around the city would march in parades. New Orleans just made up that word as a stylized spelling for the word crew.

Tampa co-opted the word to go along with its Mardi-Gras-style pirate parade, put on by Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla, featuring pirates “invading” the city by ship and then rolling a massive parade into downtown. Locals refer to this parade as simply Gasparilla.

Lots of organizations in the Tampa area use the word krewe to describe their group. The two Krewes above (the Knights of Sant Yago and the Gasparillas) are just two of many. The Krewe of the Knights of Columbus and the Krewe of Rough Riders are two famous ones. But there are also obscure ones like the Krewe of the Northside Notorious Ninjas, and literally hundreds more in the area.

Currently, this is the most famous member of one of their krewes…

I came away with a newfound respect not only for Tampa, but for Florida in general. While there is not a European level of deepness to their history, the same can be said of most places in America. But it was much more of a melting pot than what I was thinking. Both historically, and today.

Which is the whole point of travel, I think. The more you understand different people and places, the more you understand our commonalities.

In coaching, team building is paramount. You’re bringing together people from vastly different backgrounds and asking them to function as one. And that always started with getting to know each other.

Because the more you know someone, the harder it is to dislike them. I don’t know what the answer is to some of the discontent in our country right now. But I know generalizations and stereotypes don’t help.

So, I’d encourage you to work towards getting out of whatever silo you are currently in. And you don’t have to hop on a plane to do so. It could be as simple as changing your algorithm:

However you consume information, if you aren’t happy with what you are getting, YOU have the power to change it. Don’t like what you are seeing on Facebook or Instagram? Go into the search bar and type in what you want to see. See something you like? Heart it. Share it. Repeat.

As the great Denzel said in The Equalizer,

Recently made a change in your world? Share it with us in the comments!