The Burbs

There are three cities in "The Tri-City Area"; Clearwater, St. Petersburg (St. Pete) and Tampa. There are many little towns scattered around them all.

In Pinellas, the various towns include Largo, Seminole, Pinellas Park, Safety Harbor, and Belleair. These 'sleeper' communities are places to come home to. I happen to live in one, but have always worked in one of the major cities (with few exceptions).

None of the cities has much of an identity. Largo and Seminole are supposedly more middle to upper-middle class, Safety Harbor and Belleair are seen as more upper-class, and Pinellas Park is viewed as a lower-class community (though there are exceptions, of course).

Most of the towns' governments are pleasantly quiet and leave their citizens alone for the most part (excepting taxes). And most citizens wouldn't be able to name a single mayor or councilman unless they lived next door.

There was a brief scandal about a year ago when the exceedingly unattractive city leaders of Seminole posed nude for a calendar (thanks to the idea they got from a movie that had just come out about elderly women posing nude for a calendar). It died rather horribly (the calendars weren't exactly a hot commodity), and I know one of the men who posed for it so I can tell you that it died for a good reason. The general consensus (among anyone who cared) was that it was just downright tacky and somewhat silly. Here's a picture of good ole Jimmy Johnson, the head of the Seminole Chamber. Now, would you want to see him butt naked? I don't think so.

The other cities' leaders make money the good old-fashioned way: raising taxes and setting the police out on the streetcorners to ticket the citizens for minor infractions.

In Largo this year, they temporarily took a large intersection and forbid anyone turning on red on one (and one only) of the four corners. When people did it from years of habit (in Florida you can turn on red unless otherwise posted) they got ticketed. Finally the police decided to move the forbidden corner to another corner of the intersection and the original corner was freed up again... So that they could start writing a new batch of tickets, I suppose. Luckily, I never got one of those tickets. I've often wondered if the people who got the original tickets could argue against it, since the police were obviously playing musical chairs with that intersection and couldn't seem to make up their minds.

But you'll never find The Burbs in a riot. For the most part, you'll never hear of their scandalous mayor (unless he's fool enough to pose naked). You'll never read of how a city councilman was caught in a hotel room snorting cocaine with an expensive hooker. Disappointing? Perhaps, but that's why we live in The Burbs.