History is revived in Tampa

G Travel
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Rick Steves looks
at what’s new in
Italy and Spain
this year, G4
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URUGUAY
GETTING IN THE GROOVE IN
ONTEVIDEO
Discovering
Uruguay’s capital
city through its live
music scene.
SOUNDS OF
URUGUAY
IN AUSTIN
What: Uruguayan showcase
at South by Southwest
When: March 18
Where: Speakeasy, 412
Congress Ave.
More information: sxsw.
com and facebook.com/
soundsfromuruguay. If
you have a SXSW badge or
wristband, that’s great. If
not, that’s usually fine, too.
Often, these shows are not
too packed and tickets are
available at the door. Check
with the venue before the
show and arrive early.
ABOUT THE
SHOWCASED
ARTISTS
Hip-hop fusion group
Santullo: santullo.com.uy
Pop-rock band Boomerang:
boomerang.com.uy
Rap group AFC: afc.com.uy
Rock/ska/punk band
Once Tiros: oncetiros.com.uy
Folk-pop fusion Fede Graña
& Los Prolijos: losprolijos.com
Vintage pop-rock fusion
singer Max Capote:
maxcapote.com
ONLINE
Listen to a Spotify playlist of
these artists on our Cultura
en Austin blog: cultura.blog.
austin360.com
By Nancy Flores
nflores@statesman.com
As I strolled past crumbling
colonial buildings in
Montevideo’s Old City, I came
upon street musicians playing
tango. Passersby tucked
thermoses with hot water
under their arms and held
calabash gourds filled with
caffeine-rich yerba mate tea.
Each sip they took from the
stainless steel straws looked
ceremonial, and I realized
I had arrived at someplace
special.
Tucked between Brazil
and Argentina, it’s easy
for travelers to skip over
Uruguay, one of the smallest
countries in South America.
Globetrotters seeking an offthe-beaten path destination,
though, are being lured by the
deceptively cosmopolitan city
of Montevideo.
My husband and I grew
curious about traveling
to Uruguay years ago,
intrigued as we noticed more
Uruguayan films making their
way into U.S. film festivals.
Then, Uruguay brought a
delegation of musicians
to perform at South by
Southwest, and I took it as a
sign.
Despite its size, Uruguay
produces a staggering amount
of innovative music, from
tango fusions to the cool,
subtropical music of the band
Campo.
ABOVE:
Tango
musicians
perform on
Montevideo
streets.
RIGHT:
Residents of
Montevideo
enjoy drinking
the caffeineinfused yerba
mate tea out
of calabash
gourds.
NANCY FLORES
PHOTOS /
AMERICANSTATESMAN
Uruguay continued on G2
Montevideo’s past and present blend in the modern day Uruguayan capital. JEREMY SCHWARTZ / AMERICAN-STATESMAN
FLORIDA
TEXAS
History is revived in Tampa March blooms with
events around state
Abandoned buildings
have new life as bars,
restaurants and hotels.
From oysters to
rattlesnakes, there’s
something for all.
By Helen Anne Travis
Special to the American-Statesman
A few years ago, this strip
of riverfront was an abandoned, weed-clogged marsh
that few Tampanians had any
reason to visit. Today, wellheeled guests sip craft beers
while waiting to be seated at a
restaurant named by OpenTable as one of the top 100 in
America.
Ulele Native-Inspired Food
and Spirits, a new seafood
restaurant located in a former abandoned pump station
along the Hillsborough River, is the latest in a series of
renovation projects that have
opened formerly vacant strips
of Tampa to residents and
travelers alike.
Today, you can spend an entire weekend eating, drinking and cavorting in historic
By Mauri Elbel
Special to the
American-Statesman
The marquee of the Tampa Theatre glitters like it did when the venue
first opened in 1926. CONTRIBUTED BY HELEN ANNE TRAVIS
Tampa buildings where Teddy
Roosevelt once slept and Babe
Ruth hit his longest home run.
Most of the structures have
danced with demolition or
had been abandoned for years
before being reincarnated as
restaurants, bars and hotels.
“It’s exciting because there
have been plans to do things
with these buildings for a long
time — and now they’re actually coming to fruition,” said
Rodney Kite-Powell, curator
of history at the Tampa Bay
History Center.
Tampa continued on G3
Also inside
» Tampa’s brew scene excels
with local supplies, G3
From floral festivals and
rattlesnake roundups to St.
Patrick’s Day and Independence Day celebrations,
spring in the Lone Star State
is chock-full of Texas-style
fun.
Granbury
Feb. 28-March 2: At March
2 Texas, the Texas Independence Day Celebration of
North Texas at Granbury, expect everything from a parade
and live music to exhibits and
professional bull riding put
on to celebrate and preserve
the rich heritage of Texas.
More at march2texas.com.
Gruene Historic District is
throwing its annual Texas
Independence Day Celebration
on March 2. CONTRIBUTED
Dallas
Feb. 28-April 12: The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens presents Dallas
Blooms: Deep in the Hearts of
Texans, the largest floral festival in the southwest.
March continued on G2
Page 3 CMYK
AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN
| SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015
G3
FLORIDA
Tampa’s beer trail: 6 stops highlighted
Local brews
embrace area’s
culture, history.
By Helen Anne Travis
Special to the AmericanStatesman
Fueled by a crop of
scrappy and talented
local brewers, the Tampa
Bay area shot to the top
of the beer charts in 2014.
It was crowned the No. 2
beer town by USA Today
and No. 5 “Best Beer
City” by Livability.com.
Using local flavors
like citrus, guava and
even Cuban coffee, Tampa’s brewers are crafting beers that embrace
the area’s culture, history and famous residents.
And they’re winning prizes in the process.
Tampa’s Cigar City
Brewing, the granddaddy
of the region’s growing
beer scene, is repeatedly ranked one of the best
breweries in the world by
ratebeer.com, a website
for ale aficionados.
Put on your drinking shoes and get ready
for a day exploring these
top Tampa breweries,
all within a few miles of
downtown.
Cigar City Brewing
This is the brewery
that put Tampa on the
beer map. Since opening
in 2009, Cigar City has
used local ingredients to
craft delicious beers that
tell the stories behind
the city’s history and culture. The Tocobaga Red
Ale gets its name from
the Native American tribe
that lived in Tampa before the Spanish arrived.
The Jai Alai IPA, its most
popular brew, is named
after a game that originated in Spain and became
popular in Tampa in
the 1960s and ’70s. (For
those not in the know,
Jai Alai, pronounced hili, is kind of like wall ball
on steroids, with max
ball speeds reaching
more than 180 miles per
hour.) The Cigar City tasting room has about two
dozen taps serving mostly house beers and a few
guest brews. In a nod to
Tampa’s status as the Cigar Capital of the World
in the early 1900s, you’ll
find a cigar roller twisting fresh stogies in the
tasting room most afternoons and evenings.
Southern Brewing
and Winemaking
One of the smallest
breweries in Tampa,
Southern Brewing and
Winemaking has about
two dozen taps pouring
craft beers, ciders and
meads. The vibe here is
delightfully laid back.
You can cozy up to the
bar or take your brew into the large backyard,
complete with a fire pit,
cornhole boards and a giant Connect Four game.
The brewery also doubles
as a homebrewer’s shop,
where locals load up on
yeast, hops and carboys.
Ulele Spring Brewery
The Ulele Spring Brewery at Ulele Native-Inspired Food and Spir-
THE BEST OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
Forget the theme parks. Tampa is the perfect
home base for exploring the best of Central
Florida, where quirkiness and nature reign
supreme. Swim with manatees, dance with
mermaids and hunt for ghosts at these roadside
attractions, all within a two-hour drive from
Tampa.
WEEKI WACHEE SPRINGS
STATE PARK
About an hour north of Tampa sits one of
Florida’s best roadside attractions, Weeki
Wachee Springs State Park. Here, in an
underwater theater carved from a freshwater
spring, women wearing seashell bras and
fishtails perform“The Little Mermaid”while
breathing through hoses and flapping their
webbed legs against the current. In the 1960s,
being a mermaid was a highly coveted career.
Girls came from as far as Tokyo to try their hand.
The park has enamored everyone from Elvis to
Jimmy Buffet. In 2004, Paris Hilton and Nicole
Richie taped a segment at Weeki Wachee for
their reality show,“The Simple Life.” Today, the
park maintains much of its Old Florida appeal.
Also included in your entry fee is admission to
Buccaneer Bay, a freshwater water park.
CRYSTAL RIVER
In Citrus County’s Crystal River, about 80 miles
north of Tampa, you can legally swim with
manatees. The federal government allows
for“passive observation”of manatees in the
water. This means you can pet and interact
with the endangered mammals in their natural
environment, provided they approach you first.
Every winter, hundreds of manatees gather in
the county’s springs to wait out the cold in the
72-degree water. If you stay still long enough,
you’ll find yourself face-to-face with these
3,000-pound vegetarians. Some will even go as
far as rolling over to let well-behaved swimmers
rub their bellies. The regulations around manatee
interaction are strict. Undercover wildlife agents
patrol the area and are quick to write up anyone
who doesn’t follow the rules. It’s best to find a
local guide who will travel with you into the water
— not sit on the boat and watch — and guide
you through the interaction. When it comes to
swimming with endangered animals in their
natural environment, rules are a good thing.
CASSADAGA
About two hours inland from Tampa is the
century-old Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp, a
community of mediums, spirit readers and
clairvoyants. Nicknamed the Psychic Capital of
the World, this is where you come to connect
with deceased loved ones, get a Tarot reading
or have your dreams analyzed. The town is
delightfully hokey. But the people who make their
living charging up to $60 for a 45-minute reading
take their work seriously. The Cassadaga Hotel,
the only hotel in Cassadaga, proudly reports on
its website that it’s haunted. Don’t worry: The
hotel assures that only friendly spirits roam the
grounds. Keep an eye out for mysterious light
orbs in the hallways and spirits roaming the
veranda. Tucked away from the road, surrounded
by oaks and pine trees, you wouldn’t find
Cassadaga unless you were looking for it, which
might be just how the spirits intended.
perfect place to strike up
a game of Cards Against
Humanity with strangers while Marvin Gaye’s
“Sexual Healing” plays
in the background. The
brewery is in the process of moving its tasting room to a larger space
with two patios for outdoor seating.
New World Brewery
Once an abandoned pump station, Ulele Native-Inspired Food and Spirits now serves
seafood and homebrews. CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS BY HELEN ANNE TRAVIS
its uses local honey and
strawberries to make
beers that pair nicely
with Ulele’s signature octopus carpaccio and alligator hush puppies. After brewing, the spent
grain is sent as food for
the cows at the ranch
where Ulele gets its beef.
The brewery has a beer
garden that offers excellent sunset views over the
Hillsborough River.
Airport ales
Ulele Native-Inspired Food and Spirits is the latest in a
series of renovation projects that have opened formerly
vacant strips of Tampa to residents and travelers alike.
Coppertail Brewing
Located on the fringe
of Ybor City, Tampa’s entertainment district and
historic center, Coppertail Brewing is a relatively new player in the bay
area’s brew scene. Taking its name from a sea
monster that supposed-
This 20-year-old Tampa institution stopped
making its own beer a
decade ago, but the bar
remains fiercely dedicated to promoting the
work of local brewers.
It’s a great spot to sample some of the best of
the bay area’s beer makers, including St. Petersburg’s Green Bench and
Bradenton’s Motorworks
Brewing. New World
Brewery’s beer garden also doubles as an intimate
concert venue. Catch a
performance by some
of Central Florida’s best
up-and-coming bands,
as well as bigger indie
names like Kishi Bashi
and My Morning Jacket.
ly lurks in the waters off
Tampa, Coppertail uses local ingredients like
kumquat and grapefruit
to craft its Free Dive IPA
and the aptly named 9.0
ABV Unholy Trippel. The
tasting room is simple
but comfortable. Oldies
blast from the radio; families relax over a table of
empty snifters; and locals who biked in from
the surrounding neighborhoods cool off with
a pepper saison. It’s the
End your beer tour at
the Cigar City Brewing
outpost in Terminal C of
Tampa International Airport. This terminal just
happens to host Southwest, which flies directly
between Tampa and Austin. Order the Tony Jannus, a bright, citrusy pale
ale brewed on site and
named after the world’s
first commercial pilot
whose plane landed in
Tampa on Jan. 1, 1914.
Tampa
continued from G1
Downtown gems
About a mile from Ulele, travelers roll their
suitcases over the marble floors where some of
the area’s most important civil rights trials were
held and the city’s former mafia bosses took
their last steps as free
men.
The swanky Le Meridien hotel opened last year
in the city’s century-old
federal courthouse. Before Le Meridien, the
building sat empty for
about a decade, silent except for the hum of the
air conditioners that kept
the mold at bay.
Around the corner, an
investment made by the
city more than 30 years
ago saved another historic building from the
wrecking ball.
When the Tampa Theatre opened in 1926, it
was designed to transport moviegoers to another world — even when
there was nothing on the
screen. Inside, the theater looks like a Mediterranean courtyard.
Statues and columns
flank the stage; taxidermy doves and peacocks
perch on fairytale terraces. The ceiling is studded
with 99 tiny twinkling
bulbs.
It was paradise until the 1960s, when the
neighborhood went to
pot and the theater was
doomed for demolition
until the city swooped in
and bought the building.
Today, the theater is
one of the most active
of its kind, opening its
doors more than 600
times a year for indie film
screenings, concerts and
the city’s local Gasparilla Independent Film Festival.
Before each filming,
a Mighty Wurlitzer rises
from the stage floor for a
15-minute live show.
A hotel like no other
The jewels in Tampa’s
historic-building crown
are the sparkling minarets of the former Tampa Bay Hotel. Built in 1891
by railroad magnate Henry B. Plant, the opulent
downtown hotel hosted
everyone from Babe Ruth
— who hit his longest
home run on the hotel’s
grounds — to bandmaster
John Philip Sousa.
At its heyday, the ho-
The jewels in Tampa’s historic building crown are the sparkling minarets of the former
Tampa Bay Hotel. Built in 1891, the opulent downtown hotel hosted everyone from Babe
Ruth to John Philip Sousa to the Queen of England.
Cigar store Indians guard the streets of Tampa’s Ybor City,
once the cigar capital of the world. CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS BY
HELEN ANNE TRAVIS
tel’s private golf course,
2,000-seat performance
hall and heated indoor
swimming pool offered
a luxury unparalleled in
the area. Even the Queen
of England came by to
check it out.
But when Plant died in
1899, his family showed
little interest in running
the grand hotel. Then,
the Great Depression hit.
The building sat vacant
for a short time before reopening as the University of Tampa. The on-site
Henry B. Plant Museum
celebrates the school’s
history of hospitality.
Cigar factories
turned indie bars
The whole “repurpose
a historic building into something new” is old
news in Ybor City, just
two miles east of downtown.
From the 1880s to the
mid-1920s, the cigar industry was the foundation of Tampa’s economy.
More than 400 million
cigars were produced
in Ybor annually, earning Tampa the nickname
the “Cigar Capital of the
World.”
Today, the factories
and stores that served the
workers are home to indie-music venues, tattoo
parlors and high-end Italian restaurants.
The James Joyce Irish
Pub & Eatery dishes out
shepherd’s pie and Guinness in the former shell
of the Castellano & Pizzo
grocery store, one of the
first Italian markets in
Tampa. It opened in 1892
to serve the Italians who
had traded backbreaking
work in Louisiana’s sugarcane fields for jobs in
Ybor’s budding cigar industry.
Around the corner, Cigar City Cider and Mead
opened last year in one of
the city’s most famed historic buildings. That is, if
you believe the rumors.
Teddy Roosevelt
brought his Rough Riders
to Tampa in the spring
of 1898 to await orders to
ship to Cuba. That much
is true. But whether Teddy and his buddies drank
beer in a tavern that once
stood here, as lore would
have it, is debatable.
Even more unlikely
is the local tale that one
Rough Rider fired his gun
in the air and accidentally killed a woman — uhm
“working” — on the second floor, making her the
first casualty of the Spanish-American War.
Tampa historians
shoot this story down
faster than you can say,
“I’ll have another round
of mead.”
But hey, a city can
dream.
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