Florida

Strip Club Owner Gets Something Off His Chest

If you take the southbound State Road 207 exit on Interstate 95 near St. Augustine, Florida, you'll see Café Erotica, a decrepit rural strip club. The café, which reportedly shut down in September, has been engaged in a bitter fight with St. Johns County code enforcement supervisor James Acosta. I know this not because I keep abreast of the club's activities, but because you can't miss the huge 10- by 40-foot sign it recently erected. Whenever we drive past this sign, my kids laugh like ... (read more)

2005/11/16

In a story that will not become an inspirational ESPN movie starring Gene Hackman, a Florida high school has dropped its football program midseason after losing its first six games by a combined score of 299-0. The Doral Academy Firebirds, who returned 13 starters from last year's 0-11 team, still had the toughest part of the schedule to come. During the first six games of this season, they lost 29 out of 45 players with season-ending injuries to their pride. ... (read more)

2005/10/19

A Target on My Back

I was publicly humiliated at the local Target store this afternoon by one of the employees, a young woman who yelled at my children from a distance of 25 feet for being improperly respectful of Spongebob Squarepants decorative microbead pillows. Unbeknownest to me, Target Team Member Emily had stalked us all the way from the toy section to housewares, enraged when we haphazardly reshelved Parasol Kids foam chairs. If you're ever in Target and your demand for the manager is met by an employee's ... (read more)

2005/10/15

Tropical Storm Rita Heads to Keys

Tropical Storm Rita, likely to become a category 1 or category 2 hurricane by the time it reaches Key West tomorrow, is projected to move into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will find plenty of hot water to build strength. Meteorological alarmist Jeff Masters offers this advice: The entire stretch of coast from 500 miles south of Brownsville, Texas to Mobile, Alabama is at risk -- no one can say with any confidence where Rita will hit this far in advance. Texas and Louisiana are at the highest ... (read more)

2005/09/19

Keep an Eye out for Hurricane Philippe

There's a new tropical depression forming in the Caribbean at latitude 13.0 north, longitude 55.0 west. Tropical Depression 17 has the potential to become Hurricane Philippe around the time it nears the islands of the Lesser Antilles on Monday, according to Jeff Masters: TD 17 is here, and will likely be the first major hurricane of September. This storm will be with us for the next two weeks, since it is moving slowly and has a large area of ocean ahead of it. The storm is in a an environment ... (read more)

2005/09/17

Ophelia has moved away from Florida and taken all of our storm clouds, leaving behind a picture-perfect Saturday in Jacksonville. I played softball this morning, pulling muscles in my back I didn't even know I had. The storm's latest projected track appears to foretell a Tuesday landfall in North Carolina as a category 2 hurricane, according to Jeff Masters: As usual, all this is subject to a high degree of uncertainty. South Carolina is still at high risk, and Georgia still at some risk. ... (read more)

2005/09/10

Tropical Storm Ophelia is hanging out off Florida's east coast, awaiting further orders from God. Yesterday's projected path was due west across Florida into the Gulf of Mexico. Today it's predicted to wiggle towards South Carolina, but Jeff Masters believes it will head northeast for a few days, do-se-do, alaman right, and come back to the U.S.: After heading east for a few days, all the models except the GFS agree that Ophelia will eventually loop back and hit the U.S. as a hurricane, perhaps ... (read more)

2005/09/08

I awoke this morning to 40 mph winds from an outer band of Tropical Storm Ophelia, which Jeff Masters of Weather Underground expects to become stronger: TD 16 gathered enough strength last night to be given a name -- Ophelia. Ophelia will be a name we will hear a lot of over the coming week. She is going to cause plenty of trouble, and will be moving slowly enough that we'll still be talking about her a week from now. ... With so much time over warm water, and the shear likely to decrease once ... (read more)

2005/09/07

The Road Trip blog in St. Augustine reports that several gas stations in the area ran out of fuel this weekend: ... both gas stations in my neighborhood were out of fuel today. One (a Chevron affiliate) was completely out and another (a BP outlet) was out of regular. In fact, half the gas stations between here and Jacksonville on US 1 were dry Saturday night. I haven't seen this myself, paying around $3 per gallon when I fueled up on Thursday. The Florida Times-Union reports current prices in ... (read more)

2005/09/05

Katrina.Com Owner Responds to Storm

A web designer whose personal site has been published for years at katrina.com has turned it into a Hurricane Katrina relief site in response to the huge traffic from victims, their loved ones, and others seeking information on the disaster. Katrina Blankenship told ComputerWorld that the site has received 400,000 hits the past week, a twenty-fold increase on the normal monthly traffic. ... it wasn't until Monday morning -- when she saw her e-mail in-box full of messages -- that Blankenship ... (read more)

2005/09/05

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