Nibbles and Bytes

O’Brien’s Adds Thursday As Second Karaoke Night

Regular readers of these pages know that I really like the food, the drink prices and the staff at O’Brien’s Irish Pub & Grill in the Wesley Chapel Village Market.

About the only thing I didn’t like about O’Brien’s was the fact that management reduced the number of karaoke nights from two to one by keeping it on Wed. nights but doing away with it on Thur. nights.

Well, thanks to popular demand, karaoke with my buddy Gary Carmichael of Heart & Soul Karaoke is back at O’Brien’s on Thur. nights, too, usually starting no later than 8 p.m.

For more info, call 973-9988 or visit ObriensWesleyChapel.com.

WCCC Honors WCNT-tv & Wesley Chapel Nissan’s Troy Stevenson!

I love a good surprise as much as the next guy, but I was absolutely stunned by the turn of events when I attended the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce (WCCC) annual meeting, which was held Dec. 6 at Pasco Hernando State College (PHSC)’s Porter Campus at Wiregrass Ranch, and which was the program for the Chamber’s monthly business breakfast.

Outgoing Board chair Tracy Clouser of Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel thanked this year’s deserving “Volunteer of the Year” and Ambassador Troy Stevenson of Wesley Chapel Nissan, who not only actively participates in every Chamber and Wesley Chapel Rotary Club event, but also supports the community with his awesome Acme Outdoor Movies truck.

But then, between the introduction of the Chamber’s ambassadors (below) and new Board chair Jennifer Cofini of the Parks Auto Group and her Board of Directors for the 2017 Fiscal Year, Clouser made an announcement I truly was not expecting — that WCNT-tv, the five-month-old partnership between yours truly and outgoing WCCC Ambassador/new Board member Craig Miller of Full Throttle Intermedia, had won the 2016 Chairman’s Award.

Clouser, the marketing director at Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel (FHWC), has spent quite a bit of money on behalf of our in-the-process-of-being-expanded, state-of-the-art hospital in these pages, and she bought into the project created by myself, Craig and WCCC president and CEO Hope Allen by agreeing for FHWC to be the Studio Sponsor of WCNT-tv for the first 16 episodes of the show, 13 of which have already aired since our launch on June 23.

In other words, I should be giving Tracy and Hope an award, not the other way around. The cheers from the crowd of more than 100 people when the surprise announcement was made was proof positive that we’re doing something right with the show, but neither Craig nor I had any idea or we would’ve prepared speeches, instead of the dumfounded looks and silly muttering we mustered.

For more info about the WCCC, visit WesleyChapelChamber.com or call 994-8534. — GN