Congratulations to owners Cindy and David Cruz and their entire family (photo above) and staff on the opening — finally! — of their Rice-n-Beans Express location at 24726 S.R. 54 in Lutz, a mile or so west of the Tampa Premium Outlets.
Although there are a few tables inside the new location, Rice-n-Beans Express is much more of a take-out place than the Rice-n-Beans Puerto Rico restaurant on Wesley Chapel Blvd., which has a large formal dining area, a full-liquor bar and live entertainment on the weekends.
The great news is that the authentic Puerto Rican cuisine at the Express location is just as delicious as at the WC Blvd. restaurant.
Jannah and I were happy to be invited to the private Friends & Family ribbon cutting event on Nov. 9, which included a great live DJ, free homemade sangria and samples of many of the new restaurant’s many menu items.
Our favorites included the fritters/ empanadas, which include traditional beef (left photo), chicken and even ham & cheese options, as well as a unique spinach, artichoke and cheese version that had its own delicious flavor.
We also loved the rotisserie chickens (photo below) that provide the centerpiece of the new Express location, the Cuban sandwiches and yes, both the red and the black beans and rice.
Since that truly wonderful Grand Opening event, Jannah, photographer Charmaine George and I have sampled quite a few other menu items at Rice-n-Beans Express, including the pernil (roast pork; left) entrée (which comes with your choice of one or two sides), the sweet plantains, the canoa (a plantain “canoe” stuffed with ground beef & shredded cheese), the yellow rice with pigeon peas, the yucca with mojo sauce and perhaps my favorite menu item at the full-service restaurant, the chichårrons (fried pork skin; bottom right photo).
The rotisserie chickens are available in a variety of sizes, from quarter chickens with one or two sides to the “Familia Grande,” which includes two whole chickens, 32 ozs. of rice, 16 ozs. of beans and two additional large sides. There’s also a huge chicken & pork combo meal.
Save room for dessert because the Puerto Rico Desserts case in the Express offers vanilla and Nutella tres leches and three varieties of flan. Decadent!
For more info, call (813) 428-5077 or visit “Rice N Beans” on Facebook and please tell them I sent you! -GN
The North Tampa Bay Chamber (NTBC) stayed busy in November, with its annual Excellence in Business awards gala at Treble Makers on Nov. 17 (which we featured in our Nov 28 Wesley Chapel issue), as well as three ribbon-cutting events that didn’t make it into our print editions.
On Nov. 2, the Wesley Chapel Contract Postal Unit (CPU) on S.R. 54, which has been open for a few months now, celebrated with an NTBC ribbon cutting. Owner Jevon Willians provided free food and beverages for about 40 guests and introduced attendees to the CPU’s many services, all of which are available at regular U.S. Post Office prices. For more information, call (813) 994-7522.
On Nov. 8, the StoreRightSelf Storage facility, located on Crystal Grove Blvd. (near the intersection of U.S. Hwy. 41 and Sunset Lane) in Lutz, introduced attendees to its 749 storage units, most of which are climate-controlled. Store Right also is opening a similar-sized storage facility the second week in December next to the new El Dorado furniture store near the intersection of S.R. 54, Wesley Chapel Blvd. and S.R. 56 in Land O’Lakes. For more info, call (813) 567-8100 or visit StoreRight.com.
And, on Nov. 14, owner Gail Sickler’s Sustain M.E. on S.R. 56 (in the same plaza as Capital Tacos & Touch Nail Spa) officially finalized its re-branding of the store that previously was a location of Lüfka Refillables Zero Waste Store with its own NTBC ribbon-cutting event. The revamped refillables and health & beauty products store features a similar variety of all-natural products as did Lüfka, but with new products that are all locally sourced. For more info, call (8130 812-8219 or visit SustainMotherEarth.com.
Even though he’s previously run for three local offices and been involved in multiple citizen’s groups advocating on behalf of New Tampa, you still may or may not know long-time Hunter’s Green resident Dr. Jim Davison.
Davison, the recently retired emergency room physician whose first run was more than 20 years ago — in the 2002 Republican primary for the District 2 seat on the Hillsborough Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) held by current Commission chair (and Dist. 2 Commissioner) Ken Hagan — is now a candidate for the countywide (also known as “at large)” District 6 County Commission seat, a race that will be decided on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, the same day as the nationwide General Election for U.S. President.
But, there is a lot for the New Tampa resident to accomplish between now and then in order to make it onto that General Election ballot for the seat currently occupied by Comm. Pat Kemp, who can not run for the seat again, due to term limits.
For one thing, he will have to defeat South Tampa resident and U.S. Air Force Reserve staff sergeant Rico Smith (who is the lead field engineer for StemRad, an Israeli-American start-up company that develops and manufactures personal protective equipment against ionizing radiation) in the primary election that will be held on Tuesday, August 20.
As of the date of this story, there also are three Democratic candidates who also will face a closed primary in August, with the winner facing the winner of the Republican primary between Davison and Smith — although other candidates could still qualify to run in either primary between now and July 2024.
The Democratic candidates for Dist. 6 include former countywide Dist. 5 Commissioner Mariella Smith (who served from 2018-22); former citywide Dist. 1 Tampa City Council candidate Sonja Brookins (who lost a runoff against current Dist. 1 commissioner Alan Clendenin earlier this year); and former countywide Dist. 7 candidate Mark Nash.
Although Dr. Davison also lost the 2004 Republican primary for the at-large Dist. 7 County Commission seat won by former Commissioner Mark Sharpe, as well as the 2016 run-off election for New Tampa’s Dist. 7 Tampa City Council seat won (by 65 votes) by Councilman (and fellow New Tampa resident) Luis Viera, he says that he believes his fourth run for public office will prove to be the charm.
“I feel I can win the primary and the general election because I am now able to campaign 24/7 since retiring from medicine,” Davison says. “With my involvement in local politics and multiple county issues, like the (failed) sales tax, I feel that I can project what a majority of the electorate are feeling. I also will have and have committed greater resources to this (election).”
Davison promises that he is a true fiscal conservative who will have New Tampa’s back if he is elected.
“Back in 2002, New Tampa was struggling under rapid growth, just like many other areas of the county are struggling today,” he says. “County government was growing by leaps and bounds. I had seen politicians wrapping themselves in conservative ideals and patriotic symbols, only to see them forget those principles after being elected. New Tampa needed solutions then and it needs them now.”
He says that he also will be the candidate who will work hard to make good on his promises if he is elected. A big part of that, he says, is restoring the public’s trust in their local elected officials.
“Although there has always been a degree of mistrust between government and the people, it has reached new heights,” Davison says. “Covid and the recent sales tax issue are only the latest examples of complete lying and misrepresentation on the part of the county. As a member of the Hillsborough Transportation Planning Organization’s Citizen’s Advisory Committee (TPO CAC), I know the county (currently) has no intention of changing course. I run to not only present valid solutions, but to try and repair people’s distrust of local government by telling the truth and meeting their concerns.”
As For New Tampa…
Although Davison says it will be his responsibility to represent the entire county on the Commission, he won’t forget about the issues that are important to New Tampa with regards to the county.
For example, “The East-West Road connecting New Tampa directly to I-275 north of Bearss Ave. is no longer on the county’s Long Range Transportation plan,” he says. “New Tampa may have missed the best opportunity in 20 years when the Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority was going to build it and run express bus transit from New Tampa to downtown Tampa, starting about 2025. When the Florida Dept. of Transportation (FDOT) removed the express lanes from the I-275 improvements north of Hillsborough Ave to north of Bearss Ave., the Expressway Authority couldn’t justify dumping more traffic onto a failed roadway. However, the possibility of an East-West Connector for New Tampa still exists. In addition, we need to look at what is going to happen with Morris Bridge Rd., County Line Road and road, bridge and sidewalk maintenance (see story on pg. 10) in the New Tampa area. We also need to look at local transit circulators and bus rapid transit to USF and beyond.”
He also believes that even though most of the communities in New Tampa are located within the city limits of the City of Tampa, the County Commission still has a lot of say about the future of our area.
“Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. is a county road, as is Morris Bridge Rd.,” he says. “New recreation areas and sports fields will be needed in New Tampa. Maintaining all county property in good repair is another. The property north of Cross Creek Blvd to the county line, and between Kinnan St. and BBD, is all unincorporated Hillsborough County. Keeping the residents of that area safe has to be the number one priority and the responsibility of the Board of County Commissioners.”
Davison says he also has been watching the situation with the Pebble Creek golf course closely and believes, “The Pebble Creek Golf Course situation never should have gone this far. The county has the money to purchase the property, using small amounts from several revenue streams. Both recreational trails, much needed sports fields for a whole host of sports from baseball and cricket to soccer and lacrosse could be built and the whole area constructed to facilitate a wildlife corridor. All of these are sorely needed in New Tampa. This is just good fair policy and would have great economic benefits. With the growth exploding north of us in Pasco, more homes and/or apartments and their traffic are not what we need here. If the county would purchase the site, everyone would come out a winner, including the present golf course owner.”
Dr. Davison, who has been married to his wife Diane for 43 years, has lived in New Tampa since 1993. They raised their four children and were deeply involved in their schooling and sports activities. For most of the last 30 years, Davison worked as an Emergency Room Physician at multiple local hospitals and was the medical director of South Bay Hospital in Sun City Center, as well as the volunteer director of the Sun City Center Rescue Squad. The last four years he has worked as a staff physician at Med Express urgent care centers.
He was appointed by the BOCC to the county’s Emergency Medical Planning Council and Indigent Healthcare Board and has served on multiple city and county boards and committees. He was appointed by Tampa City Council to the Transportation “Committee of 99,” and to the county’s Citizens Advisory Committee and Trauma Auditing Committee. He also is proud to have to lobbied city and county government for infrastructure improvements in New Tampa. From transportation, to recreation centers and ball fields in New Tampa, Dr. Davison’s voice was a constant at city and county meetings.
He says he has spoken with all of the Republicans county commissioners elected in 2022 and they have all been encouraging.
Although I also loved Major League Baseball, NFL football and NCAA basketball growing up on Lawn Guyland, New Yawk, I definitely was a major NHL hockey fan.
Since my dad never really enjoyed watching sports on TV, I consumed as many games as I could get on our three network TV stations (ABC, CBS & NBC) and the two local stations that carried NY Yankees and Mets home games (Channels 9 & 11), and had to pick my own favorite teams in each sport since he could care less about any of them.
My favorite NHL team when I was a kid was the Montreal Canadiens, because they were not only the biggest team, but somehow, also the best skating team. Oh, and they also just happened to win 10 Stanley Cups between the mid-1960s and late 1970s, when I became a hockey fan. Even when the New York Islanders, who played their home games only 15-20 minutes from where I grew up, began their run of four Cups in a row between 1980-83, my love for “Les Habitants” never wavered.
That is, until I moved to Wesley Chapel in June 1993, when the Tampa Bay Lightning had just completed the team’s inaugural season in the league. I promised myself that I would no longer cheer for the Canadiens and would bring my young sons to as many Lightning games as I could — which wasn’t difficult during those early lean years, because great tickets at the Bolts’ original arena at the Florida State Fairgrounds went for like $10 apiece (or so).
Three years later, I even took Jared and Jake to both of the Lightning’s first-ever home playoff games at what was then called the Thunderdome (now Tropicana Field) in St. Petersburg, including the franchise’s first-ever home playoff win — a thrilling 5-4 overtime squeaker over the Philadelphia Flyers in 1996. The Bolts lost that series 4 games to 2, but both of my sons (including then-4-year-old Jake) got a legitimate taste of what playoff hockey is all about. In fact, after Tampa Bay won its first of now-three Stanley Cups in 2004, both of my boys gave up other sports to play high school hockey for Wharton High.
Unfortunately, the apartment complex where Jannah and I currently live only has Frontier cable and we stopped being able to watch Lightning games at home in the middle of the season a couple of years ago — during the Bolts’ run towards the team’s third Cup in 2021— when Bally Sports (which was then called Bally Sports Sun, or maybe Fox Sports Sun) and Frontier couldn’t come to an agreement over carriage fees. Jannah — who is now a full-on Lightning fan, too — and I had to go to local bars with Spectrum cable or satellite to watch the Bolts’ run to the 2021 Cup, as we could only afford tickets to one of those playoff games.
It wasn’t until sometime in 2022, when someone told us that we could now stream Bally on our Roku device, that we were able to resume watching our favorite team at home again — and we also became partial season ticket holders the same year. And, even though the Bolts didn’t get to hoist Lord Stanley’s goblet a third year in a row, we loved both attending games and watching the others as often as possible in the comfort of our own living room.
And, while I have never really jumped on or fully embraced the Tampa Bay Rays bandwagon after hockey ends each year, since Jannah isn’t a baseball fan at all, we kept paying for Bally during last year’s hockey offseason, mainly because I didn’t want to go through the hassle of having to sign up again when the 2023-24 hockey season began a few weeks ago.
All was right with our hockey world as the new season began, but sometime in late October, it appeared that we somehow got locked out of our log-in for Bally. It felt like 2021 all over again. My ever-resourceful wife got on her “Tampa Bay Lightning Fans” Facebook page and saw other people complaining about having the same problem. Had Bally decided to lock out those who were streaming — and paying $29.99 a month for the privilege — its “service?” If so, what could we do about it?
As it turned out, no, that wasn’t the case. Although we never got any notice about it — or Heaven help us, will we see any kind of refund for the three or four Bolts games we missed because of it — Bally simply had some kind of outage on its own end. That outage lasted more than a week and here’s the kicker — none of the barrage of emails I had received from Bally as our streaming subscriber ever mentioned the outage or even offered a customer service phone number for me to call to complain.
Instead, I had to find a customer service phone number for Bally on Google and when I called, during the first period of the Bolts’ 6-4 win over the Ottawa Senators on Nov. 4, I agreed to the option of being called back, instead of continuing to wait on hold, after the first period ended. Big mistake! Instead of calling me back before the game ended, I finally got a call back from Bally (at 12:35 a.m.) and the polite customer service rep asked me if I was watching Bally at the time.
“The game ended three hours ago,” I said, “I’ve actually been asleep, so no, I’m not watching my TV now.”
Well, I decided to go to my TV so the rep could get me hooked back up, so I guess “All’s well that ends well.” I asked the rep if there was a survey I could take after the call ended, “because I’ve got a doozy for you.” When she said I would have to hang up and call back to do so, I decided that telling this story in these pages might be a better way for me to express my…let’s say dissatisfaction…with Bally.
Antony Capers and Grand Hampton kids perform a pre-movie dance number. (Photos by Charmaine George)
Congratulations to local artist and filmmaker Antony Capers (photo, below) for the splashy Oct. 18 premiere at the historic Tampa Theatre (in downtown Tampa) of his YouTube horror serial “Grand Hampton The Movie Series.”
What started as a pandemic project with his family and neighbors in their New Tampa neighborhood has grown into a multi-year endeavor with a loyal cult following. The series takes place in Capers’ upscale Grand Hampton neighborhood that — the viewer soon discovers — was built by “The CONNECTED” solely for the purpose of housing citizens within the government’s witness protection program.
Capers was excited to pose in front of the Tampa Theatre’s marquee before the premiere.
The community has been experiencing some very odd occurrences, and — even more alarming — extraterrestrial beings have been seen roaming the quiet neighborhood’s streets.
Beginning with Season 3, the series began branching out to discover the dark stories of so many of Grand Hampton’s residents. And, as someone who attended the premiere of the “ANTHOLOGY” of new chapters that bring three of these stories to life, I have to say that I came away impressed with Capers and his talented, all-volunteer cast’s efforts.
Jannah, Charmaine, her boyfriend Brendan and I were on hand to find out what happens in the world’s craziest house in “ABBY.” Then, we witnessed the bond being broken between two brothers as they became part of an experiment in “PLACEBO.” And finally, we get to play a game of “SPIN THE BARREL,” where the winner actually loses.
Members of the cast of ‘ANTHOLOGY” answer questions after the new trilogy of “Grand Hampton The Movie Series” episodes was premiered at the historic Tampa Theatre.
After the screening, Capers, the “Grand Hampton” creator, and members of his cast stuck around and discussed the project and answered audience questions. Capers said that Grand Hampton is a community where, “anything can happen and I believe ‘ANTHOLOGY’ proves that.”
“ANTHOLOGY” is part of the historic — and reportedly haunted — Tampa Theatre’s annual “A Nightmare on Franklin Street” film series, which concludes tonight (Oct. 31) with a showing of the original “Halloween.”
“Grand Hampton The Movie Series,” which participated in the Orlando International Film Festival (OIFF) in July, has been at the Tampa Theatre before, as Capers and his crew of talented actors not only got to present his “Super Vita” movie-length episode but also film a portion of it there.
Among those who have provided cameos in the series to date include New Tampa’s District 7 Tampa City Council member Luis Viera and former Tampa Bay Bucs offensive lineman and local radio/ podcast host Ian Beckles, who was chilling and cool in “SPIN THE BARREL.”
The premiere of “ANTHOLOGY” also included lengthy “commercials” from Capers’ sponsors, including EmployEZ, UES-United Employment Solutions, Done Deal Promotions and “Aliens of the Metaverse,” as well as a dance number with Capers and about a dozen Grand Hampton kids, ages 6-12.
All “Grand Hampton The Movie Series” episodes are available on YouTube.