If you’re looking for a new church home for your family, I can’t imagine a more welcoming Christian environment than what I experienced during my first-ever visit to Carmel Friendship Church, which has been located in its own building next to the Wesley Chapel school complex on Wells Rd. since 2011 (although the church didn’t purchase the building until 2014).
I visited Carmel Friendship Church for its 11th anniversary — the church started meeting at the home of Pastors Quincy (Pastor Q) and Jennifer Stratford and their children in 2010 and moved to Benito Middle School in New Tampa on Easter Sunday in 2011 — on Oct. 10 and I have to say that, as a member of the Jewish faith who has attended many Christian churches in years past, I have rarely, if ever, felt the warmth and love I felt from everyone I met at this very special place.
Pastor Quincy Stratford
I walked in a few minutes after the church’s music program had begun and was blown away by the talent of the dancers and choir singers, especially soloists Morgan Mackall, Curlin Beck and Chris Sampson. Many of the dancers appeared to be young teens, but the music, under the direction of Kazi Whitfield, and choreography were impeccable and beautiful to watch and hear.
The inspirational message given by the Stratfords’ friend, visiting Pastor Dr. Johnnie R. Bradley, of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas, TX, quoted scripture from both the Old and New Testament to illustrate how the Holy Spirit is a Real, Divine and Unique person who provides comfort to all of those who believe. And, Dr. Bradley’s message fit right in with Carmel Friendship Church’s motto of “Real God. Purpose. People.”
Before the blessings and closing messages given at the end of the service by Pastor Q and Pastor Jennifer, another close friend of theirs, cancer survivor Patrice Kissentaner Starks, whose health issues prevented her from being able to visit her friends for several years, told how much the support of the Stratford family and her faith have helped and meant to her.
The service was followed by a free barbecue meal and a cake to celebrate the church’s anniversary.
Carmel Friendship Church (30081 Wells Rd.) offers both adult and children’s services at 9 a.m. on Sundays and Bible Study on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. For more information, call (813) 991-1300 or visit CFriendship.org. — GN
All across Tampa, purple (or blue) street lights can be seen amidst rows of white and yellow lights. Take a ride down Cross Creek Blvd. and you’ll see almost a dozen of them.
Curiosity about why these lights have randomly popped up has led to a number of television stories and a few Reddit and NextDoor.com threads.
And, even a few conspiracy theories. So let’s clear the air:
* The purple lights are not a super secret crime deterrent.
* The lights are not a super duper light pollution fighter.
* The light are not there to make it harder for heroin users to find a spot to shoot up.
* They are not collecting your vital information through some new technology.
* They are not an homage to Prince on the fifth anniversary of his death last April, and Tampa Electric just hasn’t gotten around to replacing the lights.
(Sorry, the last one was our own conspiracy theory)
Nope, nothing like that.
The purple lights are just, well, good lights gone bad.
According to TECO spokesperson Cherie Jacobs, the lights have merely fallen prey to a manufacturer’s defect that turns them from white to purple.
“We are almost done, but we are replacing all of our street lights with new energy-efficient LED technology,” Jacobs says. “The model that was made in 2019 had a manufacturing defect, and that has affected a small percentage of the lights.
“But, they are very noticeable.”
Indeed they are. The lights cast a purple hue across the road, and turn everything under the light poles a purple color. It has been explained in other stories that each light contains red, yellow and blue filters, but the yellow filters are the ones that have been malfunctioning, and the red and blue filters then create a definite purple tint.
The lights are so noticeable that Jacobs jokes that she is getting as many media requests for explanations than just about anything else these days. Concerned residents are calling television stations to get answers — News Channel 8 WFLA-TV and WTVT-TV Fox 13 recently did stories on the lights — and we’ve even received a few emails about the them.
“We are working with the manufacturer,” Jacobs says. “They are under warranty and we are replacing them as we are learning about them.”
Considering that we are living in the age of crazy conspiracy theories, it should be no surprise that those purple lights have sparked a few, including this doozy — the lights are used to identify if you have been vaccinated against Covid-19, making you glow, and therefore keeping you out of FEMA camps that the government will be setting up for the unvaccinated where you see the lights.
No, not true. At least we don’t think so.
And, the purple lights aren’t just a Tampa thing, or a TECO thing. All across the country, purple lights have been popping up in South Carolina, Tennessee, Massachusetts and Wisconsin, drawing the same kind of scrutiny from residents.
Just a few days after this story went to press, Jacobs informed us that TECO is patrolling its entire system and will replace all purple lights. It should take several months, she wrote, so after originally setting up a web page for residents to report the location of the purple lights, no need to report the lights anymore.
“See a purple light? No further action is required of anyone,” Jacobs says. “We’ll fix it as soon as we can.”
State Representative Fentrice Driskell, considered to be one of the rising stars in the Democratic Party in the Sunshine State, has officially announced that she will seek to retain her seat in the all-important midterm 2022 elections.
Rep. Driskell will be running to hold the Florida House District 63 seat she won in 2018 when she defeated Republican Shawn Harrison and retained in 2020 when she was unopposed. Driskell held her launch party on Oct. 27 at Acropolis Greek Taverna on Bruce B. Downs Blvd. (photos)
District 63 includes New Tampa, as well as Carrollwood, Lutz and the Lake Magdalene and University of South Florida areas to our south and west.
Driskell already has at least one opponent lined up for next year — New Tampa Republican Lisette R. Bonano.
The General Election will be held on November 8, 2022, with primary elections scheduled for August 23, 2022. — JCC
ampa Palms Blvd. has been labeled a failing road, and is getting repaved starting sometime next year, but bigger plans to reduce it to two lanes and add roundabouts have been shot down. (Photo Charmaine George)
Plans to convert four-lane Tampa Palms Blvd. — which circles through the Tampa Palms community — into two lanes have been soundly rejected.
After revealing its preliminary Complete Street Project plan at a Sept. 28 virtual presentation and Q-&-A session, the city received near-unanimous opposition from residents. They filled out hundreds of questionnaires for the city demanding that Tampa Palms Blvd. not be downsized to accommodate things like bike lanes, additional school pickup lanes for Tampa Palms and Chiles elementary schools, roundabouts and other safety features, some of which they felt could be accomplished with four lanes.
“I read in total disbelief what the City of Tampa has proposed for Tampa Palms Blvd,” said one questionnaire. “To quote former tennis icon John McEnroe: ‘YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!’”
Tampa planners heard the complaints and have decided to change course.
“We are preserving the four lanes,“ says City of Tampa chief traffic management engineer Vik Bhide, “and we will make (smaller) modifications.”
The $3-million repaving of Tampa Palms Blvd., currently funded in next year’s city budget, will go forward in two segments — the south loop (or Segment 1), which runs from the north intersection of Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. to the south intersection through Tampa Palms Areas 3 and 1), and the north loop, or Segment 2, which runs from the south intersection of BBD to Ebensburg Dr. in Tampa Palms Area 2.
Some of the modifications mentioned by Bhide include narrowing the lanes in an effort to lower driving speeds, and making improvements at some of the intersections by installing Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons (RRFBs), also known as pedestrian-activated warning devices.
Bhide also says that more pedestrian crossings will be introduced, and there will be an effort to address the traffic challenges around the schools during the busy morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up.
Roundabouts, which cost about $800,000 and aren’t funded at the moment, “are off the table,” as residents seemed extremely opposed to them.
Asked if he was surprised at the quick repudiation of the initial plans, Bhide said it was all part of the process.
“We tried to work with the community and what the community provides with their feedback,” Bhide says. “And we also rely on hard facts and data.”
That data, according to Cal Hardie, P.E., the City of Tampa’s capital projects manager, indicated that both segments of Tampa Palms Blvd. being repaved are great candidates for a “road diet,” due to the number of daily trips on the road.
Hardie said anything under 10,000 is considered a great candidate for reduction, and 10,000-15,000 is considered a good candidate, and Tampa Palms Blvd. currently falls in that range.
But, the residents were clear — “Do not take away any of our lanes!”
The scene that started it all for “Grand Hampton: The Movie Series,” with Antony Capers and his son Merric.
A strange alien-like creature is chained to the wall. Four kids lay motionless on the floor, marked with blood. A menacing woman in a white lab coat steps over them to talk to a baby girl dangling from the ceiling. A light fog flows through the scene.
This is just a regular Wednesday or Thursday night in the Grand Hampton garage of 45-year-old Antony Capers, where, on this night, he is filming another episode of his quirky, campy, creepy — and even funny — web video series that has much of his community buzzing.
Capers, a freelance designer who owns his own production company, Reelistic Tales, is an accomplished painter, graphic designer and has even written and illustrated children’s books. He also is the creator of “Grand Hampton: The Movie Series.”
He says the series, which so far has posted 17 episodes and can be viewed on YouTube by searching for “Grand Hampton Movie,” has changed his life. The series has 151 subscribers, and roughly 6,000 total views. A party was held in the Grand Hampton clubhouse for the Season 2 premiere.
He doesn’t get paid to do the show — a new episode is posted each Monday — but he says it has brought him the kind of joy that is priceless.
“It’s really a labor of love for me,” Capers says. “I’ve met so many of my neighbors, and it’s become a close-knit production of new friends.”
What began as a short 45-second clip morphed into a series of short episodes filmed exclusively in Grand Hampton, starring only the community’s residents.
“It’s like my Hollywood playground back here,” says Capers, a Queens, NY native.
Which is not how it all began. His initial 45-second clip of his son Merric staring out across a lake in a trance, pointing at something only he could see, was done for Capers’ portfolio.
But, he decided to post the clip on Grand Hampton’s community Facebook page for fun, and the rest, as they say, is history.
“Everybody who commented asked what Merric was looking at, and not to leave them hanging,” Capers said.
So, he didn’t. He shot two more episodes with his son, basing the story on an idea that has been bouncing around his head for years — where a community that is comprised entirely of people in the witness protection program is used to harvest the lungs of those who won’t be missed.
Antony recruits another neighbor to join the cast.
With requests for more episodes, Capers started asking for community volunteers to play roles in the production.
Richard Villarino was first, playing a neighbor in Episode 3 concerned that children were disappearing.
Another neighbor, Annette Simmons-Brown, sent in a head shot and, perhaps because her bald head (at the time) gave her a more minacious look, was pegged to be the evil Dr. Annette, the harvester of kids’ lungs, a few episodes later.
“I don’t know why he picked me…but I’m glad he did,” Simmons-Brown says. “It’s been so much fun. If I had to rate the whole experience on a scale of 1-to-10, I’d give it a 15.”
Taabish Ajaney, a 15-year-old North Tampa Christian Academy student, messaged Antony on Facebook looking for a role. He landed a part, but also has extensive editing experience and has taken on the role of intern, helping shoot many of the scenes.
Julia Rees, a 26-year-old medical school student, donned a red hood, black makeup streaked across her face and a 10-inch knife while emerging in the Season 1 finale as a mysterious hero…or perhaps a villain.
“He just said I’d be a bad ass,” says Rees. “I’m not sure where the character is going, but I’m along for the ride.”
Roughly 50 neighbors, many who gathered to watch the filming of the latest episode, have played roles. Kelly and Lura Mulroy and Latasha Scurry play television anchors, Henry Scurry is convincing — and arguably the best actor in the series — as the head bad guy, and Ishban Howard has played multiple roles, including one as the chained up alien.
Nicole Reber is another bad guy who made her debut recently in Season 2, Episode 3, and her three children — Ashton, Dylan and Skyla — were all snatched by the aliens in the same episode. Others have helped build sets and set up other scenes, while Capers’ next door neighbor Chace Scurry not only played a part, but her infant daughter Jahnai was the one dangling from the ceiling while mom nervously looked on. “Can you believe she let me do that?,” Capers says, chuckling.
Jordan Caviggia read about the show on Facebook, and brought his son Jaxon, 9, to the most recent shoot, where he played one of the children in the garage.
“It sounded like it’s a fun time, and I thought Jaxon would enjoy it,” Jordan said.
Capers thanked him for showing up, and asked the elder Caviggia if he was interested in having a part, too. Five days later, Caviggia filmed a scene playing the head of a newsroom.
“This has really ended up being about bringing people together,” he says. “It’s not about the show. I mean, there’s a story there, but it’s about community. It’s weird, and it’s a weird thing that’s happening, and I love it.”
Would Capers love for his show to catch the eye of a Hollywood executive? Of course.
“If not, I’ll just keep filming with my friends,” he says.
