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Archive for the 'North Pinellas County' Category

The great North Pinellas County roadside barbecue tour

I am from northern New England, home of pine trees, good seafood and plenty of snow.

Eli's, a Dunedin barbecue institution

What northern New England DOESN’T have is barbecue. And that’s enough to keep me here for the rest of my life. That, and the lack of snow.

When we lived up Maine and got a hankering for barbecue, we had to pile into the car and head south to South Portland, home to the only barbecue restaurant in the entire state of Maine.

(Now, before my old Maine friends get on here and attack me for my incredible lack of modern Maine barbecue awareness, I do have to acknowledge that, in my absence over the past 16 years, there is now something called the “Mainely Grillin’ and Chillin’ Country BBQ State Competition” that takes place in Eliot, Maine in August. Also, a Google search does reveal a few new barbecue restaurants scattered around the state. Wish they were there when we lived there…)

Anyway, there is no lack of barbecue in Florida, or throughout the entire South. Around here, there’s a barbecue joint on every other corner, and we go to most of them.

One thing that I really enjoy, though, are the little roadside pit barbecue places. Usually, these operate out in the open with not much more than a big black smoker and perhaps a couple of picnic tables. The more grandly financed outfits may operate out of a trailer of some kind.

Anyway, there’s enough of them around here that I thought I’d do a little blog tour of North Pinellas County’s outdoor roadside barbecue places. Here are three of them:

Eli’s

Now that I’ve just gotten through describing roadside BBQ joints as not having any permanent real estate, I start off with Eli’s, s which actually does. But here is why I’m including it: It’s a Dunedin institution; it’s only open on Friday and Saturday; and while it does have a small permanent building, only the help can go inside — customers must order through a window, and then have to take the food home or eat it outside on a strange collection of picnic tables and old restaurant booths.

One order of ribs -- to go!

There’s a big ol’ smoker out back that has a name of its own — “Bigfoot.” And it turns out very good barbecue that Eli sells at very good prices — a chopped pork sandwich with beans and cole slaw was just $6 on a recent visit.

The parking lot at Eli’s is often full or nearly so on Friday’s and Saturday’s, the only days that Eli’s is open. And on the day I was there, one customer actually rode in on a riding lawn mower, got his order of ribs and rode out, balancing his white bag of food on his lap.

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Tags: barbecue, North Pinellas County, restaurants

Old lamp posts aren’t just in Pinellas County

Disney Boardwalk lamp post

About three weeks ago I posted a picture of an old-style lamp post that I noticed on Main Street in Dunedin.

I know there are some pretty fine examples of other old-style lamp posts in places like downtown Clearwater and downtown Tarpon Springs, too. Next time I’m in those places and I think of it,  I’ll snap pictures of those old lights and post them here.

Meantime, take a look at this example of an old-style lamp post at Disney’s BoardWalk. When I was on my walk around the boardwalk I noticed these neat old lamps and snapped a few pictures so I could share one with you.

These aren’t old lamp posts — they are reproductions. But they sure look great, and they add a nice touch of style to the boardwalk area.

Tags: disney, lamp posts

Disney less than two hours from Pinellas County

Disney's BoardWalk

We spent a few days at Disney World near Orlando last week. You may feel that a discussion of the Mouse House has no business on a blog that talks mostly about North Pinellas real estate, but if you live in Palm Harbor, Tarpon Springs, Dunedin, Clearwater or any other community in or around Pinellas County, sooner or later you are going to spend some time at Disney.

What to do at Disney used to be a simple decision, because when you visited Disney World you visited the Magic Kingdom. Then came Epcot not long afterward.

Yacht Club hotel

But now you have to be much more specific than that because there are so many nooks and crannies at Disney World — besides Epcot and Magic Kingdom, there is Downtown Disney, the Animal Kingdom Park, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and a bunch of other offerings, including Disney’s BoardWalk.

Disney’s BoardWalk is where we spent our time on this visit. It’s an area modeled after Coney Island and other great boardwalk attractions of the Northeast of years gone by. There are several big hotels, two of which are based on the old rambling clapboard hotels of the the late 1800s- early 1900s. Between these two huge hotels, the Yacht Club and the Beach Club, is a big convention center facility.

Dance Club

We stayed in the Yacht Club Hotel and attended a three-day event in the convention center.

In front of these two hotels is a good-sized man-made lake, Crescent Lake. Beyond the lake is a boardwalk which hosts all kinds of restaurants, shops and clubs, all housed in about 9,000 square feet of buildings of different shapes and sizes. Walking along that boardwalk is reminiscent of the old beachfront boardwalks of years gone by.

We didn’t get as much of a chance as we would have liked to make good use of the food and entertainment that the boardwalk area offers, but we did take a nice walk around the boardwalk early on Thursday morning. The only people out at that hour (around 6:30 a.m.) were joggers and power-walkers, plus a number of Disney staff people and groundskeepers. We got some good pictures of the area, and a few of them are posted here.

It’s hard to beat Disney on a number of levels. Everything is always perfectly kept and maintained. You NEVER see so much as a cookie wrapper or a peanut shell on the grounds, the grass and shrubs are perfectly manicured and everything looks as though it was just painted or polished. If you pass a chambermaid in the hotel hallway, she will unfailingly smile and say hello.

Is there a downside to all that? Not really, although I always find myself thinking that everything is just too perfect for my liking. Sometimes I feel as though I’d like to see just one little imperfection to remind me that we’re all human beings. But I know I’m just being crabby — no one does it like Disney.

Disney World is not next door to Pinellas County, but it’s only about 90 miles away, all of it on interstates. It takes less than two hours to get over there, and Disney occasionally offers some very attractive Magic Kingdom and Epcot passes at low rates for Florida residents. 

If you move here from up north, you can be sure your friends and relatives from back home will be writing and calling, looking for an invitation so they can come visit when the air turns cold. The first question they will ask is, “Can we come visit?” The second question will be: “How far away is Disney?” Tell them it’s just a quick hop away.

Tags: boardwalk, disney

Water restrictions tighten in Pinellas County

This has been a tough year in these parts water-wise.

We just haven’t had as much rain as we usually do, and that has caused some concerns about the availability of drinking water. So in March the Southwest Florida Water Management District decided on a series of water restrictions. It’s called Modified Phase IV Water Shortage restrictions, but what it means is the highest level of water use restrictions.

You can only water your lawn once a week. There are also restrictions on car washing, power washing, hand water, use of fountains and other decorative water devices, and a whole slate of other things.

Just exactly what those restrictions are vary according to where you actually get your water. For example, We get our water from the county, so that means no car washing at all, no fountains at all, and no power washing at all (unless it is done by a power washing company.) The actual restrictions may be a bit different if you get your water from a municipality, for example.

New lawns can be watered more than one day a week, but only for 30 days. And homeowner associations can’t force home owners to install new lawns, even if the old lawns are completely dead.

Water is always an issue here in Florida and will be an increasing source of concern as more and more homes and businesses are built here. Most of Florida sits on a massive aquifer, but even that is becoming over-taxed. And Pinellas County is oneof the few places in the state that can’t draw on the water under it’s own ground. As a peninsula, Pinellas County does not sit atop useable water and must pipe it in from elsewhere — most if not all of Pinellas’ water comes from Pasco County, to the north.

To learn more about water use restrictions in Pinellas County, visit the Pinellas County Utilities wesbite at http://www.pinellascounty.org/uTilities/water-restrict.htm

Tags: lawn watering, pinellas county

Fort De Soto is Pinellas County gem

North Beach, Fort DeSoto

Q — What is the very best beach in America, according to TripAdvisor, the world’s largest online travel community?

A — Fort DeSoto Park, right here in Pinellas County.

Fort De Soto is at the very southern tip of Pinellas County, within sight of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which connects Pinellas County with Manatee County (home of Sarasota) to the south.

And TripAdvisor isn’t the only outfit that thinks so. In 2005, Dr. Beach (who rates beaches around the country, too) named Fort De Soto’s North Beach the best beach in the U.S.

Pinellas County maintains a number of parks, and Fort De Soto is the largest by far. It is made up of five separate islands and covers 1,130 acres. It was first opened in 1962, and almost 3 million visitors come by every year to sunbathe, swim, boat, kayak and fish.

Shore birds at Fort De Soto

The county bought the property from the federal government for just $12,500 in 1938. But then war broke out a few years later, and the property was sold back to the federal government (for a profit — $18,404) which used it as a bombing and gunnery range during World War II. After the war ended, the federal government sold it once again to Pinellas County, this time for $26,500.

We had some free time on Sunday afternoon and we visited Fort De Soto with our two grand-daughters. A lot of people were there enjoying the day, but the sheer size of the park made it feel sparsely populated. There is a 35-cent toll on the road that leads to the park, but Fort De Soto itself is free — not even a parking charge. But that may change soon, so this summer is a great time to explore the park for free.

Tags: beaches, fort de soto, pinellas county

Palm Harbor’s Ahern’s Ice Cream

Ahern's Ice Cream

When we first moved to Palm Harbor from Maine in 1993, one thing we looked forward to was a whole new world of ice cream shops. We figured that Florida, being a hot and outdoorsy kind of place, would be a great place for ice cream.

As it turned out, we were a little disappointed. The ice cream we found was pretty good most of the time, but there just wasn’t all that much to choose from, and we found that to be a little surprising.

Later, I read somewhere that New England, a place with long, cold winters,  was one of the most popular places in the country for ice cream. Who would have guessed that?

Anyway, we did manage to find some good ice cream places, and the longer we live here the more we see new ice cream places opening up. When that happens, we fall all over ourselves going to the new place and trying out the ice cream.

Yep, that's me, windowing-shopping the ice cream

One of the newest around here is Ahern’s Ice Cream, located in Palm Harbor on Alternate 19 just south of Alderman. We’ve been there a couple of times recently, and we like the ice cream as well as the people who work there. We spent one visit talking to the owner (and eating ice cream, of course), and we spent the next visit eating ice cream and talking to the very nice young woman behind the counter. She goes to St. Petersburg College and drives a very funky red 1970 Volkswagen bug, which was parked outside.

One thing that’s interesting about Ahern’s is that it sells ice cream made over in Tampa by Old Meeting House Ice Cream, a small, independently owned and operated ice cream business that has been making and selling ice cream since 1947. Old Meeting House still makes ice cream in small batches by hand, just as it did when it started out in the ice cream biz 61 years ago.

Ahern’s (and Old Meeting House) definitely passes our critical Ice Cream Test.

Tags: ice cream, Palm Harbor, pinellas county

Are we bailing out the bad lenders?

Banks are getting billions of dollars from the federal government to prop them up following the melt-down of the U.S. housing industry. The melt-down was caused in large part by poor lending practices, especially among sub-prime lenders. And who owned those sub-prime lenders? The very banks that are now getting bail-out money.

That’s the finding of a new report released by the Center for Public Integrity. And a not-insignificant number of those loans financed homes right here in Pinellas County.

Many banks that have been hit the hardest by the economic melt-down have portrayed themselves as victims of the sub-prime lending industry — companies that were too easy about lending money to people with little cash, poor credit or low incomes. But the director of the Center for Public Integrity says the banks not only knew about those questionable practices, they owned the very lending companies that behaved so irresponsibly.

“The mega-banks that funded the sub-prime industry were not victims of an unforeseen  financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves,” said Bill Buzenberg. ”These banks were deliberate enablers that bankrolled the type of lending that’s now threatening the financial system.”

The Center looked at 7.2 million sub-prime loans made between 2005 and 2007.  It said that banks based in the U.S. and Europe poured vast amounts of capital into the sub-prime industry in pursuit of big profits. And it says that at least 21 of the 25 biggest sub-prime lenders  received their financing from banks that are now getting bailout money from the U.S. government.

The Center for Public Integrity describes itself as a non-profit organization “dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern.”

Tags: Add new tag, home finance, pinellas county, sub-prime

Pinellas County homebuyers: Don’t miss the $8,000 first time homeowner tax credit

    More than half of the people who plan to buy a home in the U.S. this year are first-time homebuyers. And ALL of them should look into the $8,000 tax credit that is being offered to first-time homebuyers this year by the federal government
 
      This is a pretty exciting to for first-time homebuyers to get into the market, what with very low prices and historically low interest rates. The $8,000 tax credit is just icing on the cake. It’s hard to imagine that such a “perfect storm” of home-buying advantages will come together again, at least in the lifetimes of most of us.

      Are people really aware of the first time homeowner tax credit? Apparently so – the IRS says that of all the 2008 tax returns filed by March 6, more than a half-million returns claimed the first-time home buyer credit.

      If the tax credit sounds good to you, don’t wait too long – it is only available until Dec. 1, 2009.

 Here are the nine most important things you need to know about the tax credit:

     1. The credit is available to all first-time buyers of any kind of home, new or re-sale.
 First time home buyers are defined as people who have not owned a residence during the three years prior to the purchase date.

     2. The tax credit is an amount of money equal to 10 percent of the home’s purchase price, up to a credit of $8,000.

     3. The income limit for a single taxpayer is $75,000; for married taxpayers filing jointly, income must not exceed $150,000.

     4. If you exceed the income limits, you may qualify for a partial tax credit.

     5. The tax credit does not have to be repaid. Previous tax credits were really interest-free loans.

     6. People who buy homes and claim the tax credit must use the home as a principal residence for at least three years. Those who fail to do that may have to pay the credit amount back to the government.

     7. Claim the tax credit on your federal income tax return by using IRS Form 5405. No other application or form is necessary.

     8. The credit may be claimed even if you have little or no federal income tax liability. An example: You had withholding in the amount of $4,000, but ended up owing taxes totaling $5,000. Normally, you would owe the government another $1,000 on top of what was withheld. However, if you purchased a home and claimed the tax credit, the IRS would send you a check for $7,000 – the $8,000 tax credit minus your $1,000 tax liability.

     9. The tax credit is a dollar-for-dollar reduction in your tax liability. In other words, if you owed the IRS $8,000 in income taxes for 2008 and you claimed the $8,000 tax credit, you would owe the IRS nothing.

Want to know more? Take a few minutes to listen to an expert – Robert Dietz, the tax economist for the National Association of Home Builders. Click on the YouTube icon above.

Tags: Add new tag, first time homebuyer, pinellas county, tax credit

Pinellas homeowners: New program makes refinancing possible

Would you like to refinance your home, but find that you can’t because the value of your property has declined? You may be able to refinance anyway under the federal government’s new Making Home Affordable program.

This is good for some homeowners in Pinellas County and in Tampa Bay, where foreclosures and declining values are among the highest in the nation.

Making Home Affordable has two parts – one allows for the modification of existing mortgages, while the other offers opportunities for home refinancing, if the home mortgage is owned or guaranteed by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae.

Let’s look at the refinancing function of Making Home Affordable:

• To qualify, borrowers must occupy their homes. The home may have up to four units, but the owner has to occupy one of them.

• Interest rates under Making Home Affordable are “market rates,” but it is a little unclear what that means exactly.

• Loan balances may be as much as 105 percent of the current value of the home. Otherwise, borrowers have to comply with all the other usual underwriting demands, things like all payments must be current, income has to be high enough to cover the new payment amounts, and there can’t be more than a single late payment during previous 12 months. 

• Mortgage insurance on the old loan will carry over to the new loan – a little unusual, because generally mortgage insurance policies end when the loan is paid off; then a new policy gets issued for the new mortgage.

• It’s okay to have a second mortgage on the property as long as the second mortgage holder has agreed to remain in the second position lien-wise.

• Cash cannot be withdrawn during the transaction, but closing costs can be included in the mortgage amount.

To learn more, visit http://www.MakingHomeAffordable.gov

Tags: making home affordable, pinellas county, refinancing

Lamp posts in Dunedin

Lamp post in Dunedin

 Ever since we put up this blog, with the newsboy standing under the lamp post, I’ve become a little more aware of lamp posts in North Pinellas County. Old-style lamp posts aren’t all that common, but I did notice that downtown Dunedin has some really dandy examples — I guess when they did over the downtown area, they were careful to add some nice old-style touches, and antique-looking lamp posts were among them.

I noticed this one on Main Street the other night. I’m not sure if you can read it, but the sign says “Dunedin — Best Walking Town in America.” I wonder if that was an actual award the city received. I’ll try to find out — if I do, I’ll post the answer here. If you already know the answer, post a comment and share it.

Tags: Dunedin, lamp post downtown