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Archive for the 'Tarpon Springs' Category

Rodie’s — a great breakfast in Tarpon Springs

There was time not too many years back when one of our favorite breakfast stops was a place called Rodie’s, in Tapron Springs.

Rodie's Restaurant in Tarpon Springs

Rodie’s was a small hole-in-the-wall diner kind of place on Alt. 19 just south of the Tarpon Springs downtown area.  It was a place very much favored by the locals, and the Rodie’s folks put out a very good breakfast for a very fair price.

Rodie’s did so well that they acquired a piece of land across the street from the original restaurant and built a new place — much fancier, much bigger, and a lot more upscale, at least in appearance.  They still are only open for breakfast and lunch — they close at 3 p.m.

They may have lost a little bit of the charm they offered when they were in the older, smaller place across the street. But they still really pack the place on weekend mornings, a testament to their excellent food and fair prices.

Rodie’s offers some very good burgers and sandwiches, but breakfast is when I like to go there. Besides the good assortment of pancake dishes and omelettes, they also offer some southern favorites and some Greek-inspired dishes, everything from biscuits and sausage gravy to gyro rollups and Greek salads.

Rodie’s is right next door to the brand-new Sweetbay supermarket on South Pinellas Avenue (Alt. 19).  I’m going to post something about that Sweetbay a little later on.

Tags: breakfast, pinellas county, restaurants, Tarpon Springs

Downtown Tarpon Springs lamp posts

Lamp post in downtown Tarpon Springs

Time for another lamp post.

Just to refresh your memory, I posted a picture of a lamp post from downtown Dunedin not too long ago. It was a pretty fancy one, and it went well with the overall charm of the downtown area of Dunedin, which has been fancied up quite a bit in recent years.

Next up was a lamp post from Disney World’s Boardwalk area. Not a real local lamp post, to be sure, but a nice one that illustrated how antique-looking lamp posts can be used to lend an authetic touch to a restored downtown area.

This one was taken in downtown Tarpon Springs just this morning.

Apparently Tarpon Springs one-ups the other local downtowns by adding fresh flowers to their lamp posts. Other local communities may do the same thing, but I haven’t seen any.

You can see more of the Tarpon Springs downtown area here.

Tags: downtown, lamp posts, Tarpon Springs

The light rail saga continued

Since I got all fired up recently about the new light rail system in Phoenix, and how nice such a system would be in Tampa Bay, I thought I’d share our recent experience with light rail transportation in Baltimore.

Light rail in Baltimore

This past week, we spent a few days with family in Connecticut, and then went on to Baltimore for two more days. If you’ve ever flow into Baltimore, you know that the Baltimore-Washington Airport is not very close to the downtown area – it’s located at a central point between Baltimore and Washington, DC.

When I was making arrangements for the trip, I found a shuttle service that could take us from the airport to downtown Baltimore. I don’t remember the cost exactly, but it was around $15 per person each way, or around $60 for the two of us round-trip.

A little later, we discovered that Baltimore has a light rail system that runs from Hunt Valley, north of the city, then right through downtown Baltimore and then on to Glen Burnie in Anne Arundel County. One leg of the rail line down near the Glen Burnie end shoots off and goes directly to the airport.

So that’s what we did.

There was a little bit of a walk through the airport terminal to get to the train boarding area, but once through the terminal doors the train was sitting right there waiting for us. The fare was a measly $1.60 per person (and it could have been just $.55 if I had read down a little further and found the special 55-plus fare). Once on board, the train made about 10 stops before delivering us to the Baltimore Convention Center right downtown.

We had decided to stay in the colorful Fells Point area, and that was still a fair distance away, so we flagged down a cab for the last leg of the trip.

Here are the best parts of the light rail train ride; it was really cheap as well as hugely convenient, and it only took 30 minutes to get from the airport to the heart of downtown Baltimore. It also made us feel like we were doing the right thing, environmentally speaking.

Here was the worst part: On the return trip from downtown to the airport, we just missed the Airport train and had to wait 30 minutes for the next one. That wouldn’t have been so bad, but it was cold. No, actually, it was worse than just cold. It was REALLY cold, around 24 degrees, and we had to stand outside for a half-hour. For thin-blooded Floridians, it was torture.

Still, we loved it. One of the light rail stops is Camden Yards, and we’re thinking about flying up there next summer for a Tampa Bay Rays – Baltimore Orioles game. I’m still dreaming about a Pinellas County light rail system, something that could serve Tarpon Springs, Palm Harbor, Dunedin, Clearwater and other North Pinellas communities as well as St. Petersburg and Tampa.

If you want to learn more about Baltimore’s light rail system, go to www.mtamaryland.com/

Tags: baltimore, light rail, pinellas

A proud Greek heritage is on display in Tarpon Springs

Tarpon Springs is a charming Florida Gulf Coast town known for its Greek restaurants, bakeries, gift shops and sponge merchants. It is very much a Greek community, and it traces its Greek roots back more than 100 years, when Greek divers and their families immigrated to Tarpon Springs to work in the town’s sponge trade.

Florida’s sponge industry really began in the early 1800s, many miles south of Tarpon Springs, in Key West. Men would crisscross the shallow waters off Key West in rowboats or sailboats, scooping grass sponges off the bottom with long rakes. The harvested sponges would be carried by boat to Tampa Bay, and then shipped from there to New York City.

Key West quickly became the major source of sponges for customers in New York and throughout the Northeast, but that was about to change as technology allowed men to dive to the ocean floor. Divers soon found there were larger sponge beds, and a much larger variety of sponge types, in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, further up the west coast of Florida.

By the late 1880s, a wealthy Philadelphia banker named John K. Cheney sought to take advantage of those bountiful sponge resources off Florida’s coast.  He built warehouses in the town of Tarpon Springs, and soon he, along with another businessman named Ernest Meres, became the town’s first sponge merchants. He bought sponges locally and then sold them to associates in New York City.

In 1896, a Greek immigrant who had been working in New York as a sponge buyer, John Cocoris, arrived in Tarpon Springs. He went to work for John Cheney, and soon recruited 500 sponge divers from Greece.

The Greek divers were amazed to find that the floor of the Gulf was thick with sponges of all kinds. Baskets of large wool-sponges could be quickly sent in baskets from the sea floor up to the boats that waited on the surface. Cheney and his associates added boats and divers to increase their harvest.

Just a few years after the turn of the century, there were more than 1,500 Greek sponge divers and other workers employed in the Tarpon Springs sponge trade. By 1936, that number had increased to more than 2,000, and Tarpon Springs was recognized around the world as the sponge capital of the world.

However, the sponge industry faced a number of serious challenges in the 1940s. First, Red Tide attacked the gulf and killed most of the sponges. Then, synthetic sponges were developed. and they cut into market previously dominated by natural sponges. It took more than 20 years for the sponge market to right itself.

Now, tourism has replaced sponge diving as Tarpon Springs’ major economic activity. Tourists enjoy Tarpon’s Greek influence and culture, which have survived the ups and downs of the 100-year-old sponge trade.

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Marc Washburn is a sponge merchant in Tarpon Springs and also on the Internet. His e-store, Natural Bath & Body Shop, carries traditional Greek olive oil soaps, Loofah, and a large selection of sea sponges.

Tags: Greek, Tarpon Springs

Hitting the bricks in Tarpon Springs

If you love historic old brick streets enough to actually work on them, the city of Tarpon Springs has a great deal for you.

Tarpon Springs decided a few years ago that one way to preserve the old brick streets within the community was to offer local residents the opportunity to rebuild and repair the streets on a volunteer basis.

City officials learned that the city of Punta Gorda, Florida, had a similar program that was working very well. So last fall they decided to give it a try in Tarpon Springs, asking local volunteers to help with the reconstruction of Cedar Street.

The city hired a professional contractor to prep the street, remove the old bricking and install new water and storm sewer lines. Then the volunteers were turned loose to install the bricks.

It worked out so well on Cedar Street that the city is now having a contractor prep Bay Street from S Spring Boulevard to Lime Street. Once Bay Street is rebuilt, some other historic brick streets in town may be rebuilt with volunteer labor, too.

Want to learn more, and maybe take part? Get in touch with the Tarpon Springs Engineering Division at 727-938-3711.

Tags: brick streets, Tarpon Springs