David Lubin seems to be a funny bone specialist, but he's also a serious photographer and editorial commentator.
By RON MATUS
Published January 16, 2004
PARKLAND ESTATES - David Lubin knows the myth: Doctors are single-minded, so focused on practicing medicine they can't even set the clocks on their VCRs.
To that, he might respond: Have you seen my bobblehead collection?
Lubin, a family practitioner for 27 years, delights in debunking the stereotypes. Not only can he program his VCR with authority, he owns all 400-plus issues of MAD magazine, worships the Tampa Bay Lightning and writes enough fired-up letters to the editor to publish a "best-of" collection.
Oh, and he's an award-winning photographer.
Lubin's annual calendar, packed to the gills with his quirky visions of Tampa Bay, is hung in thousands of homes and businesses. Last month, he rolled out edition No. 13.
Photography "offers what I see to other people," Lubin, 56, said last week, sitting in his office near Memorial Hospital. "People don't always get to see fireworks and rides at the fair and sunsets and hibiscus. They don't really look at stuff as a photographer would."
Or, as Lubin would.
But, then again, who does?
Lubin's world includes prescriptions and stethoscopes but doesn't end there.
As a doctor, he's committed enough to be an officer in the Hillsborough County Medical Association, and serious enough to shop for legislative solutions when drug companies charge some patients more than others. Like other doctors, he got upset when Gov. Jeb Bush intervened in the Terry Schiavo case. (Don't get him started. Really.)
And yet, when he had the opportunity to get the governor to pose with him and a MAD magazine cover that lampoons Bush's parents, well - click - he took it.
"He's very deadpan," said friend Stacey Bessone. "He reminds me of Leslie Nielsen from Airplane."
Lubin might be low-key, but his letters to the editor aren't.
"I certainly hope someone high up in one of the television networks read about Warren Sapp's menage-a-trouble on the Times front page," he wrote last August. "Never mind Big Brother, Paradise Hotel or For Love or Money. There's a proverbial gold mine in the production of The Poor Sap."
Lubin's office isn't shy, either.
A slumping woman, made of cloth, greets patients in the lobby, smiling beneath a floppy straw hat and cradling a garage sale boom box. In the hallways, clients file past the goofy monsters of Ybor artist Tom Kopian. In exam rooms, they find copies of MAD magazine.
Silly? Sure.
But what better than a chuckle, Lubin says, to inspire calm and comfort among the sick and stressed.
"Seventy-five percent of the people reading magazines when I walk in have a MAD in their hand," Lubin said. "So it works."
Lubin follows his own prescription for humor.
Behind his desk: a poster-sized collage of MAD poster boy, Alfred E. Neuman. On the shelves: his bobblehead collection, including likenesses of several Bucs and Lightning players and four of the Rolling Stones. The Jerry Springer bobblehead is autographed.
Until a few years ago, Pinky colored Lubin's office, too.
Pinky was Lubin's late tarantula, one of several he has owned and one with the unique ability to disgust Lubin's ex-wife and his office manager. Lubin said he sometimes took his pink-tinged pet out for a walk - on his arm. When Pinky passed on, Lubin decided, "I'm over the spider phase of my life."
His photography phase has never waned.
"He's a photographer trapped in a doctor's body," summed up friend Jack Newkirk.
Lubin began hunting moments after his youngest daughter was born. Now he's good enough to moonlight on paying gigs, including the annual Gasparilla race and his award-winning calendar, which local businesses pay to be a part of.
This year, Lubin printed 15,000 copies.
The images are vintage Tampa: Bucs fan Big Nasty. Gasparilla pirates. Flag-waving Bayshore Patriots.
"I'm really proud of it," Lubin said. "I like to do it. I like to show it. I like to share it."
Lubin's artistic honors don't end with his calendar.
One of his photographs is featured in Dawn of the 21st Century, a coffee table book that resulted from a global art project. Thousands of photographers from around the planet submitted images they captured during a 24-hour period at the beginning of the century. Only 500 were chosen.
Lubin's entry: a party at the Bowling Ball House in Safety Harbor, where hundreds of rainbow-hued bowling balls decorate the lawn. On the cusp of a new millennium, the house was covered in Mylar and the guests wore glittery shades.
Zany, yes, but somehow warm and hopeful, too.
On another level, Lubin won the 1992 National Enquirer Picture of the Year award after snapping St. Petersburg Times photographer Mike Pease intensely staring down an equally riled iguana.
Then there's the Gov. Bush-MAD photo, which ran in MAD.
Nothing fancy. Almost perfect.
Bush and Lubin are posing side by side at a fundraiser for physicians, with Lubin holding the magazine.
For his effort, he got a year's subscription.
"Had he been holding it, I would have gotten three," Lubin said.
- To order a Lubin calendar, send $6 to David Lubin, M.D., 508 S Habana Ave., Suite 280, Tampa, FL 33609, or call 872-3164.
David Lubin
AGE: 56
NEIGHBORHOOD: Bayshore Gardens
JOB: Doctor (family practitioner)
HOBBIES: MAD magazine collector, Tampa Bay Lightning season-ticket holder
PASSION: Photography
ALMA MATER: Tulane University, undergraduate and medical school
LEFT FIELD: charter member, American Tarantula Society
FAMILY: Divorced; two daughters, Sabrina, 35, Leah, 25
ROOTS: Born in Detroit, raised in Hollywood, Fla.
DREAM: To be on the reality TV show, Big Brother
REALITY: Appears on WTVT-Ch. 13's Ask a Doctor from 7 to 9 a.m. the last Thursday of every month.
