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Dade City nightlife? No kidding

By JAN GLIDEWELL
Published June 19, 2006

The other night, I was sitting in the outdoor venue behind Mike Agnello's tavern listening to some good blues, sipping (alas) a Diet Coke, hearing snatches of conversation from people around me enjoying themselves - and feeling content.

It took me a few minutes to realize exactly why I was feeling content until it dawned on me. It was night, I was in Dade City, I had just eaten dinner and I was being entertained.

It may not sound like much to folks in big cities with areas like Tampa's SoHo or Miami Beach's South Beach, but stringing those factors together in Dade City has been something hard over the years.

I can't claim that I discovered this trend all by myself, at least other than piecemeal. A few weeks ago, my wife and I were having dinner at Tropic Breeze when a Times photographer suddenly snapped our picture. I stopped enjoying the luxury of muttering obscenities about pesky journalists to ask him what was up, and he told me that Molly Moorhead, a former colleague, was doing a story about the city's night life.

I almost spewed my Caldo Gallego over that one.

Saying Dade City had a night life used to be a cruel joke. Cafe Kokopelli was pretty much the only restaurant in town (unless you wanted to head for the fast food chains to the south) that was open evenings.

Entertainment, unless you counted the monthly Saturday Cruise-Ins that cater to antique buffs, didn't really come to town until Agnello began offering music on weekend nights at the Osceola.

Oh, sure, historically speaking, you could hark back to the days when the city actually had a strip bar (don't ask - it was never a pretty sight) and an Elegant Restaurant at the old Edwinola Hotel (now an adult living facility) where tuxedoed waiters tossed Caesar salads and served flaming desserts tableside.

And the landmark centerpiece of the city remains Phil Williams and Skip Mize's Lunch on Limoges.

It was and is a lunch place, but when Mize and Williams looked at the vista from their front porch 25 years ago and saw Napa Valley where everyone else saw Three Mile Island (Mize's quote, not mine), it marked the beginning of the city's transition from an agrarian economy anchored by an Army Navy store and with, as Eliot would have noted, more bars than chophouses.

In the city's incarnation, and while nearby Brooksville is bemoaning its lack of dinner places, Matter of Taste, only a few feet from Tropic Breeze on Seventh Street, has started staying open some evenings.

A couple of the antique stores are starting to hang around to see if there will be business, and the Coffee Mug, a tiny but popular daytime gathering spot, is moving to a new location closer to the action and planning on being open Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

By the way, the fact that my portrait hangs inside the main entrance of the Osceola (along with a bunch of much more interesting things) has nothing to do with my writing about the place.

That was some sort of deal he made with my wife regarding the need to scare small children away from the entrance or a hole in the wall or something.

I recently got to vote for Agnello in a city election, just as I voted for his father 30 years ago, although it wasn't much help to either.

Agnello is a gadfly who hates being called a gadfly, no matter what Socrates said in coining the term; a tavern owner who would rather be called a businessman, a promoter, writer and great guy who will, undoubtedly, find something to complain about in this column, but I don't care. I will be 2,000 miles away in a place that isn't reachable by cell phone.

The nearest settlement, incidentally, by the way, has 50 residents, a restaurant that is open in the early evenings and, at the trading post, frequent live entertainment on weekends.

This year, for a change, it will be enough to make me homesick.

[Last modified June 19, 2006, 08:18:31]