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Didn't we learn not to repeat history?

By Sandra Thompson
Published November 4, 2006

It's been deja vu all over again in Tampa this week: Dick Greco running for mayor! Rafael Vinoly invited to design the new Tampa Museum of Art! The pirate ship Whydah coming to Tampa!

True, these events are mostly in the "maybe" category, but the fact anyone is seriously considering them is weird enough, isn't it?

First, Dick Greco. He has people talking to him about running for mayor again this March - and he hasn't said flat out "no." Not a surprise. Greco has been mayor four times! The first time before you were born, if you're pushing 40. He quit once to make more money, so he didn't get his whole 16 years in, but even so, he had a pretty good shot.

Now, if we were in really great shape, if he had made Tampa one of America's Next Great Cities, or whatever that phrase is that used to appear on our Welcome to Tampa signs, well - maybe running again would make some sense.

But that didn't happen. We do have a really nice Bucs stadium, thanks to Dick, but frankly I think the Glazers were in a better position to pay for it than we were.

Now, I understand things might have been a lot more fun for some people when Dick was mayor. But thinking those fun flush times will come back if Dick comes back is like going to your 40th reunion and falling in love with your high school sweetheart all over again. You may feel like you're 16, but you're not. Those days are gone. Get over it.

Why Rafael Vinoly would want to ever set foot in Tampa again is beyond me. He did get $7-million to design a building he didn't have to actually build, but that museum building was a $71-million, 150,000-square-footer. This one ain't. It's truly small potatoes compared to the one he lost.

And the invitation to compete with five other firms already chosen came late.

Plus, how many times can an international superstar architect hear his design compared to a gas station and not get teed off?

And then there's the Whydah pronounced WID-ah, by the way. If you were around here in 1992, you may remember the Gasparilla boys and other Tampa bigs thought it would be fun to bring in stuff from a real pirate ship, albeit one than sank nearly 300 years ago, and turn it into a $70-million museum.

But before it was a pirate ship, it was a slave ship, and that didn't sit well with Tampa people who feel kind of personal about the subject.

What is it about slavery that MOSI doesn't understand? And what do pirates have to do with science or industry? And do we want even a dime of tax money to go toward an exhibit that ties in with the opening of Disney's next sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean? Even if Johnny Depp were to come to town - and nobody's saying he would.

You know, this sounds like the kind of thing Dick could get into.

He had nothing to do with the earlier effort, at least he wasn't mayor then, and it's not as big as some of his old deals, but it IS Disney.

We're not called pirates here for nothing, you know.

Sandra Thompson, a Tampa writer, can be reached at sthompson125@ tampabay.rr.com. City Life appears on Saturday.

[Last modified November 4, 2006, 06:44:48]