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© St. Petersburg Times, published August 31, 2000
Across the Tampa Bay area, Thursday is a huge night on the bar and club scene.
Bars roll out drink and dance specials. At the jammed Club 1509 in Tampa's Ybor City, free drinks bring the college crowd. For the slightly older set, Thursdays are a time to sip specially priced drinks at hot spots such as Clearwater's Living Room or St. Petersburg's Rare Olive.
Comedy clubs and coffeehouses, such as Club Maxx in Madeira Beach and the Manhattan Coffee Bar & Eatery in Clearwater's Countryside, set aside Thursday as the night for amateur poets, songwriters and comedians to step up to the microphone.
And Thursdays lend themselves to themes such as Grateful Dead Night at Skipper's Smokehouse, Bike Night at Bourbon Street in New Port Richey, Disco Inferno at the Falls in Tampa.
... Dining out
Frank Chivas of the Salt Rock Grill, Boulevard Bistro and Pep's Sea Grill did a little survey of a recent Thursday Salt Rock crowd. Here's what he found.
"They call it date night. The parents can go out alone. They go without reservations and can get in. It's easier to get a baby sitter. The kids usually have something to do the weekend nights," Chivas said.
That's just for starters.
In restaurants around Tampa Bay, Thursday increasingly is part of the weekend kickoff, busy, but not as packed as the true weekend. In the most popular restaurants, reservations for Friday and Saturday night often are snapped up far in advance. Not so Thursday."
And at no-reservation spots, the Thursday wait is likely to be less than the one you complain about on the weekend.
Thursday is also a good time in the internal cycle of a restaurant, said B.T. Nguyen, whose Cafe B.T. in Tampa has only 38 seats inside and 12 outside, all highly prized on Friday and Saturday.
On Thursday, she has planned her French and Vietnamese specials, and supplies are fresh and ample. Servers won't have to say, "We're out of . . ."
"It's almost like we're testing for the weekend, everything is ready," Nguyen said.
Maybe the increasing popularity of "Casual Friday" has something to do with the rising trend in Thursday dining, said Rochelle Smith of A Taste of Wine in downtown St. Petersburg. "A lot of people are starting to get in that weekend mood on Thursday."