Tampa Bay notes: St. Pete’s new 85-tap serve-yourself beer bar, win a hydroponics shop in an essay contest, and more Florida men and women

It’s going to be a warm week leading up to Christmas in Tampa Bay, starting with some thick fog. I’m going to have to set aside some patio bar time this week!

For those of you outside the three countries that don’t use Herr Doktor Fahrenheit’s old-timey system for measuring phlogiston, I’ve added the temperatures in Celsius to the weather report above.

St. Pete’s new 85-tap serve-yourself beer bar opens!

Okay, local friends — when are we going to St. Pete’s Pour Taproom, which boasts 85 serve-yourself taps? They just opened, and it appears that they have a solid selection, including gluten-free beers.

Pour Taproom charges by the ounce, not by the glass, which makes it easier to try a small sample of something and see if you like it. The combination of a Disney World-like wristband and sensors on each tap make it so that you can serve yourself while they tally up your bill. Their prices range from 20 to 90 cents an ounce.

Find out more:

• Tampa Bay Times: Self-serve beer bar opens Saturday in downtown St. Pete and Nation’s largest self-serve bar, for now, opening in St. Petersburg
• Creative Loafing: Five Courses: The Rez Grill opens tonight, Pour Taproom this weekend and more
• St. Pete Rising: Pour Taproom to Bring 85 Self-Serve Taps to Downtown St. Pete

Win a hydroponics business in this essay contest!

This will sound like a fantasy to a number of my friends with a writerly bent, but it’s real: Allan Bednar, owner of Simply Hydroponics and Organics, a 25 year-old business based in Largo (a 40-minute drive southwest of my place), will give it to the person who writes the best essay explaining why he should do so. That’s right: you can win a business by winning an essay contest!

Entries will be accepted through March 15, 2018, and the winner will be announced on April 2, 2018. The original announcement date was scheduled to be April 1, but too many people forgot that this is Florida and assumed that the contest was an April Fool’s prank.

Find out more:

• Simply Hydroponics and Organics’ contest page
• Tampa Bay Times: Largo man giving away business and property to person who writes the best essay

Florida mayor resigns for a very Florida reason

Florida leads the nation in identity theft, and is famous for people making terrible choices for insanely petty reasons, so it’s only natural that someone would combine the two. Teresa Bradley had to resign from her position of Mayor of Davenport, Florida (it’s just under two hours east of Tampa) after it was discovered that she was parking in handicapped spaces with permits acquired by stealing dead people’s identities.

“I’m representing myself, your honor.” Hilarity ensues.

The Tampa Bay Times has an amusing article about the Florida men and women who choose act as their own attorney in court. One of them did jury selection by asking potential jurors: “Do you like pets? Do you think I look like Charles Manson? Do you hate my hair?”