Singer-songwriter Craig Finn said once that he never really woke up in Ybor City before he nurtured that memorable lyric from the richly imagined soil of The Hold Steady’s youthful-loser landscape.
Well, I sure have.
In my Jeep, in the HCC parking garage. On the sofa in the old Creative Loafing offices above Cafe Creole. In a “loft” on the other side of the railroad tracks that was more of a hostel-slash-squat, spooning a pretty girl I sort of knew on top of somebody’s loft-in-a-box-in-a-loft and surrounded by people who were still partying.
And other times—the last one at the REAX Magazine office, to the sound of a cop on horseback galloping up onto the porch in pursuit of an assault suspect running from Club Empire. (We found unexploded pellets of pepper spray—the kind they fire from paintball-type guns—all around the place the next morning.)