Weekend Round-up, Tampa style

For anyone who's known me for more than about 2 years, what I am about to reveal is going to come as a significant shock: this past weekend I traveled down to Tampa, Florida to attend the ACC Tournament--and had an absolute blast. If you know basketball at all, you know that the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) is home to some of the best basketball in the nation. Duke, UNC, Maryland, Boston College, Virginia, Virginia Tech--all these schools are part of the conference, which means there's some pretty fierce competition to be crowned conference champions and get an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

In any case, we went down because Jessica had to be there for work and we figured we'd make a weekend out of it (not least of all because it was 15 degrees in New York and 80 in Tampa--hard to beat that). Jessica flew down on Friday morning and I followed her after work that night; our friends Kerryann and Allison also came down for the fun. Jessica and I spent most of the day on Sat at the games and at the pool; then we met up with the girls for dinner in this outdoor mall-like place called Channelside. We ate at a restaurant whose menu featured sliders of many kinds (beef, turkey, tuna), freshly caught fish entrees and sushi. Oh, and the best beer battered fries I've had in a long time. Kerryann's sister and brother-in-law joined us for dinner, but peeled off afterwards when we decided to go seek out "Gay Tampa", smartly enough.

Let me give you this piece of advice: If you're ever in Tampa, just forget about seeking out the gay scene. Here's what happened to us: once we had enough alcohol in our veins (Allison, Jess and I shared a 64 oz. bowling ball filled w sangria; whether it was truly alcoholic is still a question in my mind, but we were happy) we hopped a cab from Channelside over to Ybor City in search of a bar whose name KA couldn't "quite" remember. After walking around for half an hour, asking any vaguely gay looking person we could find for directions, we gave up and got in another cab and headed to some place out in the boonies called Valentine's. Valentine's, when we got there, was a large space occupied by about 10 very sad looking gay Latinos, and if I recall correctly the wind chill in the place left the air temperature at about 20 degrees. It was cold. And dark. And scary. And we had no car to get us home. So we did what any good lesbians would do in that situation: we drank. And played darts. And drank some more. And by 2:30, when the place was packed with salsa dancing fools, we decided it was time to go home. A full night, by any standards.

Of course, Allison and Kerryann found some more fun later that night at a little club called Flirt. But that's their story to tell... All I can say is that I woke up on Saturday morning with a picture of a very comely trannie in my inbox.