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Ta-dah! Announcing Tampa’s Man of the Millennium, the Once and Future Mayor, the Alpha-est of the Alpha Males, the gent who epitomizes political erectness: Dick Greco. Maximus Dickus. Our mayor loves to be the butt of his own tales — especially if the stories involve shapely female butts. Or nicely curved breasts. Or delightfully trim waists. Or ... well, you get the point. The mayor has, for example, on several occasions related to me that when he resigned as Boss of Bosses during his first gig, he turned over his city car to successor (after two interim mayors) Bill Poe. Noting that Poe is a very religious man, Greco once quipped, “I would have been ashamed to tell Bill what went on the back seat of that car.” Those of us who were hanging with Hizzoner all guffawed because we knew what went on. Squirming and sweating and panting and fumbling with buttons, and ... well, you get the point.  Throughout lunch, women — mostly in their late 50s and
early 60s, but always still attractive — kept coming up and hugging the
mayor-in-waiting. The (presumably) former paramours worshipfully cooed
and blinked. The old bull soaked up the adulation with more than an occasional
snort of lust. The conversation went sort of like this: “Oh, Dickie, Dickie,
Dickie,” la femme would say.
I’d tell you some of the dames’ names, but ... well, you get the point. (According to all accounts, Dickie has been thoroughly tamed by his wife, Linda, and during his current reign he has absented himself from the carnal chase.)  His clients were undoubtedly major league businessmen — we’re talking about guys who can do deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Suits. Chamber of Commerce board members. Pillars of their communities. Family men. Church goers. Republicans. But once Greco escorted them inside the dimly lit Mons, they surely got down and dirty as the babes rubbed their ... well, you get the point. So why is it that a mayor with an incurable case of priapism — and damn proud of it — is now being lambasted as a “coward” on a sign in front of the Mons? And why is Redner — probably the only man in Tampa who has viewed more ... well, you get the point ... than Greco — so royally pissed? The two aging goats seem like natural allies, after all. They both share an ambition of hosing the city with testosterone. Only their methods differ. The answer, you say, is simple. The city just passed a law banning “lap dances” and requiring strip-club patrons to stay 6 feet from the dancers. Nah, too easy an explanation. There are two things at work in the latest battle over flesh. One is a clash of maximum studs. The other is Tampa’s karma — the city is doomed to forever be America’s most ridiculous city. First, the clash. When the city launched its latest crusade against the nude clubs, there was a lot more to it than Councilman Bob Buckhorn’s shameless panhandling for votes for his anticipated mayor’s race.  There had been an unspoken — perhaps spoken — agreement between the mayor and the pornster that the city would keep its biggest legal guns holstered if Redner would keep the skin out of Ybor. Greco has Great Visions for Ybor becoming a world-class tourist attraction, and flesh peddling — at least the sort promoted by neon signs — doesn’t fit the mayor’s vision. The city began minor legal harassment of the strip clubs – largely in response to Club Flamingo and the mooning of city laws by an operator who turned a West Shore bar, Yucatan Liquor Stand, into a strip club. Redner should have lain low but didn’t. He ran for Buckhorn’s council seat. Buckhorn seized the opportunity to champion morality — sure, it was a cynical ploy, but he trounced Redner badly. Greco now had to send his boys to do a little damage — the legal equivalent of breaking some fingers — to enforce discipline in the city. The anti-lap-dance law is intended to be an irritation — undoubtedly a costly one to Redner — but you can be sure no one is going to shut down Tampa’s signature industry. The little fracas did highlight the never-ending tale of Tampa’s civic pratfalls. We can be a ludicrous city. Are we known for our culture? Our refinement? Heck, no. It’s the lap dance flap that is getting national press attention. It was bad enough that Tampa was hailed as the strip-club capital of the nation. Now, wags can argue, we’re biting the hand (or whatever) that feeds so many people here. It is fitting that with so many real problems facing the city — Tampa General Hospital, the need for a better transportation system, a critical shortage of teachers and classrooms, a community impoverished by welfare giveaways to sports team owners — we choose to enter the third millennium engaged in bitter warfare over how many inches a guy’s nose has to be from a dancer’s ... well, you get the point.  |