Welcome to the 31st November edition of Paradise News. It is traditionally our “welcome back” edition for seasonal residents (aka snowbirds), our Thanks-Giving issue, a celebration of the end of hurricane season and the beginning of the holidays. This season, as the high temperatures no longer reach the nineties, also marks the seasonal expansion of entertainment, both indoors and out.
Last year on Sept. 26, we found our home and office, which customarily sits a few feet above sea level, 2-3 feet under water, thanks to hurricane Helene. Luckily, we still owe plenty on our mortgage, so we were required to maintain full coverage. We now have a new roof, new HVAC, new cabinets, appliances, doors, walls, and we are gambling the insurance proceeds that the flood will not happen again anytime soon. Not that we wouldn’t love to elevate, but the cost was too high for us to handle. We have been living in and publishing from a 1/1 on the eighth floor of a downtown condo, but are hoping to return to the beach home and office in the next few weeks.
We are proud that our team, which includes many local writers, of which some who were also affected by last year’s storms, were able to meet every deadline and publish all 10 issues of Paradise News on schedule since Helene’s visit. New readers might discover the Arts and Leisure and Events columns, 14 pages of free listings, often starting on page 39, with a list of 20 entertainment categories, carefully updated monthly by Buddy Baker, providing the most comprehensive entertainment calendar in Tampa Bay, in print and online. We are thrilled to present our third Zubrick Magic Theatre cover story, introducing their new holiday spectacular show, presented in their cozy downtown theatre, where there are no bad seats, just a block north and east of Ferg’s, the #1 Sports Bar in the USA, (last month’s cover story.)
We dedicated a full page in both October and in this issue to celebrate the 35th annual Suncoast Jazz Festival, Nov. 21-23 indoors at the Sheraton Sand Key which brings local, national and international stars together. There is a link to tickets in our issue online.
In the spirit of giving, we remind our readers that the current administration is opposed to governmental subsidization of public broadcasting. If you are a fan of National Public Radio and/or Public Television and Masterpiece Theatre, we strongly encourage supporting them. There are so many great local causes, but a few we particularly love are: OCHR – Our Children Have Rights, a not-for-profit that supports children from broken families; Parc, employers of the disabled, who are building a new headquarters on Tyrone Blvd.; RPPF, Rebecca Penneys’ Piano Festival at the University of South Florida; The Wolf and Wildlife Preserve in Divide, Colorado (see the articles page 24-27 in last month’s edition); Soothe Our Souls, a Treasure Island free sailing opportunity for terminally ill patients and their families, run by our advertiser, Dolphin Landings Charter Center; and the Gulfport Senior Center, which helps many elderly live independently with transportation and a wide range of services.
Online, at www.paradisenewsfl.com you can always find the current issue. Under the Current Issue tab is a Past Issue button giving access to the last 10 years of our work. Each back issue is totally accessible and even downloadable. Under weekly, you can find the digital newsletter that circulated last Thursday, and a form to subscribe to it for free. You can also order us to mail you a 10-issue print subscription for under $2 each, ($19.95 annually) and as little as $1.50 with a 5-year ($75) subscription. Advertising is the lifeblood of Paradise News. We try to ensure that our advertisers are trustworthy businesses with plenty of positive reviews, so our readers will never be disappointed by someone they find in Paradise News. If you do business with any of our advertisers or anyone we write about, please let them know you saw their ad or read about them in your favorite magazine. If you have a local business and could handle more customers, call Pete at 813-230-3965 or email sales@paradisenewsfl.com. We have found a career in community news magazine publishing to be rewarding in so many ways. After publishing our photo in most of the last 300 issues, for example, we are frequently recognized, often by people we do not know, and thanked for our work. We find that kind of encounter is spiritually uplifting. There are not many careers where you can get that.