Time to Stay Classy, Tampa

Desperate times call for desperate measures...the idea of doing a blog has been just an idea for awhile but after reading a few friends who started this, why not?
Years ago, I wrote more often for a living so, the other day, I figured let me start this before I get out of practice. Most of the world has a blog.
Yes I borrow the title of this blog from my Ron Burgundy, who used to tell San Diego how important it was to "stay classy" ("Thanks for stopping by!"). Some alternate blog titles considered were: 1) The Milkman Never Sleeps; 2) The Customer is the Boss; 3) It's 5 o'clock somewhere.
I've lived in Tampa longer than I ever expected, having grown up in the more "urban" settings of New York and Miami. When I first moved here, I fully expected to live here no longer than 1 or 2 years--it's one of those cities that people from Miami used to give you me a puzzled look and ask, "Why would you want to move there?" It's not that anyone in Miami knew or cared much about anything about Tampa, it's just one of those cities that was on the map and was about as ordinary to Miamians as Jacksonville, Kansas City and old furniture.
But as I look back at all the years I've spent here, I realized how this city snuck up on me, how I'd go other places and wish I was back in this perfectly sized, easy-to-manage place to live.
A lot has changed recently, as Tampa has grown in promience and visibility. (Starbucks' slogan on its Tampa coffee mugs: "America's next greatest city.")
This is why I still know not to roll my window down when approached at an intersection for money; why I know that turn signals are a dying courtesy; and why I laugh when people complain about "traffic" in Tampa.
I have never gotten over how spoiled people are about driving dsitances in this city when it still seems to me everything in close. To go, for example, Bay to Bay north to Fletcher on Dale Mabry Highway takes no more than 20-25 minutes in most normal hours of the day, yet most of my friends would almost never want to drive that far for anything short of gunpoint. And to cross Tampa Bay on one of our 3 fabulous bridges?
In Miami and New York, you almost always expect to spend 30-45 minutes in your car to do anything simple: movies, supermarket, work commute. It's probably gotten worse recently while I became spoiled myself living in Tampa. Here, no commute or drive should take longer than 15 minutes and, if it does, I catch myself getting annoyed.
I have always said living in Tampa is like living in a big city with a small-town mentality. It has gotten more "big-city" in recent years in some ways, but it's still a classy place to live and, in the infamous wisdom of Ron Burgundy, this blog hopes it stays that way!