Neighborhood Profile: Safety Harbor is friendly city nestled along Old Tampa Bay

SAFETY HARBOR

Six years after moving from the Washington, D.C., area, attorney Warren Firschein likes his new home so much that he is writing a history book about it.

Nestled on the northwest corner of Old Tampa Bay in Pinellas County, Safety Harbor is a bedroom community of some 16,000 residents, many attracted to it for its location, which is convenient to both St. Petersburg to the south and Tampa across the bay to the east. ...

St. Petersburg woman, 94, heads to 67th national bowling meet

ST. PETERSBURG

When Mini Tvaska started bowling, she did it in her stocking feet and threw a 16-pound black ball. Young boys, not automation, righted the pins after each frame by tossing them into the holes in a metal pin-setting contraption and then pulling a lever that lowered them back onto the lane for the next bowler.

The year was 1936 and 18-year-old, 5-foot-petite Mini Tvaska — she was Mini Brazas then — didn't know it yet but she was embarking on a lifelong journey....

See Boz Scaggs, dog tricks, pamper Mom at Tampa Bay events in May

1 Back to the '70s

Where were you when Boz Scaggs hit it big with his album (remember those round black discs?) Silk Degrees in 1976? I was a student at Ohio State and I can still conjure up the song Lowdown from the jukebox in my memory bank. You, too? Well, you can hear him again at 8 p.m. May 3 at Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Road, Clearwater. Raised in Texas, Scaggs got his trademark sound by combining rock, jazz, R&B and blues. Opening for him is another act you may remember from way back when, Pablo Cruise. Tickets are $49-$85. For more information, visit rutheckerdhall.com or call (727) 791-7400....

Snowbirds from Ohio fall in love, watch Buckeyes, go on cruises

Newlyweds Duane and Nancy Campbell, who are both 77, lived a block from each other for 25 years in Columbus, Ohio. Their kids went all through school together. They no doubt shopped in the same stores, ate in the same restaurants, watched the same Ohio State Buckeyes games in sports bars. And yet, they had to travel more than 1,000 miles to meet and fall in love in paradise. They got married in January at the St. Petersburg Yacht Club and recently returned from their honeymoon, an Antwerp-to-Amsterdam river cruise. We met up with the snowbirds — to ask them about dropping anchor and getting hitched — as they were packing to head back to Ohio from their Bayway condo in the sky. ...

Neighborhood Profile: New Port Richey

NEW PORT RICHEY

Family. That's the most important thing in the world to the Burnetts — Carmen and Greg and their children, 12-year-old Courtney and 11-year-old Gregory.

Family is what brought Carmen Burnett to Florida as a 13-year-old. Her family was living in Michigan when the health of her grandparents, who had retired to the New Port Richey area, started failing. It was the start of the extended family's migration to Florida....

Food Network, Pinterest, websites sway wedding cake trends

This year's fashionable wedding cake is a tall and svelte showstopper, dressed in ruffles that deepen in hue from its top to its bottom.

Its many layers — round or square or octagonal or a combination of shapes — diminish in size from toe to head.

If it has a topper at all, it's so integral to the cake that it becomes one with it.

The cake mirrors its bride and groom. Flashy and flamboyant types have oversized brightly colored flowers; the shy and demure may have pale pink or cafe au lait Victorian decorations. White wedding cakes are as passe as phones with cords....

AARP driving classes keep seniors on the road, cut insurance rates

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t seems as if it was only yesterday that we were teenagers sitting in driver's ed class.

The instructor — as harassed and harried as any substitute teacher — tried to get the attention of a classroom full of yapping and fidgety high school students much more concerned about when it was their turn to drive than learning the rules of the road.

They couldn't care less about blind spots and following distances and double yellow lines. Nope. They wanted to get behind the wheel and go. Push the pedal to the metal. Turn on the radio. Sling their arm out the window. Enjoy the freedom that only a set of wheels can bring....

LifeTimes lists 5 events you shouldn't miss in April

1 RAYS AND COOOOL GIVEAWAYS. Grab a kid 14 or younger and get an Astro bobblehead when the Tampa Bay Rays take on the Oakland Athletics at 1:40 p.m. April 21 at Tropicana Field. (Astro, David Price's French bulldog, wanders the clubhouse like he's in the starting lineup.) Or, if you can't find a kid to go with you and give up his Astro bobblehead, get your own prize, a Joe Maddon gnome (which could be weirder than last year's Zim Bear) when the Rays take on the Yankees at 7:10 p.m. April 24. Learn more at tampabay.rays.mlb.com....

Rays' Joe Maddon talks about mom, Italian groceries, looking hot, tweeting and rock 'n' roll

Everybody loves Joe Maddon.

What's not to love about the Tampa Bay Rays coach about to enter his 20th season in the majors, the last six at the helm of the Rays?

He's the winningest coach in the Rays' short history.

He's okay with keeping a pitcher on the mound when the rest of us want to send him to the showers.

And, he's okay with letting a pitcher's dog (David Price's Astro) stay in the clubhouse....

Neighborhood Profile: Venetian Isles in St. Petersburg

ST. PETERSBURG

Elizabeth and John Funk live on one of the narrow fingers of land in Venetian Isles, which juts east into Tampa Bay the farthest of any Pinellas development.

Their street has never been flooded; nor has their house. But they have been flooded in.

Venetian Isles extends into the bay on relatively high ground northeast of Snell Isle and directly east of Shore Acres. It's an upscale waterfront community of 533 homesites, most of which are on the man-made fingers separated by deep-water canals suitable for power and sailboats of all sizes. ...

Senior impersonators delight as Elvis, Dolly, Marilyn and Johnny in gowns and wigs

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hat makes a person want to transform into someone else? • Actors immerse themselves in different characters for only as long as a production lasts. • But impersonators do it for a living. • They do it for a lifetime. • "Actors playing a character get to make up part of the person they are portraying. That is not as true with impersonators who try to completely capture the person they are impersonating," Sheldon L. Wykell said. • Why do they do it? • Wykell, a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist in St. Petersburg, may be more equipped than most to speculate. He has a bead on the acting persona from two distinct angles: his mental health work and growing up with a mother who was a director of children's theater in Chicago. • "They are more comfortable being someone else, and they all have some exhibitionistic tendencies. They have a desire to be seen, noticed," he said. • "We all do things to adapt to our personality, and if you can make money and have fun doing it … why not?" • Why not indeed? • Here is what three area performers have to say about what it's like to assume another's identity — and why they love doing it....

5 things to do in March

1 The Gasparilla Festival of the Arts will be March 2 and 3 at Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park in downtown Tampa. Artists — ceramic, digital, drawing, fiber, glass, jewelry, mixed media, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, watercolor and wood — come from all over the country to try to win the $15,000 Raymond James Best of Show Award and an additional $59,500 in prize money. Hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free. gasparillaarts.com....