BLUZ & BBQ
A Charitable event for The Davis Islands Swimming Pool
Curtis Hixon Park, Downtown Tampa
October 15th, 2011
The organizers of the Bluz & BBQ event couldn’t have chosen a better day than Saturday the 15th as the weather was perfect for going outside. Plus if you add the word free next to music, food and beer, people will come! The second annual Bluz & BBQ event was actually a charitable event for the restoration of the historic Davis Islands Swimming Pool on Columbia Drive, The Roy Jenkins Pool. Though you would of never known this by the way it was set up. There was very little advertising beyond a vendor booth that explained what this event was really all about and that little vendor booth was getting almost no traffic.
That didn’t matter though as people and families came to see the live music, 6 bands from Florida to Texas play blues rock, and eat barbecue from local eateries. Curtis Hixon Park filled up pretty quickly right from the start at 10 am. By noon there were an easy 500 people milling about, sitting on the grass and munching food and slurping beers. There were vendors of all sorts besides the beer and barbecue. There were booths for the kids, crafts and items from other local stores and shops. It was a very family friendly event and the weather helped bring out a lot of people.
While everyone was enjoying the music and food the real intention was for the organizers to raise at least $20,000 to get the Davis Islands pool up and running and open to the public again. They need $2 million to get it going with all the bells and whistles, but $20,000 was their real goal and would like to make that up asap. While the city has promised to allocate some funds to its repair, there’s been no definitive answer from the city government just yet. Originally it was the city which caused the pool to shut down when they tried to replace the drains and fouled it up. This historic pool had been open for 75 years until the city tried to modernize the drainage system as part of a city wide mandate to do just that to all the cities pools. That was three years ago and the Davis Islands community has been fighting to get it re-opened ever since.
To learn more about Davis Islands check out the The DI Buzz or the Davis Islands Chamber of Commerce.
For more photos of the event, check out the 813area photo gallery for Bluz & BBQ.
