Axios Tampa Bay
☀️ Surprise, Tampa Bay! Bet you didn't expect to see us in your inbox this morning, huh?
- ⛈ A chance of thunderstorms and mid-80s pretty much all week. Guess summer really is here.
A bunch of you asked for something to stay connected during our planned break, and we realized we'd be checking the news obsessively anyway.
- So we've turned on "vacation mode" for this post-holiday week — a little shorter and lighter than our usual newsletter, but still with everything you need to get ready for your day.
Today's newsletter is 535 words, a 2-minute read.
1 Pulp thing: Relax and unrind
🏳️🌈 Happy Pride Month! Start off with a reminder about the queer people of color who struggled so we could celebrate (Creative Loafing), then check out all of the activities in our area (Tampa Bay Times).
A 21-year-old man, Cameron Herrin, given 24 years in prison for killing a mother and daughter while street racing on Tampa's Bayshore Boulevard in 2018, is appealing that sentence. (WFLA)
🌊 Get a play-by-play of all of the steps officials have taken to contain the Piney Point spill — and what hiccups might still loom. (Bradenton Herald)
⚖️ A Citrus County man will spend five years in prison for what a judge called "ghastly" neglect that led to the death of a chihuahua named Bennie last year. (Citrus County Chronicle)
🎶🚨 Tampa's Sunset Music Festival was back in full force this weekend after last year's pandemic postponement, and eight people were arrested there on felony narcotics charges Saturday. (Tampa Bay Times)
🍾 A Pasco County man went on a burglary spree early Sunday in Zephyrhills that unfortunately featured him entering a seafood restaurant's freezer and throwing "all the White Claw alcoholic beverages and beers into a retention pond" behind it. (WFLA)
2. Champa Bay weekend roundup
⚾️ The Rays remain hot, like the hottest-team-in-baseball-while-setting-team-records-hot, after beating the Yankees 3-1 yesterday.
- They've won 16 of their last 17, something that's never happened before in their history. And 41-year-old pitcher Rich Hill, the oldest player on the team, is putting up absolutely historic numbers for someone his age. (ESPN)
🏒 The Lightning emerged victorious from the first game of their second-round playoff matchup against the Carolina Hurricanes.
- The Tampa Bay Times' Frank Pastor doled out a scorecard full of A's after the performance, saying there's "no opening too narrow" for the team to exploit right now.
3. 1 local thing that went national
We love it when the national press gets a whiff of a really good story from our area, and that happened in a big way over the weekend.
Flashback: You might remember how Creative Loafing reported that a St. Pete concert promoter was charging $18 a ticket for vaccinated folks and $999.99 per ticket for unvaccinated folks for a punk rock show later this month.
- We noted it in The Pulp the next day, but it seems like the rest of the country just noticed: NBC News, The Hill, and the Washington Post all ran stories on it over the long weekend.
Why you'll hear about this again: Gov. Ron DeSantis' office joined the fray, likening the scheme to a vaccine passport when it told the Post that it "unfairly discriminates against people who have enumerated rights under Florida law."
😎 Ben and Selene are, as promised, on vacation mode. 🌴
We'll catch you back here tomorrow. Stay cool, friends.