From speakeasies to suds and savasana
Once a corporate wasteland, downtown Tampa is now home to bars and breweries
TAMPA, FLA.— Technically, this isn’t hot yoga, but within a matter of minutes, I’m sweating — in fact, I’m sweating a lot. Trickles inching down my back, rivulets rolling over my face, great dollops flopping and pooling onto my borrowed mat.
From the front, a local DJ named Dempsy pumps out a steady hip-hop beat, and it pounds, at this moment, almost as hard as my heart. With me set up near the back, a couple feet from a row of bar stools, DJ Dempsy starts to spin an old-school set of songs and, as the instructor moves around the big room, pushing us into an increasingly difficult series of poses, I have to admit: I’m not quite down with OPP (yeah, you know me).
But within a couple minutes, I’m down, semi-permanently, into a prone pose — and definitely not prepared by the next song, not ready to Shoop with Salt-N-Pepa. Checkmate. Savasana.
My sweaty sojourn in this brewery on a Sunday morning is just the beginning of my adventure in Tampa, one where I’m looking to taste this city’s best brews — and beyond.
“Beer yoga” has quickly become a thing in Tampa, and in this case Camp Tampa, a nearby fitness studio, has collaborated with a craft brewery called 81 Bay to raise money for autism awareness — with yoga and beer.
Eager to rehydrate, I chug a tall glass of ice water and then order up a pint of frosty raspberry ale, and mingle. The crowd of about 50 participants includes a wide range of ages and sizes, from young singles and couples to middle-aged men, and about half of those who gathered for yoga decide to hang around for a drink.
Sufficiently towelled off, I chat with Shawn Bowman, one of 81 Bay’s three owners, who tells me the yoga sessions here fit with their overall philosophy — to make craft beer more accessible.
That, he says, includes their space, which features fun, like foosball and dart boards and board games, as well as rotating art exhibits.
And it extends to the brews, too, which are, he emphasizes in beerspeak, “sessionable” — code for light and easy to drink, perfect for the muggy Tampa weather.
“We come out with beach beers and boat beers and pool beers, where you can have five or six and not be down on the floor,” he explains. I find three 20-something women, still standing, over by the bar, and ask them what brought them here on a Sunday morning.
“It’s not boring and I love the music,” says Maureen Mulheran, and then her friend, Mallory Nelson, nicely sums it up. “Because there’s beer.”
Heading to Cigar City Brewing to learn more about making — and drinking — beer on Florida’s Gulf Coast, I take a tour of its semi-industrial space with a big-bearded dude named Kevin Shanks.
The actual brewery came first, he says, with its mash tun and other shiny equipment, while the tap room and other fancier touches were finished later.
This place, Shanks maintains, was the cradle of the local craft-brewing movement, adding they’ve created more than 1,000 different kinds of beer since opening in 2009.
Their bestseller, he says, is something called Jai Alai, named after a Basque Spanish sport that used to flourish in these parts. “It’s the first tropical IPA,” Shanks notes. I try it later in the tap room — and taste some distinct hints of pineapple and mango.
Other liquids flow through Tampa, too.
Making the trip northeast to the part of town that gave the city its nickname (Cigar City), I try some sweet Cuban café con leche at a small spot called Tabanero, where men and women still hand-roll cigars, creating just a tiny fraction of the millions that were made in this neighbourhood, Ybor, in the 19th century.
Walking a couple blocks over to Rock Brothers Brewing, the bartenders there encourage me to sample a few of their beers, explaining the owners collaborate with bands to create signature brews, and that everyone from local favourites to ’90s southern-rock juggernauts Hootie and the Blowfish have left a liquid legacy here.
Before leaving Ybor, I skirt around a couple of the area’s famous freeroaming chickens, stopping in at Fish Hawk Spirits, part of the restored Centro Ybor shopping complex, for a tasting of tangerine brandy, golden rum and blueberry vodka, all made from Florida ingredients.
And craft cocktails are now flowing again through the city’s downtown. Once a corporate wasteland — where pretty much everyone went home after work, leaving the streets deserted — Tampa’s core is now home to some of its coolest cocktail bars.
For example, there’s Hotel Bar, which opened just a few months ago and where mixologists create their own takes on classics from legendary hotels around the world, and Fly, one of the first to open downtown more than a decade ago and which now features live music every night and a rooftop bar on the weekends.
Down the street at Anise, bartender Evan Campbell makes me an “old fashioned Old Fashioned,” grabbing the ingredients from the backlit bar, careful not to muddle the orange, lest the drink finish too sweet. As we chat, he mentions The Back Room — a new venture for the bar.
With another patron who happens to overhear our conversation, Campbell takes the two of us back there, first to an eerily empty alley (“this is normal,” the other man remarks to me with a half smile, as we stand alone in the silence, just before Campbell opens the door), then to the actual room, small and stylish with a pushed tin ceiling and a limited list of top-shelf cocktails.
“Tampa is ready for this,” Campbell remarks. “We’re ready for the next thing.”
He insists this isn’t a speakeasy — not in the truest sense. So, I decide to visit one, just a few blocks from my hotel, a secretive spot called Ciro’s. As I make my way on foot, I consider the fact that, yes, in theory, a speakeasy is supposed to be difficult to find. That’s the whole point.
But as I begin my second circumnavigation of the building that Google Maps tells me houses this bar — a mid-century white seaside affair with apartments and balconies — I start to feel a bit ridiculous, a man wandering through parking lots and dragging my dress shoes over dewy lawns in the sultry southern air.
I finally give in, fumbling for my phone and calling the place, where they assure me I’m close, directing me in real time around some bushes and past a pool and down a walkway to a wooden door where an eye-level slat suddenly slides open. I give the password (“mint julep”) and am shown to a reserved booth, near the back.
Soon, I’ve left that little enclave and sidled up to the bar, sitting on a stool and chatting with a couple of young women and a bartender inevitably named Snake, who, when I ask him to demonstrate the coolest thing he can do, performs an “absinthe presentation,” taking out a blowtorch and burning up some rosemary to smoke the glass, before making the drink, which tastes equal parts smoky and tropical.
It all seems about right for Tampa, an even mix of smooth and citrus — and a secret that, for all intents and purposes, is now out. Tim Johnson (travel@thestar.ca) was a guest of Visit Tampa Bay, which didn’t review or approve this story.