Running is healthy lesson foR studentsAcademy Prep partners with the Lightning Foundation to teach students about health and nutrition, hoping the message will spread to their family lives. 3

diary. 2From a Gingerbread House brunch to a Victorian Christmas Stroll, find out the happenings in your local social scene.

Neighborhood News . 4Downtown: The Skatepark of Tampa will hand out skateboards next weekend in its annual “Boards for Bros” giveaway at Perry Har-vey Sr. Park. 4

opiNioN . 6

bUsiNess . 9Palma Ceia: Vietnamese restaurant Indochinois moves to a new location on S Dale Mabry, closer to its customer base.

home & gardeN . 7New Suburb Beautiful: The Levell Design Charity Gar-den Tour this weekend sup-ports Cornerstone Kids.

real estate . 7

thiNgs to do . 11The five-man a cappella group Rockapella brings a holiday show to the Tampa Theatre on Sunday.

Crime . 12-13

A recording studio in Ybor could take your life story to national radio. 4

in the know

tampabay.com Friday, December 12, 2008 TCTPublished Fridays for South Tampa, Central Tampa and adjoining areas.

By TrisTan Wheelockand emily nippsTimes Staff Writers

GANDY — Community activ-ists and cyclists are looking to gather support for what might be another long battle: reopen-ing the Friendship Trail Bridge.

The bridge was closed last month after engineers discov-ered that it had dangerously

deteriorated with chunks drop-ping into Tampa Bay.

Since then, local bicyclists, and business owners have felt the pinch.

“A lot of people think it’s closed totally,” said Bill Robin-son, owner of Gandy Bait and Tackle, which has noticed a decline in business. “There’s construction on the road and

they’ve taken away some of the parking we used to have. It’s a lot of things all at once, that’s what’s bad.”

Alan Snel, director of a local bike alliance called South West Florida Bicycle United Dealers, said the bridge’s partial closing is a major roadblock for local bicy-clists. People who use the bridge

Battle lines drawn again over Friendship Trail Bridge

JAMES BORCHUCK | Times

Friendship Trail park rangers Tom Beams, left, and henry stone let maya mwanza pass to the western side of the bridge. despite its closing, portions of the bridge remain in use.

Activists want more information and the damaged span reopened.

. See Bridge, 10

ARLEEN SPENCELEYGuest columnist

In a ball cap and a wind-breaker, a bearded man checks out the spread: fruit

and pastries, sandwiches and soup, chocolate milk and iced tea.

“What’s up?” he says with a nod at the guy standing in line to his right.

“Same old thing, different day.”Each rips a banana off a

bunch, grabs a couple of sand-wiches and a cup of soup. But before they dig in, they dig through a bucket of hotel soaps and shampoos.

“Got any razors?” one asks. “Any socks?”

Chances are you don’t ask those questions over lunch. But for these guys, and the rest of the women and men who frequent the Kaye Prox Food Bank in Town ’N Country, it isn’t unusual.

That day — the day before Thanksgiving, while many of us watched our turkeys defrost or fought over Publix’s last pump-kin pie — they just asked for what they needed.

They are homeless.

• • •

Their paths first crossed mine last month, when I stopped by the food bank after a volun-teer invited me. Her invitation couldn’t have come at a better time: Our country is in the mid-dle of an economic crisis, our cul-ture is obsessed with having the latest, the biggest and the best, and 20-somethings like me can barely tell the difference between the words want and need.

“That’s why credit cards are maxed out,” said Marilyn Rug-giero, 60, who has volunteered at the food bank for 10 years. “It’s about what you want, not what you need.”

What I want and what I need started to separate a little while I handed out socks to homeless

A wealth of insights on needs vs. wants

. See SPeNCeLeY, 10

MARTHA RIAL | Times

PRiCE: $5.49 to $6.49 per bottle; also sold in setsTo buY: Visit www.intensityacademy.com

JOHN PENDYGRAFT | Times

PRiCE: $49To buY: Call Alvarez at (813) 453-5507, e-mail him at ybormanny@yahoo.com or visit progatos.com.

This holiday season, you can spend your money at the mega-mart, on gifts made in other countries that profit big corporations. Or, you can buy locally, from crafty entrepreneurs right here in Hillsborough County. • Need a reason? How about six? • Try finding these items — some unique and artful, others a bit, well, out there — at the mall.

2 It all started at her kids’ school with the vegetable of the week: the carrot.

Michele Northrup and other parents at Learning Gate Community School decided to create recipes out of carrots grown in its organic garden.

Northrup, lover of all things spicy, cooked up a hot sauce.As she walked the aisles of her neighborhood grocery store, she

noticed nobody else had made a carrot-based hot sauce. Well, the kids loved it. And after she concocted seven more sauces and created an online store, so do hot-heads across the country.

Northrup, 37, founded her business, Intensity Academy, just a little over a year ago. Her sauces have already won 14 national prizes.

There’s her Chai Chipotle, part of a line infused with organic tea. And Carrot Karma, whose habanero peppers give it kick.

She makes a cocktail sauce, a teriyaki sauce and her most popular item, a Chai Chipotle ketchup.

Her ingredients are all trans-fat-free, all-natural and, of course, all spicy. Alexandra Zayas, Times Staff Writer

1 In 1978, a teenage kid named Manny Alvarez had a crazy idea during a game of chess. What if he flipped the board diagonally?

And what if, instead of kings and queens and bishops, the pawns were predators, like lions and leopards and pan-thers?

Thirty years later, after much tooling and tweaking, Alvarez’s game is ready for retail. It’s called Gatos, a Spanish word for cats, where the ultimate way to win is to fatally ambush your opponent’s lion.

Alvarez, 46, lives in Ybor City, within walking distance of the restaurant he owns, Streetcar Charlie’s Bar & Grille.

He has helped form a group of local Gatos players, who occasionally gather at King Corona Cigars to play. This holiday season, he plans to only sell a limited edi-tion of 100 board games.

But he hopes to start mass producing them by the summer. He’s looking for investors.

Alexandra Zayas, Times Staff Writer

3 Farmer Joe Keel needed something to do with his ugly blue-berries — those deformed

or slightly bruised, but that tasted just fine.

Jams? he thought. Jellies? Pies? Wine!He began to experiment with blueberry wine

at home and brought in Vermont native Chase Marden, who had experience developing fruit wines.

That was 2003. Now, Keel and Curley Winery, which rests on 25 acres in Plant City, produces 16 types of wines. Its 100 percent blueberry wines come sweet, semidry and dry.

Other wines include: Peach Chardonnay, Strawberry Riesling, Tanger-ine Tango Zinfandel, Wild Berry Pinot Noir, Mango Citrus Fusion, Key West Key Lime and Black Raspberry.

For the more traditional taste buds, they also produce six types of grape wine. Alexandra Zayas, Times Staff Writer

SKIP O’ROURKE | Times file (2005)

PRiCE: $14.99 for fruit wine bottles; grape wine bottles start at $18.99To buY: Go to the winery’s shop, 5210 W Thonotosassa Road in Plant City. For hours or to order, visit keelandcurleywinery.com or call (813) 752-9100.

Gatos chess-style game | Manny Alvarez, Ybor City

Fruit wine Joe Keel, Plant City

All-natural hot sauce Michele Northrup, North Tampa

For more gift ideas from local entrepreneurs, see Page 5

6 GIFTS WITH LOCAL FLAVOR