Shuffling Away

Shuffleboard courts in downtown Avon Park, Florida


Shuffleboard and golden days of retirement are entwined in Florida mythology. In the mid to late twentieth century, there wasn't a trailer court in the state worth a lick if it didn't have a shuffleboard court or two. This association with the elderly has been a bit of a public relations challenge in attracting new fans to the sport, although the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club has a very popular Friday night session with live music.

Playing shuffleboard in St. Petersburg, back in the day (Florida State Archives)


The Kissimmee All States Tourist Club's shuffleboard courts will be torn down soon as part of the city's Lakefront Park redevelopment. Grass-roots efforts to save or at least commemorate the courts include the Facebook group Save Our Shuffleboard. KAST is the subject of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Story of the Day today: Florida To Lose 1941 Shuffleboard Courts.

Festa Italiana 2008 in Ybor City

Several city blocks in Ybor City are blocked off this weekend for Festa Italiana -- today and tomorrow, everyone in Tampa is Italian! The highlight of today's activities were the bocce ball tournament and the wine judging. Tomorrow thousands more people will crowd into Centennial Park for food, games, and music. (Perhaps a few will wander over to the Ybor City Museum State Park to see the new exhibit, Sicilians in Tampa, sponsored by the Ybor City Museum Society and curated by yours truly.)

Photos below:

1) The bocce tournament in Ybor's Centennial Park, March 29, 2008
2) The City's Fortune Bosco Bocce Courts, near the Centro Ybor parking garage
3) Sign across the street from the Bocce Courts marking the location of Ybor City's first railroad station. This is where many Sicilians began their Florida adventures, stepping from the train platform to sandy Ybor streets.

Prize Property

A relic of my husband's youth in Miami, dredged from the bottom of the family game closet: Prize Property, the 1974 Milton Bradley land development board game. The object: "to develop wastelands into prize properties."

At the start of the game, the board is covered with overlays showing the undeveloped land, brown and in places, on fire. Old brick factories and farm buildings stand abandoned, gaping holes in their roofs. These overlays are removed as players "improve" their property, revealing lush green sites where casinos and resort hotels may be built.

To win, you must be the first to construct all nine of your resort buildings. On the waterfront, you build a tennis & swim club, a marina, and camp grounds. In the middle tier, you build a golf course, a health spa, and a dude ranch. And finally, you build a hotel, a casino, and a ski lodge. Nope, no affordable housing for the people who run your properties, but the little buildings sure are cute.

The money is counted in the millions, and players must navigate town meetings; legal actions are settled by drawing colored marbles from a plastic gavel. Periodically, a marina is flooded or a camp ground burns.

Aside from creative genius of the game's design, it's actually pretty dull to play and it comes in a large awkward box. But we keep it around because it's just so..., well, they just don't make them like this any more.