I made a spontaneous trip down to Tampa, Florida, because my boy James said he was going to make the trip up to Clearwater to visit the Hulk Hogan Beach Store. Frankly, I couldn’t see myself visiting on my own and I’m not sure to who I would be able to force come along, so this was an opportunity that I was not willing to pass up.
As for the store itself, it was pretty much the Hulk Hogan Nostalgia Center located on the Beach for all intents and purposes, filled to the brim with Hogan-related memorabilia, souvenirs, crap on the wall, as well as a huge variety of t-shirts and other chintzy things that all have Hogan’s likeness all over it. And tons of yellow, it was like Asian camouflage in there.
Unfortunately for us, the Hulkster wasn’t actually present at the store when we went; according to the shop’s co-owner, Hogan often does show up, but he was “working out with Nick (his son)” and was not coming in that afternoon. But the best part about the visit was when apparently Dusty Rhodes called the store looking for the Hulkster, to which it dawned on me that Hogan must not like Dusty enough to give him his actual cell phone number or anything, so the American Dream is relegated to calling the store to try and find him. Owned.
And since as a rule of thumb, traveling in the summer to a place and not seeing baseball is akin to breaking the law, we went to the Trop, and watched the Rays play the Blue Jays. And what turned out to be a relaxing garbage time game after the Rays hung seven in a single inning, turned out to be the perfect storm of failure as the BeeJays chipped away at their deficit, and after a massive Fernando Rodney meltdown, take the lead and steal a win from the home team. Owned x2.
