(Bradenton, FL Mayor Wayne H. Poston, prepared to mediate all disputes between local thugs)
Tim Marchman spent a month last weekend in Bradenton, the Grapefruit League home of the Pittsburgh Pirates and a town whose Chamber Of Commerce would probably prefer you read the burg’s wiki entry than the following from the Slate baseball scribe.
I spied a corrugated metal shack promoting boxing on weeknight evenings, storefront Pentecostalist churches and donut shops with hand-painted window signs out of Walker Evans, grim pawnshops with long rows of shotguns for sale, local headlines revolving around the travails of the dog track, storefronts for rent for $800 and cars for sale for $600 and lots of kids on bicycles, and shared good times at the Greyhound station with two toughs trying to one-up one another with absurd tales of their time inside and knowledge of obscurely nicknamed and highly fertile Ft. Myers thugs. You will not hear a bad word about Bradenton pass my lips.