Coolin' By Day...

March 13, 2018

Salt n Pepa 



 



Coolin’ By Day…

Spring Break and the island of Key West fills up with college students here in all their annual party-filled, traffic inducing, scooter horn-honking glory. It is always a good time to slip away for a nice spring break weekend of my own with a quick trip to Tampa/St. Pete to kick off the Indy Car racing season at the St. Pete Grand Prix. Throw in one of the best beer festivals in the country, a great music festival, a quick trip to Disney and even a trip to the Florida Strawberry Festival and you have an action packed few days. 



 





Kathy stayed home on this trip, this is her year on to attend the Indy 500 and she only commits to attending a single race a year. Plus her long-time Scott was here visiting from Colorado and she wanted to see the BoDeans concert at the KW Theater. So I flew solo up to Orlando and using my annual Disney pass, headed over to Epcot to see the annual Flower and Garden Festival that they have going on there.











It was a beautiful day, not too crowded and about as pleasant as you would want as I checked out the displays that they had up for the festival. The entire grounds were alive with beautiful flowers, topiary designs and specialty food, drinks and vendors to support the Garden theme. Disney does everything top notch and this festival was no exception. I absolutely love going to Epcot and always enjoy my frequent visits there.















After a great afternoon at Epcot, I was in the car for the short drive over to the Florida Strawberry Festival in Plant City. It is an event that I had never attended, but the main stage entertainment for the evening was the “I Love the 90’s” tour featuring the likes of Tone Loc, Salt n Pepa and Vanilla Ice and as it was on the way, I really wanted to check it out.









The Strawberry festival is massive, almost as large as a good State Fair and with much of the same entertainment and amusements. In fact the Midway was twice as large as most state fairs that I had been to and there were also the standard fair food, expositions and entertainment. The only thing lacking was the presence of farm animals that are found at many similar fairs. Instead the focus was on agriculture, specifically the Strawberry which is grown in abundance in the rural areas surrounding the fairgrounds.



 



 



It was a ton of fun and I really enjoyed the Strawberry Festival and that was before the concert even started. The main reason I wanted to go was to see the female rap duo Salt N Pepa, who I have been a fan with since their inception, but had never seen live prior to this. They were really fantastic, still and performed a nice set that featured all their hits from the 90s including megahits like “Let’s Talk About Sex”, “Whatta Man” and of course “Push It”. 

Salt n Pepa

Tone Loc 







They still looked and sounded as good as ever and I simply loved their show, they really are iconic figures in music as they were among the first female rappers to truly break and make it big, winning multiple grammys, soul train awards and others. They played a video montage of the history of the band to open the show and is really remarkable all that they accomplished. Why they were not the headliners over Vanilla Ice still escapes me.

 







I enjoyed Tone Loc as well, though he was not nearly as good as Salt N Pepa, neither was Vanilla Ice, who while still having some decent moves, really was never that great of a rapper to begin with. I did not stick around to hear his one hot and was well on my way to St. Pete when he got around to playing it. It was a nice way to kick off the weekend and Salt N Pepa rocked.