Although I live in North Tampa right now, my family lived in Venice for most of my childhood.
Sarasota County isn’t exactly the best place to live under 40 years old, but it was much worse in the 1990s and early 2000s.
By the time I got to high school, my friends and I would pack ourselves into a car and drive to downtown Sarasota to find some kind of fun for the evening. We would walk the streets near the marina and crack jokes about school and work life. One of my high school friends went to the University of Tampa right along the water on the Hillsborough River. Instead of driving a car up and down interstate 75 to get up to Hillsborough County, he had a moped that he rode up and down U.S. 41 and U.S. 301 if he could avoid heavy traffic. Thankfully when I applied to the University of South Florida here in North Tampa, I had a car to get to and from my parent’s house on weekends or during holidays. Now I have a small house here up on Temple Terrace and couldn’t be happier with the selection of businesses, especially contractors like heating and cooling companies. I found my HVAC supplier through scouring internet reviews to see who had the least amount of angry, ranting, former-customers publishing their experiences on the internet. My heating and cooling company is located in Tampa but they service other communities in the greater Tampa Bay area like Brandon and St. Petersburg. They also offer discounts for senior citizens and anyone on disability or federal assistance.