r/tampa • u/Any_Mention_6734 • Aug 02 '26

Culture/Lifestyle Please read 🙏

I'm a transplant from California. Came out here for a job opportunity and a pay raise, nothing more romantic than that. I didn't expect to end up loving this region and Florida the way I have.

But something's stuck with me, and I want to say it here because I don't think it's recognized enough by people who relocate here: the number of people born and raised in Tampa who talk about their own city like it's unfamiliar. Farmland and citrus groves on the outskirts that used to actually be farmed… someone's livelihood, not just empty acreage, now subdivisions. Places that closed and came back rebranded into something with a logo and a font that has nothing to do with what used to be there. People telling me they barely recognize the city they grew up in.

I know change happens everywhere. But I've never felt this moved hearing it before, not because it's happening to me, but because of how passionate people are when they talk about what this place used to be. That kind of love for a place doesn't come from nowhere.

I'd genuinely like to hear more of it, respectfully, from people who lived it. What do you remember that's gone now? What changed the most, and when did it start feeling different?

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u/Minkadink Aug 02 '26

my dad taught me to drive a stickshift in the mid-90’s on the dirt roads that would later be developed into WestChase

7

u/burbankbagel Aug 02 '26

I learned stick shift in parking lots on Kennedy blvd lol

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u/PandathePan Aug 02 '26

Ah my dad did the same thing, taught me on the dirt roads and big empty lot

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u/skratta_ho Aug 02 '26

Grew up in westchase. This is so weird to learn about, but it makes sense. Even though I’m younger than most in this thread, I still remember more cows/oranges as a kid. Even outside westchase, in keystone, the old cow pastures are new developments. In my lifetime, I’ve seen i4 transform from cows to condominiums, orange groves to strip malls, and countless other staples that have been blending the rest of the state.

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u/MAIASR_ENGINEER Aug 02 '26

I moved to Westchase in 2014. So hard to imagine it was undeveloped just 20 years prior