My friend Roger from Tampa called the other night to fill me in on the Chinese fire drill that is developing in Tampa over the GOP convention this summer.

The Convention Center is downtown, and downtown is where several major roads and expressways intersect, and is bisected by the Hillsborough River, which can only be crossed at a few points. It is a major crossroads for the entire county, and the Bay makes the entire area south of it off limits to vehicle or train traffic.

The GOP convention and its associated limited-access-by-special-ID-only Security Zone are going to effectively shut down the CBD for a week. A lot of promises were made before planning actually started, and now its turned into a bureaucratic nightmare.

Businesses are howling that their operations will be disrupted, the big commercial office buildings will have to go on holiday, and no one knows how security measures are going to affect the whole show, particularly traffic, especially because of the still unresolved jurisdictional tangle from City, County, State, Federal (and multiple private) law enforcement agencies on the same turf, each issuing conflicting regulations.

To top it off, three of Tampa’s most prosperous, exclusive (and Republican) neighborhoods lie south of the security zone, and residents must travel through it to get anywhere. Two of them, Davis Islands and Harbour (yeah, spelled with a “u”) Place will be essentially cut off, with access across their bridges blocked by security checkpoints. Only Bayshore Boulevard/Hyde Park to the south will have an escape route, but it will force them way out of their way if they want to go the only way there is to go, North. No one is happy about this.

The security regs are draconian, Roger reports even contractors cannot carry potentially dangerous weapons in the area, including two-by-fours. (Yes, they can be turned into truncheons.) On the other hand, even though water pistols are officially banned from the Security Zone, Governor Scott says people with valid carry permits (about every other banjo-plucking redneck in the state)are authorized to exercise their 2nd amendment rights and pack heat there. Yes, that means concealed weapons.

Roger says he’s going to stock up on groceries, beer and weed and not leave his flat for a week, watch the whole fiasco on TV, and pray for an air-conditioner breakdown at the convention center.