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• Image via Jeremy Porter/Facebook

After reportedly accepting a $100 bet to mess with a shark, a man found himself with the animal latched onto his arm at a Florida beach last weekend.

A video posted to Facebook on Monday, which has now been widely shared, shows an unidentified man calmly standing around with his right arm firmly wedged in the jaws of a baby nurse shark.

According to CBS 12, the incident occurred at Jensen Beach over the weekend, and the Martin County Fire Department was called to help assist. After about a 20 minute struggle, the shark was reportedly let go after responders poured alcohol on its face. The shark was then released back into the ocean.
While mostly docile creatures, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says nurse sh...

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• PHOTO BY CASEY BROOKE LAWSON/TAMPA BAY VIPERS

A recent column on the XFL Newsroom posed a simple question: When the XFL returns, should the Tampa Bay Vipers stay in Tampa?

The column cites poor attendance compared to the other XFL teams for the games played at Raymond James Stadium, explains how the XFL could capitalize on the markets created by the recently deceased Alliance of American Football (AAF), and gets into how the recent hype surrounding the Bucs could make the Vipers an “afterthought” to football fans in Tampa.

The column proposed that the Vipers move to was Orlando, which had the Orlando Apollos in the AAF, coached by former-Buc Steve Spurrier...

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• Photo via Drew Farwell/Unsplash

Today, the first Saturday of September, is a License-Free Saltwater Fishing Day in Florida.

It’s one of the eight license-free fishing days offered by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Florida, of course, isn’t just known for being the Sunshine State. It’s actually the “Fishing Capital of the World” because of the many lakes, rivers and ocean waters available to Floridians for fishing.

Usually, hauling in a big one off the coast would cost you. It may not be an arm and a leg, but paying $301.50 for a lifetime Saltwater or Freshwater Fishing License isn’t financially feasible for everyone.

Anyone today, from little kids to avid fishers, can enjoy the catch without the license...

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• Photo by Jen Cray for Orlando Weekly
• Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts

Back in March, Winter Park’s Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts was one of the area’s first music venues to begin adapting to the new pandemic reality by becoming a soundstage for remote live performances.

Their maiden foray into that realm, starring Terri Binion and Beth McKee, turned out to be the last concert I would see in person this year. Here’s what it was like.

• First Takes

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• Michelle Mailhot

On Saturday, the hardworking minds at Blue Bamboo will  unveil their next phase of streaming content. Hosted by local performer-educator Michelle Mailhot, new weekly music series First Takes debuts this Saturday at 8 p.m. through Blue Bamboo’s website with a free ...

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• Screenshot via the Florida Channel

A day after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers announced they would play their first two games in Raymond James Stadium without spectators, Gov. Ron DeSantis urged the team to allow fans to attend.

“If the Bucs had fans, I would try to go to the first home game. I would,” DeSantis said during a Thursday roundtable in St. Petersburg about bars and breweries. “I am not going to go if other fans are not allowed.”

DeSantis, who has repeatedly expressed excitement for the football team he grew up supporting and its off-season signing of quarterback Tom Brady, said the reopening of the Raymond James Stadium to fans is important for the Tampa Bay community.

DeSantis noted that the stadium is scheduled to host Super Bowl LV on Feb...

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• Photo via UCF Football/Twitter

Florida will host a college-football national championship game, no matter how few conferences take to the gridiron this fall, Gov. Ron DeSantis maintains.

And DeSantis, in including college football among the industries needed to revive the economy, isn’t shy in saying the Big Ten Conference would be making a “huge mistake” by not allowing its schools to play this season.

“These are kids that have worked their whole lives for this. And to take that away, when it doesn’t need to be taken away, was a huge, huge mistake that the Big Ten made,” DeSantis said Monday during an appearance with White House coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas...

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World Honey Bee Day came and went Aug. 15, but it wasn’t a celebration: Over 40 percent of insect species are threatened with extinction. Thanks to science, we know exactly why: habitat loss, pollution from pesticides, invasive species and climate change all play a significant role. But because professional scientists only have so much time, they cannot always collect all of the data needed to understand where different species are or how populations are changing at the local or global scale. And without our help, professional researchers can’t speak strongly enough to advocate for the policies we need to reverse current trends.

One obvious solution to both challenges is citizen science, which brings the public into the research process...

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• Image via Google Maps

Gov. Ron DeSantis said he hopes to give Floridians the “ability to have some enjoyment in their life” by soon lifting on-site drinking restrictions imposed on bars and craft breweries since late June.

The restrictions were put in place due to widespread non-compliance with coronavirus safety guidelines. But DeSantis said Thursday after nearly six months of Floridians living amid the pandemic, “I know people really yearn to have a sense of normalcy.”

“I know it’s been difficult, and I just want to let you know that these are not things that we take lightly,” DeSantis said at the conclusion of discussion in St. Petersburg with bar and brewery operators. “It stinks, and like I’m not happy for how everything’s gone...

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Webster’s Dictionary defines “tenet” – in a phrase that takes you 10 seconds to read – as “a principle, belief, or doctrine generally held to be true, especially one held in common by members of an organization, movement or profession.” After two and a half hours, I still don’t know how Christopher Nolan defines it.

In the first big-budget, studio release of the COVID-19 era, Nolan has delivered the eagerly anticipated follow-up to his 2017 masterpiece, Dunkirk. Perhaps haunted by the fact that we are unable to travel back in time to save the thousands of men who died on the beaches of Dunkirk, France, in 1940, Nolan has created a film whose characters save the world by communicating with the future to voyage into the past to save the present...