Nice pics I see my FD. We should start planning the next one soon that way people will most likely show up because they will be able to plan for it ahead of time.

 

this meet will fail unless they stop making it at the farthest possible point of land in the bay area. even a bi-monthly type of meet doesn't need to be a huge bbq ordeal. it would have alot more success just as a small meet somewhere in the evening, possibly in a parking lot, and then if people want to eat, have it near a restaurant where people can go inside and stuff.

getting to ft desoto is a task in itself unless you already live in st. petersburg, and making a whole day out of it is senseless, unless it was a meet that was really large.

 

We should find out where we can have car meets. Maybe Dan has a point. I know I'll be attending a local car meet next sunday night in a parking lot. They seem to have good turn outs too.

 

The Nissans used to meet at best buy on dale mabry and i-275, before that, it was a huge parking lot on the northwest corner of bearss and dale mabry (with an applebees in walking distance).

centralized location would help. i don't honestly think there is enough of a mazda community that would show up every month though. it would be nicer if there was, but we're obviously not large like the nissan/ford/honda communities sometimes. i'd be down with a monthly or bi-monthly meet that was small and lasted like 2 or 3 hours, like at 7pm on a saturday night or something. or a friday. just show up and chill and talk, maybe dinner after. otherwise, i would suggest keeping the large bbq style planned meets for either larger groups like big big mazda meets, or have them 2-3 times a year like have a spring one, summer one, and fall one (the holidays are shitty times to have meets, fyi).

maybe need to have a new thread gauging interest on who in this forum is actually active and would think about coming to something every once in a while. i dont mind a smaller group sometimes.

there isn't as much cohesion within mazda because alot of times you have the rotary group and then you have the 'other' cars, and miata group sometimes. everyone gets along but alot of times people don't share knowledge as much as say, a 240 or honda group would because most of their cars involve pretty much shared knowledge. and there isn't enough people to have a specific type of meet.


edit - if we found a current meet that wasn't too ricey and obnoxious, we could start meeting there, and just have our own little group, but still be able to mingle with other cars and such.

 

I agree ft desoto is WAY too far. Weve never tried having a meet in Tampa, even though ive suggested it a few times.

 

Well trying to find a centralized location and a big enough place is kind of hard. Friday nights would be good though. Where is everyone from? I'm from St. Pete. I'm guessing some of you guys are North from me, just by suggesting you guys wanting to meet up in Tampa.

 

We could more than likely use the park smack in the middle of north tampa. Lake Park. Decent amount of parking spaces and bbq pits to use (i think) and tables. Not too many people chill out there. Maybe try and go early.


I'll take photos of the area if you guys aren't sure about it.


here's the area
Google Maps



Interested?

 

Well we have some good ideas here and I really think we should start planning the next event now. We should probably start two lists, one for people interested in going to these meets and another for possible locations of where we could go to meet up. It's true that the Mazda community isn't the biggest in the area, but we should still be able to pull a few people together and have some decent size meets.

I am from the St. Pete area and even though I know my way around Tampa I don't really know a lot of actual places we could meet. I do know though that if we wanted to have a meet in the St. Pete area we could go to Lake Seminole Park. It's a real nice park with lots of shelters and grills to BBQ on and we can reserve a shelter right next to the lake. I know Chris brought his kayak last time to the Ft. Desoto meet and I have on as well so we could launch right from the shelter almost and kayak around in the lake. Just a suggestion for one possible place if anyone wanted to go.

As far as a list goes for suggestions and people interested maybe we should start a new thread so we can get the planning going.

 

Honestly I have not been ignoring everyone when they asked for a Tampa meet and the meets have been every 2 months. The problem with the tampa park department is that they want money for shelter rentals as opposed to pinellas that does free shelter reservations. The last meet @ Fort De Soto was rained out but we still had over 35 carsand around 50 people show up. We chilled in the shelter and bbq'd with umbrelas. This meet was @ desoto to make up for that rained out meet. So, everyone pitch in figure something out. The most centralized area in pinellas is in Phillipe park in safety harbor.

 

A meet in Tampa might work, I'm willing to try it if we think of and agree on a spot.