Real Estate Views from St Pete

Step aside, Seattle, and let me tell you about the role that Pinellas County, Florida, plays in enjoying coffee:

Terry Davis, of Ambex in Clearwater, is the third largest builder of coffee roasters in the US - machines that cost from $3,500 to $150,000. Whether it's St Petersburg, Oregon, or China - you're likely to find one of Terry's coffee roasters.

There are then about two dozen small coffee roasters in Tampa Bay, including Kahwa.

Then there's the matter of coffee filters. Enter Melitta cone filters. Melitta has been here in Pinellas County for 15 years.

You like flavorings in your cup or in the beans?  Monin's Flavors, in France since 1912, is also in Clearwater, with labs and tastings. The bottles of flavorings you see on the shelves in your local coffee shops, and that you smell in the beans, may well come from Pinellas County, Florida.

It's worth reading the entire coffee article and seeing the photos that were published this morning in Bay, a bi-monthly magazine published by the St Petersburg Times. To go directly to the article, after you've clicked to Bay, go to Page 49.

We attended a VIP reception this week at Signature Place, the architecturally striking new condo in downtown St. Petersburg. This was a chance for a couple of hundred people to view the furnished models, and check out the common areas, enjoying food stations scattered throughout.It started with flutes of champagne in the elevator.

When we went outside into the 6th floor Sky Garden, we were impressed at the staging here at the end. The artificial turf never needs mowing or watering and you won't be bothered by noisy lawnmowers. We thought it was nice to stage this picnic.

After the music started and we were enjoying samples from Mise en Place, we looked over and saw that the staging had even included models! The people hitting golf balls on the putting green were obviously guests at the reception, but these two sunbathers certainly looked like staging!

Signature Place will start closing on sales later this month.

What's a petition on Twitter?  A Twitition.

After spending hours on hold and online with AT&T today to complain that they wouldn't give me a $199 upgrade on the new iPhone 3GS until next March (they really need to allow upgrades as fast as Apple makes them on the iPhone), Tami pointed out to me that

there's a petition on Twitter, a Twitition that

"we the undersigned petition AT&T to offer reasonable iPhone 3GS upgrade prices.  AT&T should give existing customers the same rate for the new iPhone 3Gs that they do for new customers. New customers or not, another 2-year contract is being made."

In 1 day 11 hours there have been 4,956 signatures so far!  Sign it using your Twitter account.

This morning our paper had a long and interesting article from Charles Duhigg, business reporter for the NY Times. He wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine on all the data mining done by/for credit card companies. So, for example, someone who charges felt pads for chair legs or a carbon monoxide detector is far more likely to pay his credit card bill than someone who charges a chrome skull car accessory.

Avoiding for the moment the privacy or ethics issues ...

Wouldn't this data also work to determine who's most likely to pay their mortgage payments? Could doing this lower the interest rate and payments for those most likely to pay their bills?