Photo c/o Blake Yeager
Matthew Jost poses inside Old Hillsborough Bay in Tampa, Florida on Sept. 28, 2022.
Negative storm surge sucked the water out of Old Hillsborough Bay last night, and while the New York Times got a little confused about our local geography, one of its photographers did manage to catch a glimpse of Florida Man at work.
On Wednesday, as onlookers dangerously flirted with nature by walking beyond the Bayshore balustrade and onto the temporary shoreline, Hilary Swift bumped into Tampa artist Blake Yeager and clothier-philanthropist Matthew Jost who were staging a photo.
“Honestly the main objective was for Florida Man to enter the sea and tell Ian. ‘He said unto thee, go back from whence you came,’” Yeager—a musician and photographer who’s also made headlines for his “Tiger King” photos—told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “And we’ll be damned if it didn’t seem to work.”
Jost and Yeager have been friends and collaborators for years, and were among those entranced by the science behind negative storm surge.
“We thought it would be a killer backdrop for a state-triotic shoot. We marched through the gusts and muck into the bay proudly carrying our state flag,” Yeager said
They naturally got honked at and heckled with ‘We love you Florida Man!’chants before they bumped into Swift
“The cameras were rolling, the horns were honking and the phones were flying for sure and we felt an amazing charge of brotherly love and a lot of ‘We love you Florida Man!’”
This story originally ran at Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.