By Francine Messano
Happy Buddha Yoga Lounge
It’s been said that I’m making a “leap of faith” with opening the Happy Buddha Yoga Lounge in downtown Tampa but I think I’m just following through with my long standing desire to see downtown neighborhoods become wonderfully rich and vibrant places.
Almost 7 years ago my three daughters and I moved from a traditional home in Lutz to a loft in the Channel District. Besides being raised in a city environment in New Jersey, I was being influenced by the projects I was working on while a graduate student at the University of South Florida School of Architecture and Community Design. These projects enabled me to see the creative potential of city blocks and vacant warehouses. People called those of us who moved downtown “pioneers” but I knew what was to come and I needed to be a part of it. After graduating and working in the architecture and design field for 4 years, I began to realize that my profession would continue to suffer because of the economic downturn. With past experience in sports and teaching spin class, I had toyed with the idea of becoming a yoga instructor. Yoga was beginning to be very important in my life. It made a huge change my ability to deal with stress, it relieved the pain I began to experience due to sitting for long hours at the computer and it also was getting me into amazing shape.
As I worked through my yoga teacher training, a couple who really took a leap of faith and opened a bike shop in downtown a year ago, urged me to check out the available office space one door down from them. Once I did, my creative mind took strong hold and I realized that this was going to be the next opportunity to become an active part of the city’s vitalization. Out came the purple carpet, down came a wall and the space began to show its potential. My oldest daughter, who is an artist, even drew the most beautiful 20’ long sketch on the wall.
The result of my efforts is the Happy Buddha Yoga Lounge, which is within walking distance to businesses and residences, incorporates my love of yoga and desire to share it with city dwellers and also my desire to share my creativity through the design of the space. In the years to come, I will remain a pioneer because I believe that downtown Tampa needs the continuing vision and efforts of its creative community. We are the ones who can bring it to life.
During the last two great depressions in the U.S., hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of people organized to meet their basic needs when the mainstream economy and centralized monetary system failed them. Unemployed poor folks got together to create time dollar stores and cooperative mills, farms, health care systems, foundries, repair and recycling facilities, distribution warehouses, and a myriad of other service exchanges.
A slow storm. That’s how 
