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My Accidental Run-In With the Scientology Headquarters
It was as weird as you could expect
It is almost a cliche to make fun of Scientology, mostly because they make it so easy. The Onion has skewered them repeatedly, with headlines like, “Scientology Losing Ground To Fictionology”.
I have a unique perspective on this because I live near their global headquarters in Tampa Bay. Last week, I visited it accidentally and realized there’s only one small thing separating them from a normal religion.
First, it gets quiet
I was driving across the Howard Franklin Bridge, enjoying the scenic view of Tampa Bay’s shimmering blue waters. I intended to have a simple, fun day with the spouse near the water, checking out stores.
We parked and began exploring. As we crossed a sidewalk downtown, surrounded by tall buildings, I said to Laura, “Why is it suddenly so quiet? That’s weird.”
She glanced around and said, “It is weird. Did we scare everyone off?”
“This has a strange post-apocalyptic abandoned town feel. Maybe we are in a movie?” I said.
“What’s it called?” Laura said.
“The Day After,” I said with authoritative finality.
Then we turned a corner to a smaller block and noticed all the buildings were mostly-white, which wasn’t by accident. We’d stumbled into one of Scientology’s expanding campuses.
There were sci-fi symbols on some of the buildings and the occasional car driving by. I joked to Laura, “I hope I’m not frozen in liquid nitrogen and thrown into L. Ron Hubbard’s volcano.”
I’d known Scientology owned extensive real estate in the area, including several entire blocks in Clearwater. What I didn’t realize is how extensive, and fast they’d grown — they owned half the city it felt like.
There was an odd deceptiveness to the layout. Buildings that didn’t seem related to Scientology were owned by the church. It’s total troll-town, clickbait stuff: buildings named “United For Human Rights”:
