Our instructor at the dispatcher training seminar was excellent, a great facilitator, the first time I have ever seen someone truly facilitating rather than simply teaching and she did it beautifully. The down side was that we never got out before the appointed time... This was not a junket I was on, which is good news for future dispatchers I may be training as they will ultimately get the benefit of the mass of techniques that I learned. All of which is not to say I didn't take the time to enjoy myself on a little after-school solo field trip, which required me to get on the horrid Highway 19 and bug out south:
It rather amazes me to realise that I lived in St Petersburg fully 19 years ago. I left California with my 20 foot sailboat on a friend's trailer and he launched me in the Gulf of Mexico at Port Aransas and from there I made my solo way around to Florida, along the intracoastal waterway, finally sailing into St Petersburg's Vinoy basin where I anchored and got a job at WMNF Radio in Tampa. In those days there were no docks at the Vinoy and one could anchor for as long as one wanted without interference, and on this trip I discovered sailboats are back at the Vinoy:
And according to a couple of photo-shy dudes spiffing up their dinghy (right where I used to land my dinghy!) people hang at anchor for as long as they want.St Petersburg is the beachy half of Tampa Bay. Tampa itself is an agglomeration of brick buildings, modern skyscrapers and miles and miles of suburbs spreading all over the countryside. St Pete is limited to it's peninsula, more or less and the gulf coast is one long beach (overseen by several small municipalities that St Petersburg is lusting after and wanting to annex- lately unincorporated Terra Ceia). The town used to be known for its green benches and huge population of shuffle boarding retirees. These days most of the benches that are left are white and occupied by younger, perhaps less motivated residents:
The approaches to downtown are the usual wide open streets, and a mishmash of local businesses, chain stores and unoccupied buildings. This is Central Avenue heading east:
From a long way away one can see the tall bank building rising up over downtown with it's unmistakable brown roof:
And from the water I remember the big white hockey puck of a stadium roof. These days its paid for by a juice company in the manner of modern stadiums bought and sold to sponsors, but in the bad old days it was a white elephant that leaked, cost the city money and couldn't attract a team to save its life. It doesn't look to me like it improved its neighborhood:
St Pete took advantage of the boom of the 1990's to build attractive downtown lofts and condos and develop a core that tried to attract life to downtown. I visited in around 2000 and it was a much more lively town than when I had lived here on my sailboat. Downtown on this past sunny Sunday evening was still pretty in its own way:
They even masked the municipal parking garage with murals and stuccoed walls to make it look like just another office building. I may have been alone in my admiration for a boring city parking lot, but not for my admiration of the Bonneville in the midst of this urban planning:
Which was the moment when I heard a loud popping noise, that sound only made possible by a two stroke Vespa using a muffler with attitude, and this young tattooed dude showed up to go hang with his buds- in downtown St Petersburg! Definitely not the largest above ground cemetery in the world, as they used to call this city of old aged pensioners.
We talked Vespas for a bit and he confessed he had been thinking of riding to Orlando on his tricked out PX150. Naturally I egged him on, never one to quash someone else's dream. I hope he has the nuts to follow through and take the ride.
The approaches to downtown are the usual wide open streets, and a mishmash of local businesses, chain stores and unoccupied buildings. This is Central Avenue heading east:From a long way away one can see the tall bank building rising up over downtown with it's unmistakable brown roof:And from the water I remember the big white hockey puck of a stadium roof. These days its paid for by a juice company in the manner of modern stadiums bought and sold to sponsors, but in the bad old days it was a white elephant that leaked, cost the city money and couldn't attract a team to save its life. It doesn't look to me like it improved its neighborhood:St Pete took advantage of the boom of the 1990's to build attractive downtown lofts and condos and develop a core that tried to attract life to downtown. I visited in around 2000 and it was a much more lively town than when I had lived here on my sailboat. Downtown on this past sunny Sunday evening was still pretty in its own way: They even masked the municipal parking garage with murals and stuccoed walls to make it look like just another office building. I may have been alone in my admiration for a boring city parking lot, but not for my admiration of the Bonneville in the midst of this urban planning:Which was the moment when I heard a loud popping noise, that sound only made possible by a two stroke Vespa using a muffler with attitude, and this young tattooed dude showed up to go hang with his buds- in downtown St Petersburg! Definitely not the largest above ground cemetery in the world, as they used to call this city of old aged pensioners.We talked Vespas for a bit and he confessed he had been thinking of riding to Orlando on his tricked out PX150. Naturally I egged him on, never one to quash someone else's dream. I hope he has the nuts to follow through and take the ride. Back at the waterfront I wandered for a good long bit checking out my old haunts, the place I called the Martian Embassy, known locally as The Pier:
It's one of those architectural abominations that grow on you the more you live around them, and I was glad to see tons of people out enjoying the unusually mild spring afternoon. The Gulf of Mexico is the place where humidity reaches Amazonian proportions in the summer. There is not a drop of wind, combined with humongous downpours and lightning storms that would scare most people into religious fervor, especially if they live on boats ( lightning and sailboats are a gruesome combination- worse for sailors than pirates wind storms and foreigners combined). I moved my boat into the marina at Demen's Landing when I met a woman:
Peter Demens was one of two men who founded St Petersburg. He and John Williams flipped a coin and the winner got to name the city- the winner was Demens who hailed from Russia. So the other dude, Williams, got to name his other dream, a luxury hotel for the railway terminus after his home town. Which was how the somewhat dilapidated Hotel Detroit came to be in downtown St Pete. And it's Demens Landing, not Demon's Landing, thank you.
They were graduating students from the University of South Florida campus in St Pete Sunday so I managed to disrupt them a bit, and I flashed a picture of this landmark as I rolled by:
To my eternal shame this is where I confess I have never gone to the Dali Museum, though my wife who, paradoxically has, says its fabulous. I am a cretin even on my good days.
It's one of those architectural abominations that grow on you the more you live around them, and I was glad to see tons of people out enjoying the unusually mild spring afternoon. The Gulf of Mexico is the place where humidity reaches Amazonian proportions in the summer. There is not a drop of wind, combined with humongous downpours and lightning storms that would scare most people into religious fervor, especially if they live on boats ( lightning and sailboats are a gruesome combination- worse for sailors than pirates wind storms and foreigners combined). I moved my boat into the marina at Demen's Landing when I met a woman:Peter Demens was one of two men who founded St Petersburg. He and John Williams flipped a coin and the winner got to name the city- the winner was Demens who hailed from Russia. So the other dude, Williams, got to name his other dream, a luxury hotel for the railway terminus after his home town. Which was how the somewhat dilapidated Hotel Detroit came to be in downtown St Pete. And it's Demens Landing, not Demon's Landing, thank you.They were graduating students from the University of South Florida campus in St Pete Sunday so I managed to disrupt them a bit, and I flashed a picture of this landmark as I rolled by:
To my eternal shame this is where I confess I have never gone to the Dali Museum, though my wife who, paradoxically has, says its fabulous. I am a cretin even on my good days.However I have hung around the boatyards of Salt Creek and they are still there thriving without me:
In the unpretentious neighborhoods of south St Pete:
I don't ever wish to go back to those days, as i wasn't particularly happy and fled back to California as fast as I could, but there is a nostalgia in realising how much time has passed and how unlikely it was that I would ever find myself prowling these old dilapidated neighborhoods wondering where the years have gone. Because they have gone and won't come back and all I can think to do is to keep on keeping on making every day count.
In the unpretentious neighborhoods of south St Pete:I don't ever wish to go back to those days, as i wasn't particularly happy and fled back to California as fast as I could, but there is a nostalgia in realising how much time has passed and how unlikely it was that I would ever find myself prowling these old dilapidated neighborhoods wondering where the years have gone. Because they have gone and won't come back and all I can think to do is to keep on keeping on making every day count.Back at the conference center in Lake Tarpon I learned lots of good stuff about training new dispatchers, stuff my superiors at the police department will be happy to ignore, but in any event I doubt I will ever return to the grounds of the very clean, very mowed, very soulless conference center:
Nostalgia for this place? I guess I'll have to bear myself in patience and wait another twenty years.
Nostalgia for this place? I guess I'll have to bear myself in patience and wait another twenty years. 