It was one of the first things I was told when I came to Tampa.
Be wise to South Tampa.
The people are different there, I was told.
Which people, I asked.
Society people. They think of themselves differently. They even have their own geography.
The people who said this, I thought they were crazy. I had to learn. These south of Kennedy people took Kennedy Boulevard to be a kind of Berlin Wall between their washed, perfumed selves, and the unwashed rest of us.
It was a mark of honor with them that they never had to drive north of Kennedy. Nearly everything they needed - boutiques, golf courses, divorce lawyers, plastic surgeons and most of the schools they deemed worthy of their perfectly behaved children - were SOK. (That's shorthand for south of Kennedy.)
This legend permeates all of Tampa.
It is true, but it is also not true.
There are pockets of what is swept up in the name South Tampa, for instance, where the code inspectors could have a field day with the mobile homes that shelter the working poor, and corners where police cruisers could work night after night on the drug holes.
Then come the places that make the real estate agents get that funny lilt to their voice when they say "South Tampa," places like the home on the Palma Ceia golf course where Jean Ann Cone lived.
She was the queen of South Tampa society, and nobody begrudged her the title. Republican. Tri-Delt sorority girl. Patron of every good cause. Wife of a millionaire, Douglas Cone, who had a secret so big he bumps every other cheating man back into the little leagues.
For a couple of decades, while he was living with his wife, Cone was carrying on with a woman named Hillary Carlson. This was no fling. There was a separate house. There were kids. There was another life in which Douglas Cone was known as Don Carlson.
And just two weeks after his wife died in March, there came an act so large it stripped away any pretense of grief. Douglas Cone married Hillary Carlson.
You could ask yourself how Cone got away with being such a scoundrel for so long. Sheer nerve has a lot to do with it.
But the answer lies in that business about real estate. He got away with it by crossing Kennedy Boulevard in his pursuit of happiness and never showing his face in places where his Palma Ceia pals might go.
That house he lives in with his new wife, Hillary, is in Lutz, on the opposite end of Hillsborough County from Palma Ceia. Who from SOK would ever think to go to Lutz?
Other sections of Hillsborough County may have the same sense of identity as South Tampa. I can't think of another with such a sense of snob appeal, misplaced and obnoxious. Do they get this way in Citrus Park? Valrico? Wellswood?
At the moment, snobbery has given way to a high sense of outrage on behalf of Jean Ann Cone, a feeling that she was deeply wronged in life and in death.
If you ask, you'll hear questions about whether she knew about her husband's secret life before she died.
Had she just been told and taken more than a couple of drinks to calm her nerves at the news?
Her friends will tell you she was never more than a social drinker. Yet she was found, slumped in her car, with a blood alcohol level more than twice the legal limit.
You've heard the rich are different from you and me.
Douglas Cone certainly is.
But he is not a product even the rich and comfortable of South Tampa would claim. He lives with his feet in two worlds, uncaring about the hurt he inflicts with each step, as long as he gets what he wants.
