I tend to daydream while I'm driving and rely on landmarks to remind me where I am, which is difficult on a drag lined with the chain stores: Eckerd, Home Depot, Target. Am I in North Tampa or Largo?
Fourth Street N in St. Petersburg had never been a problem. Sure, it has a lot of chains, but it also has local businesses to serve as landmarks.
But lately, something has happened. I'm driving down Fourth Street, and I see Bali Bay Trading Company, a near clone of the Bali Bay I pass on Bay to Bay Boulevard in South Tampa. Then Feet First, which is also on Bay to Bay. (A technicality: Feet First was on Fourth Street first, but the owner was the original operator of Athletic Shoe Factory on MacDill Avenue.)
Wine Warehouse? Yep, it's right around the corner, same as the one on Bay to Bay. Evos, the healthy fast food place on Howard Avenue that is known for its air fries and whose first location was on Bay to Bay, is here, too. So is the Pine Shop, the furniture store at Bay to Bay and MacDill.
What's going on? Is Fourth Street the new South Tampa? It's beginning to look that way.
The Tampa-owned megachain Outback Steakhouse recently has turned up on Fourth Street in a big way: Outback, yes, and also Carrabba's Italian Grill. (Bonefish Grill is here, too, but it originated on Fourth Street; then Outback bought it.)
The newish sort of hip national chains that hit South Tampa first, such as Panera Bread and Starbucks, now are on Fourth Street.
Some people are making the move, too; not to Fourth Street, but to the residential neighborhoods to the east of it. The older neighborhoods - with their 1920s bungalows, Mediterranean revivals and big trees - look a lot like South Tampa.
Cherie Doughtie, owner of Cherie's Eklectika, a quirky shop in downtown St. Petersburg, moved to St. Petersburg's Old Northeast from Hyde Park when she got married, even though her husband, Britt, works in downtown Tampa.
"I've never in my life been happier living anywhere," said Doughtie, who is from Orlando and has lived all over the world.
She raves about the expanses of public green space where their three children can play, the small-town feeling, the friendliness, the relative lack of transience compared with what she found in Tampa.
"I found it hard to have lasting relationships in Tampa," she said.
On the other hand, Sam Elizondo, a health care analyst who dabbles in real estate, made the move from Hyde Park to Venetian Isles in northeast St. Petersburg - then moved back to Tampa.
"I was way too bored in St. Pete," he said. "I felt isolated demographically. Shopping was horrible. Dining was better, although I was still doing most of my dining in Tampa. I was still doing most of everything in South Tampa."
He loves the natural beauty of St. Petersburg, the quiet charm of neighborhoods like the Old Northeast and the old Florida atmosphere of the city's downtown. He likes what he calls the "strong public aesthetic": clean, well-landscaped streets as opposed to neglected-looking Gandy Boulevard and S Dale Mabry Highway.
But, he said, "St. Petersburg has no buzz."
He bought a waterfront house on Davis Islands and paid the same price as he did for his waterfront property in St. Petersburg.
"This is how important South Tampa's urban buzz is to me," he said.
Even so, Elizondo is aware that Tampa is behind the curve.
"I still can't understand why we lack the amenities of other big Florida cities," he said, citing Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Miami, where he lived for eight years.
He's waiting for a Whole Foods Market or Trader Joe's, upscale groceries, to open in Tampa. He's also waiting for downtown to wake up.
"I love this area more than any other part of Florida," he said. "I want to stay."
But he might not wait forever.
Sandra Thompson, a writer living in Tampa, can be reached at tampa@sptimes.com City Life appears on Saturday.
