Among the 40,000 books crammed into the Old Tampa Book Company, there is a particular gem, The Last Works of Matisse: 1950-1954. The book contains numerous lithographs, made under Matisse's direction, of the vibrant abstracts for which the celebrated French artist is known.
The book does not come cheap, but gems never are. The asking price is $1,400. And on Tuesday, somebody who found the book on the Internet decided to buy it.
Internet sales make up half the business of the downtown Tampa book shop that specializes in used and collectible books, everything from astrology to literary criticism to sports. There is a section dedicated to books about Florida. Most works are not pricey, like the Matisse book. Outside the store, two carts on the sidewalk are jammed with books that sell for a dollar.
You are in no danger of becoming a millionaire when you run a secondhand bookstore. You do it because you love it. And you have to be half-crazy to be in the business in Tampa's ever-moribund downtown. On Monday, the store sold all of 58 books to people who came in off the street.
Still the owners, Ellen and David Brown, persist. They have been at it for more than nine years, braving a downtown that dies once the lunch hour ends. St. Petersburg's downtown is starting to hum and thrive with restaurants and townhouses and shops in restored Central Avenue buildings. Downtown Tampa, meanwhile, remains a cluster of indistinguishable office high-rises with mirrored skins, shadeless sidewalks, parking lots and garages, a handful of restaurants, and only now and then, a store like the Old Tampa Book Company, with something that might catch your eye.
People have bemoaned and puzzled over the state of Tampa's downtown for years. They were at it again Tuesday, at the development forum of the Tampa Downtown Partnership, an organization of executives, planners, developers and property owners. Ellen Brown was in the audience, nursing her frustrations.
"I've gone to so many meetings, and heard so much stuff, and I don't see leaders standing up," she said later. "And I don't see developers coming up with plans."
It may be that no grand plan would work. The marketplace will decide what happens, and already some things are happening to, wonder of wonders, bring people downtown to do something other than work.
They may soon live there.
Next door to the bookstore, a few loft apartments are under construction. These are crucial, because they are in the heart of downtown. A few condominium projects are in the works, but they will go up on downtown's northern and western borders.
I won't complain. It's wonderful news. But what took them so long?
This is also Ellen Brown's question. Her business has struggled so long that she and her husband were ready to shut their doors and confine their business to the Internet, until last week when they made another leap of faith and signed a new five-year lease.
"I don't (stay) for economic reasons," she said. "I do it because I want to believe."
God bless her. Downtown needs more people like Ellen Brown. She has all sorts of ideas.
Why hasn't the city figured out that the unrelenting prosecution of drivers who let their parking meters lapse for even a few minutes is bad for business?
Where are the police when you need them?
Could the city tax owners of vacant property at a rate higher than those whose buildings are occupied?
What can be done to make sure that what development comes isn't solely of the high-rise variety?
I used to write regularly about downtown Tampa. It was confounding how a community with so much going for it - the breezy beaches a half-hour away, Super Bowls, a constant influx of new and optimistic transplants - could be so dead at its core.
I eventually dropped the subject. It was too discouraging. And what I said made no difference.
But that was then in downtown Tampa. This is now. Now is people like this hopeful pioneer, Ellen Brown. With luck, hers is the face of what's to come.
