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City Life

Eclectic current runs through S Manhattan

By SANDRA THOMPSON
Published March 12, 2005

It started with an ad for the Djembe Cafe and Urban Wellness Center. I expected it to be in Seminole Heights or off-Seventh-Avenue Ybor, but S Manhattan Avenue? That's where I live, more or less. Where was it?

It occurred to me that I'm always in farflung neighborhoods looking around, but in my own neighborhood I just drive by places. So I set out to explore - let's call it the S Manhattan corridor (SoMaCo), from Fair Oaks Avenue at the south end to just north of El Prado Boulevard.

I found the Djembe Cafe in an obscure strip center across from Earl's Garden Shop - Nursery. Earl has been there for more than 50 years and has a sign offering free landscaping to people 85 and older if accompanied by their parents.

The cafe is still a work in progress. Paint cans were on the floor and tables not in use, although you could have tea at the counter. The non-cafe space sells African drums (that's what "djembe" means), wooden flutes, books and CDs. Sun Dog Yoga just moved here from S Dale Mabry.

I asked the man working in the cafe if people would find this place.

"You found it," he pointed out.

But I'm always looking, I told him. That's the type of person they want, he said, "those who are searching."

Up the street, Dairy Joy looks like a 1950s roadside ice cream stand right out of my childhood. It has been here since 1958. You can get a soft-serve cone for less than a buck, a dipped cone or a frozen banana and a dozen different sundaes. The same family has owned the place for three generations.

Minnows and Monsters - "Tackle with Teeth" - is a place I've driven past a million times. The guy behind the counter, who was later identified by his card as "Capt. Cookie Diaz," was telling a customer about a New Yorker who had called to ask about a lure on the Web site, so he stuffed some in an envelope and sent them to him to try, no charge.

I asked the captain if the holographic lures work.

"All lures work," he said. "It just depends who's using them."

At Manhattan and Euclid Avenue a building under construction now has a sign announcing ShapeXpress. Inside is an empty shell - no interior walls or ceiling - but owner Jana Clark had a table set up to show photos of ShapeXpress interiors in other cities to anyone who could figure out how to get past the Verizon crew into her parking lot.

Just up the street, Leo's Beach Park Health Club is a funky-looking place that has always intrigued me. Inside is down-to-basics body building, and if you have any doubt whether his programs work, you haven't seen Leo. He was at the desk. He has been there for 25 years.

Continuing north, a psychedelic-yellow former marine supply store now houses the Golden Egg, the school uniform store that used to be on Henderson, and the 2-week-old Poco Pattino, a children's shoe store. The latter is owned by Leigh Peters, a sixth-generation Tampan who left the New York fashion biz, and came back to Tampa when she was expecting her first child. The shoes from Italy are so fabulous, and the slippers from California so artful I wanted to buy them, even though I don't have an appropriate-age child.

At Imagine That, three rugrats were underfoot, Barbies and toys scattered on the floor, while their young moms tried on the boutique's very hip clothes. All sale stuff had just been marked down to $10, so I trolled the racks and bought a top marked down from $54. It looked really incongruous when it opened here four years ago, but now it seems to fit.

Just before Manhattan turns residential, Suncoast Interiors has had people poring over wallpaper books for ages and the Ravioli Co., transplanted from Hyde Park a few years ago, makes two dozen kinds of ravioli, a dozen pasta sauces and great takeout gourmet. I have their menu on my refrigerator.

I left out some places. Backyard Connection had some cool looking Adirondack chairs, and there's Pondscapes, Angler's Addiction. When the street is widened and the dead gas station and bank drive-through and medical clinic are reincarnated, there will be more.

SoMaCo?

It could happen.

Sandra Thompson, a Tampa writer, can be reached at sandrathompson1@mac.com City Life appears on Saturday.

[Last modified March 12, 2005, 00:48:09]