By JACQUIN SANDERS

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 19, 1999

Paris has a broad, tree-lined boulevard, the Champs Elysees. It leads to the magnificent Arc de Triomphe.

The Pier was built in 1973. Years later, it underwent a $12-million renovation, reopening in 1988. Attendance has gone up and down, often depending on the popularity of exhibits at the nearby Florida International Museum. [Times photo: Yalonda M. James]

St. Petersburg has a broad, tree-lined boulevard, too. It leads to a puzzling little piece of comic relief called The Pier.

In these parts the first joke a child learns is not, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" It's, "Why did they build The Pier upside down?" (It's always The Pier -- never the Pier, and never just Pier. The Pier.)

Poor The Pier. It is one of those sad structures that never looks right, that nothing good ever happens to.

It was supposed to attract tourists, and did, but they were the wrong kind. They're good people, these tourists, but not exactly upscale. Lots of guys showing fat knees under Bermuda shorts, gazing wistfully at other guys casting their lines into the murk.

Lots of older women, too, looking distrustfully at skimpy swimsuits and doing more strolling than spending.

Like fumes from the pipe dreams that have hung over St. Petersburg for decades, The Pier was supposed to attract prestigious merchants. What it got was T-shirt emporiums. Bloomie's never showed. Nieman didn't even tell Marcus.

The Pier went up -- or was it down? -- in 1973. From the beginning, it tried too hard. Still does. The paving on its boulevard is dollhouse cute. Its bus-trolleys are nothing short of darling. Often, music fills the air, indeed nearly blows the air out to sea. Like Willie Loman, The Pier is "liked but not well-liked."

It wasn't always so. Back in 1889 the Railroad Pier had a bathing pavilion with a toboggan slide, and nobody demanded a diving board. Later the Electric Pier (1906) flashed its lights and preened for postcard pictures, and people smiled and bought cards and sent them back to frozen-over Michigan.

Last of the lovable piers was the Million Dollar Pier (1926-1967). There were a hundred reasons to amble on down to that pier. Among them:

• The chance to hear Peg 'o' My Heart played by an 18-person harmonica band, nearly all of whom claimed they learned their skills from the great Borah Minevich, or at least from one of his Harmonica Rascals.
• The lectures, given by college professors, on the history of tourists' home states.
• Fox-trot sessions that lasted till dawn, or at least till midnight came and the band played Good Night, Ladies.

The Pier has always had a couple of pretty good restaurants, and lately the shops have gotten better. Still no Bloomies, but the imposition of a no-more-than-one-T-shirt-store rule reduces clutter. Great Explorations is a fun museum for kids, and the aquarium is good on picture displays, but oddly short on fish.

But if there's one thing that sums up the hard luck of The Pier, it is the Notorious Tale of the Two Lasers.

The original, installed in 1978 on the third floor of the upside-down building, cost $45,000 and sent "a beam of green" up the boulevard. Unfortunately, the green kept shorting out. A team of Honeywell engineers, donating its services, couldn't keep the contraption functioning. The city later ditched it and got another laser, but it wasn't much better.

In 1984, Tampa got a laser of its own, beaming new shades of green. Green for nausea. The Tampa laser made The Pier's look peaked. St. Petersburg threw in the towel and donated its laser to the University of South Florida physics department -- which probably ought to see what it can do about that building.