“Whatever’s local and whatever you like best, please”.
The bright orange and yellow beer cans on our pavement table were picked by my go-to bar order when in a new place and too thirsty for important decisions. This lucky dip selection can sometimes lead to very questionable results, but this time it gave out ‘Sunshine City’.
Brewed just around the corner by this city’s first microbrewery and bearing one of its two nicknames, it’s a fitting tipple given that Emily and I are seeking out shade from the endless winter sun of St. Pete early on a Saturday afternoon in late February.
Dressed in sequinned gold, a 6’2 drag queen - give-or-take a stiletto heel inch or three - stands at the bar’s doorway flirtatiously imploring curious passers-by, shielding their eyes from the brightness of the sun and the sparkles, to come and join the bottomless brunch cabaret indoors. The already-packed tables of young and old, extrovert and introvert, bold and bashful don’t look like they’d even notice the extra company - but it would definitely be welcomed with open arms.
If this is the city derided by Americans as ‘God’s Waiting Room’, then we can’t wait to get to heaven.
It’s a couple of days into our little road trip along the west coast of Florida, and we are already on our way to finding out what it takes to change a reputation.
. . .
St Pete, Florida could just have easily been called Detroit, Florida.
Its founding story, which like most founding stories probably contains a sprinkle of myth alongside a kernel of fact, concerns two men and a coin toss. To the winner, the spoils of naming this new settlement. Both, rather unimaginatively, wanted to name it in tribute to their respective hometowns - Saint Petersburg for Peter Demens and Detroit for John C. Williams. The Russian won - records don’t record whether it was tails or heads - and Williams had to settle for the naming rights of the city’s first hotel.
And so, The Sunshine City in The Sunshine State, which once saw a record 768 days of straight blue skies, was named after a place where the mercury gets as low as -9 degrees celsius come winter. Perhaps because of that dissonance, or perhaps because of Cold War awkwardness, the residents took to calling it plain ol’ St Pete.
Outsiders though would know it better by that ‘God’s Waiting Room’ moniker.
Because of that wonderfully predictable tropics climate, its Gulf of Mexico beaches and water, and the arterial Interstate 75 running straight down from the mid-western states of the US, much of Florida in the 60s & 70s became a magnet for retirees in their 60s & 70s.
(For Brits, just think of the Margates or Bournemouths of old with much, much better weather. And better beaches. And better teeth.)
However, this demographic shift meant much of Florida, but especially the St Pete area, became viewed as a place that was really only geared for those looking to (quite rightly) make their last few chapters as enjoyable, sun-filled, and amenable as possible. The Snowbirds looking to escape harsh winters. Parts of Florida’s coast became known for a pace more suited to those above a certain age.
A sort of permanent sunny side up holiday retirement community.
Yet, the places and people Emily and I visit across our three days spent exploring downtown St Pete, especially in the EDGE District, don’t tally with what one would assume is a city catering primarily for those in the autumn of their years. There are at least three vegan restaurants, midcentury modern furniture boutiques, a kick-ass little Cuban street food sandwich stall down the road from a wonderful outdoor taco joint, cool coffee shops and bars in flamingo pastels, neon or exposed brick, autoshops converted into microbreweries, secret pizza places, street-art murals, and even a specialist dairy-free gelato shop.
It feels young. It feels cool. It feels like a millennial’s playground.
It’s certainly more hipster than hip-replacements.
Perhaps younger people haven’t just stuck around the waiting room, but taken over.
Debbie, who runs food tours in the EDGE District and betrays her English roots only on the odd syllable or two, tells us things started to shift in St Pete about a decade or so ago. Parts of downtown were dilapidated or abandoned, unpopular to the business or pleasure crowd, And, where empty industrial units appear alongside cheap rents in a forgotten corner of any city, a place has two destinies: either it shrivels and dies, or the artists arrive.
The beautiful painted walls and streets all over this city reveal the direction taken.
The locals we speak to make it clear that a burgeoning reputation for taking art seriously here is welcomed, and underpins much of St Pete’s new cool direction and community-led rebranding. For a mid-sized city like this - the population is just over 260,000 people - the dozen or so downtown art galleries, open studios, new museums, and seven designated ‘art districts’, complementing the long-standing waterfront Dali Museum, point to an outsized influence from the culture & arts community.
For travellers like us though, passing through for a few days or using it as a base for coastal day trips, it’s the flowers which bloom from the strong roots and seeds of a local creative community which are the strongest evidence of its presence. After all, many places lay claim to an improving arts scene or evolving cultural attitude by way of a new museum here, a new gallery there.
The difference for St Pete though? It’s got the Shine Mural Festival.
The festival was created by the non-profit St. Petersburg Arts Alliance, and brings local and international artists together every October to lead the way in the makeover of wide-open public spaces, and hidden darks corners. There are lego-inspired declarations of inclusive love, a portrait of Twiggy down a back alley, odes to the city, its sunshine and its people, sea magicians, and a furious shark chewing metal gates.
Its short and long-term visual impact has transformed pockets of the city into an open-air art exhibit.
As of 2020, there are 550 street-art murals and counting, some on an impossible large scale, and finding them on foot or two wheels is definitely one of the best things to do in St Pete. And, if our travels across the years have taught us anything, it’s that wherever great street art goes, street cred is sure to follow.
There are still many retirees in St Pete though. And that is, of course, no bad thing at all.
On our food tour, one couple from Wisconsin are on their fourth or fifth winter trip to the west coast of Florida. This trip, alongside some winter sun seeking, is specifically to scope out places for their retirement shortlist. They want somewhere near the beach with a good quality of life, two things that will always be in abundance in the wider St Pete / Clearwater area. But this is their first time in the EDGE District - the first time they’ve heard about the restaurants and the street art and the more youthful energy which symbolise the new story of those who choose to move to, or visit, St Pete.
The grandsons and granddaughters of the generation who would have known it only as a place to retire twenty years ago, who now see it regularly featured on various lists as the best places for millennials to move to in the US.
However, a place perhaps doesn’t have to sacrifice one generation to bring in the other - and the secret in the sauce is creating a future identity where both lifestyles can complement one another, rather than come into community conflict.
After slurping on mushroom ramen at the packed out underground den of Ichicoro Ane, we spent our Friday night at the St Pete Shuffleboard Club. Shuffleboard, for the unacquainted, is a little like bowls and curling had a love child to create a sport for the sedentary. With cue sticks and discs, one uses the former to slide the latter into a pyramid at the other side of the lane, scoring points for where the discs lie. Once a favourite recreational activity for the elderly and cruise ship lovers, it fell out of favour over the decades. The St Pete Club, the oldest shuffleboard club in the world, went from 5,000 members in the 1950s, to just 35 members in 2000.
In a last-gasp effort for survive, the members and a group of young artists known as The Artillery, opened the club’s doors to the public on Friday nights to create a fun, community atmosphere - and the results took everyone by surprise
Shuffleboard in St Pete is back in a big way, with a 1,200 strong membership fuelled by the young residents and incomers adopting it as their own social club. Groups of friends, young families, other tourists, as well as older stalwarts, bring beer and snacks from home to play, to socialise, and to bring in the Floridian weekend together under the floodlights. On our visit, we had to wait twenty minutes for one of 80 courts to become available!
That traditional community institutions of the old way of life gain new life, and new energy, from those who may not have stuck around, or arrived here before, is a heartening model for the future.
“This city used to be a place where people came to die,” he told us.
Our explorations of St Pete with our cameras brought us to a freshly painted yet to be opened cellar wine bar & bottleshop. Its facade had all the hallmarks of kitsch post-modern Americana colour schemes and typography which we had fallen for throughout our time in west coast Florida, and we stopped to take a few shots. This was clearly going to be the sort of wine bar where you could drink from the bottle if you chose, the soundtrack would be rock not jazz, and you definitely wouldn’t have to dress fancy to get in.
The owner, with skater curls flicking out from under his baseball cap and a baby in the crook of his left arm, stepped out and welcome us to his adopted city. He shared that he had moved here from California, that life here was less ‘buttoned-up’ then in Miami, and that he had commissioned a local street artist to paint the photogenic storefront. The philosophy of his bar was brief and to the point: “Life is short. Drink like it.”
He planned to open up in a couple of months.
Clearly, with a new reputation forged by art and creativity in the sunshine, St Pete is now a place where people are coming to live.
We visited St Pete / Clearwater in partnership with Visit Florida.
Thank you to our additional partners, including Visit St Pete / Clearwater, Hertz, the Don Cesar Hotel, and the Opal Sands Resort.
Read all about our favourite things to do in St Pete next!
