You may not be personally familiar with Peter Belmont, but chances are you’ve come across the fruits of his 40 years of volunteer labor in St. Petersburg. Have you ever attended Movies in the Park? Or taken a walking tour with Preserve the ‘Burg? Maybe you’ve shopped in the Crislip Arcade or sipped a drink on the verandah of the Vinoy. If so, then you’ve had a brush with Belmont’s legacy. Over his decades of activism, Belmont has left such a mark on the city that his recent cancer diagnosis prompted a flurry of efforts by friends and admirers to honor his work.… Read More

Ed Baird was 9, and Allison Jolly was 10 – two local kids looking for something to do on summer vacation – when their parents enrolled them in “learn to sail” lessons at the St. Petersburg Sailing Center. Both would go on to be superstars in the world of sailing. But at the time they were just having fun, hanging out with friends on the water. 

“The Sailing Center was our home away from home,” Jolly recalls. “It was a very safe and welcoming environment.”  

St. Petersburg was still a small town not yet discovered, then.… Read More

Jacqueline Nickson Cotman and Dr. H. Earl Cotman are an amazing couple, gracing our city with their considerable talents and civic activities for many years. They arrived in St. Petersburg in 1981 from East Lansing, Michigan. Earl was invited to join the staff of Bayfront Hospital as a radiation oncologist after serving as assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, chief of radiation therapy at William Beaumont Army Medical Center while in the service at Ft. Bliss, Texas, and as associate in radiation oncology at Edward W. Sparrow Hospital in Lansing. In addition to his tenure at Bayfront, he established the practice of radiation oncology at St.… Read More

Historic landmarks, especially cherished churches, require TLC, and so it is with First United Methodist located across from Williams Park in downtown St. Petersburg. The church dates its history back to 1889, a year after the city’s founding. The first church building was erected in 1892 and later succeeded by a second building on the corner of 2nd Avenue North and 3rd Street in 1902. The present grand structure dates from 1925-27. 

It was a challenge to get the church built. After much of it was constructed in 1925, an outer wall collapsed, virtually requiring construction to start anew. Upon rebuilding, the church was retrofitted with an interior steel frame.… Read More

If you bump into Tampa Bay’s media guru and Beach Drive resident Elliott Wiser walking around downtown St. Pete on September 24, don’t be surprised if you see a big smile on his face. It was on that day in 1997 he launched Bay News 9, the popular 24-hour news channel here in Tampa Bay. 

 Yes, 25 years ago Wiser had a dream. A vision. And while retired now, it is with a sense of accomplishment and pride that he describes a project that seemed surreal at the time. 

“This idea started out as a new concept for a TV station,” he explains.… Read More

The first rule of the St. Petersburg Bike Co-op: It’s not a bike shop. For a total of six hours a week, the co-op at 559 Mirror Lake Drive North is open for anyone to come in and buy a bike or get a bike repair. The bikes are mostly donated or built from scratch by shop volunteers and mechanics. That factor allows prices to be extremely low. 

“I didn’t enjoy working for profit,” says shop coordinator Caelan Jeffery. “Working with expensive bikes and pompous people, it’s not for me.” 

Along with a fluctuating team of about 10 volunteers, mechanic and co-op coordinator Jeffery runs the show in an equal distribution of power that only a co-op can truly attain.… Read More

Though he’s an anthropologist rather than an archaeologist, Bryan T. Shuler is an adventurer, scholar, professor, musician, pilot, and all-around fascinating guy – much like Indiana Jones, except that Shuler is the real deal. Sometimes, when he is on one of his adventures, he even wears a hat that looks suspiciously like the iconic fedora.

Shuler’s life reads like an adventure novel, with wild tales from his globe-trotting escapades: getting charged by a bull elephant as a Fulbright Scholar in Ghana; being surrounded by whales as the onboard anthropologist for the National Geographic Explorer during a six-week expedition off the coast of Africa; hiking in the Yung Frau region in the Swiss Alps; he still recalls “the breathtaking view and thrill of crossing a glacier in a crevice.”… Read More

Seeing the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club trophy wall on Netflix feels like a glitch in the Matrix. Cindy Smith-Maglione, a Redington Beach resident and the former vice president of merchandising for Abercrombie & Fitch, gave an interview under the iconic white-and-green shuffleboard club sign in White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch on Netflix. It’s not just any documentary – it was one of the top shows on the streaming service.

Staff members at St.… Read More

St. Petersburg was once known largely for its senior population, but that demographic did not begin to develop until about 1950. Between 1930 and 1940, the proportion of those 65 and older ranged from 10% to 15%, although this was still substantially higher than the total US population. In 1960, the percent of those 65 years and older was 28%, and peaked at 31% in 1970. As of 2019, the percentage was a fraction over 20%, still above the national average around 17%.

St. Petersburg has a long history of its senior population supporting the city, and the city offering a helping hand to seniors who need it.… Read More

What do a wealthy real estate speculator, a Confederate veteran, and a holocaust survivor have in common? They all called the same corner of the Old Northeast their home. 

The house at 1630 Locust Street had been in Dave Bennett’s family since his mother bought it in 1974. Back then, it still featured two apartments on the second floor, remnants of its years as a guest house. Dave and his wife, Pam, bought it in 1996 when the large home became too much for his mother to care for. They’d done some cursory research as they renovated the home over the years, but like many residents in St.… Read More