Inkwatu

Tampa residents think of St. Petersburg as that enormous, mysterious, and unknown stretch of flatland between Tampa and the beaches on the Gulf of Mexico. One never gets off the route to the beach if it is at all possible because it means getting instantly lost in the confusing (to anyone but a St. Pete resident) matrix of identically numbered streets and avenues, made even more confusing because the avenues run at a 90° angle to the direction of avenues in New York.

Should a Tampa resident be so unlucky as to venture into St. Petersburg itself, everyone looks a little “odd” to them. They perceive an eccentricity about many St. Pete residents. Everything about St. Pete is unfamiliar to our friends across the bay. Our streets are wide, no big national chains in sight…folks WALK. Weird!

Tampans always breath a sigh of relief once they’ve finally reached the beach. Being a typical Tampan, it was a complete surprise for me to discover that I would come to love this city more than I imagined I could love anywhere. After 30+ years of living and teaching in Tampa, Florida, following my retirement from the university, I was very much at loose ends about where I wanted to live. I tried a couple different places, all lovely, but I felt like too much of a transplant. So, I returned to Tampa and eventually found my way across the bay to St. Petersburg. I was pretty sure I’d found Home. But, the decision to move here wasn’t 100% certain. I was right on the edge. I didn’t really know, for sure. I had plenty of good, solid, rational reasons to move here and plenty of emotional ones, but despite the overwhelming evidence that This-Was-It, I just couldn’t quite commit.

Then came the tie-breaker. Someone took me to Chattaway’s and…I knew.

I knew I belonged in St. Pete with all the rest of the eccentrics.

Chattaway’s is a restaurant open 7 days a week, 11 A.M. to 9:30 P.M. at 358 22nd Ave. S., St. Petersburg, FL 33705 (call 727-823-2594 for takeout). As with many other old-time St. Pete establishments, it’s CASH ONLY. The owners are English, although long-time Florida citizens. If you eat indoors, there are more Queen mum and Queen Elizabeth blue plate memorabilia than you’ll see anywhere west of the UK. However, most of the eating is alfresco, including the bar which is focused around an outdoor space heater. There are numerous wooden tables surrounded by sweet-smelling Confederate Jasmine on trellises, fences, arbors, and bath tub after bath tub filled with flowers. (I did mention eccentricities!) This is a place to indulge your inner Brit.

It’s the kind of joint that has “Specials.” On Mondays, it’s Cubans, Tuesdays, Catfish, Wednesdays, Sloppy Joe’s, Thursday, Spaghetti & Meat Sauce, Friday, Juanita’s Choice. Have you ever been to a restaurant that had Sloppy Joe’s on the menu?

They have domestic draft and domestic and imported bottled and canned beers, chili (!), authentic fish & chips, hot dogs, grilled cheese, and a vegetarian burger called the W.T. Colyer, Esquire, “Dedicated to the owner’s father who gave up meat for the love of his wife in 1915.”

They also have “baskets.” Remember “baskets”? Seems like every comfort food restaurant when I was a kid had “baskets.” Chicken Baskets. Shrimp Baskets. Chattaway’s has both those which of course include various sides and the main item in a “basket.”

[This point in the article corresponds to that point in a song where the composer suddenly shifts to a new key to, later, “cleverly” work back to the original key and theme.]

St. Petersburg is home to the Poynter Institute, a distinguished school of journalism. Quoting from their website, here’s their mission statement: “The Poynter Institute is a school dedicated to teaching and inspiring journalists and media leaders. It promotes excellence and integrity in the practice of craft and in the practical leadership of successful businesses. It stands for a journalism that informs citizens and enlightens public discourse. It carries forward Nelson Poynter’s belief in the value of independent journalism in the public interest.

Founded in 1975 by Nelson Poynter, chairman of the St. Petersburg Times and its Washington affiliate, Congressional Quarterly, the Institute was bequeathed his controlling stock in the Times Publishing Co. in 1978. As a financially independent, nonprofit organization, The Poynter Institute is beholden to no interest except its own mission: to help journalists seek and achieve excellence.”

We live in a world of 6 billion people, and that’s just counting the folks that are alive now. Lord knows how many people it would be if we added them all up. With all due respect to Laurie Anderson and her contention, in song, to the opposite, the dead probably do outnumber the living as William Cullen Bryant alludes in his poem, Thanatopsis. Estimates are there’s 60 billion of “them,” and only 6 billion of “us.” Given that amount of competition to one’s own creativity, there’s always going to be someone who said it first, and/or better. Bowing to that sobering fact, I hope you follow these three links to excellent features by Poynter Institute students that tell much, much more about Chattaway’s:

• Chattaburgers With a Side of Wisdom by Anne Jungen
• In the Kitchen, 55 Years of Memories by Hina Ala
• a Chattaway photo gallery by Jorgen Gulliksen

If my karma permits it, I hope I’m as lucky as those talented students and I get to study at Poynter in my next lifetime. For sure, though, this lifetime, I’ll be eating at Chattaway’s, often. See you there!

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