Tomorrow, the Sunshine City Antiques and Collectibles Show opens at the St. Pete Coliseum. Here’s the details from the City of St. Petersburg Events page.

January 8-10
Sunshine City Antiques and Collectibles Show, Friday 5pm to 8pm, Saturday and Sunday 10am to 5pm, $6 adults, 12 and under are free. This nationally recognized show features nearly 100 exhibitors of antique furniture, art, pottery, jewelry, silver, toys, and glass. The event also features a two-day Antiques Appraisal Fair. Held Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 2pm, $5 per item.

The photo at the top of this article is a panorama of the 2009 Antiques Show at the Coliseum. It, and of all the still photographs in this post, expand to full size if you click on them. I encourage you to at least take a peek at the panorama at full size.

Immediately above is a short embedded video from that same vantage point. I just wanted you to see the scope of the show and to hear the sounds to get a sense of the show’s ambiance.

The rest of the snapshots from the 2009 show I present without further comment except to say that two of my favorites are the model boat (immediately above), the folk-art jugs (immediately below), and the old lace exhibit (at the very end).

The Sea Hagg is a place my mother would have adored. I guess the love of kitsch, tchotchkes, schlock, “bad” art, curiosities, and the odd flotsam and jetsam of life is an inherited trait, because I know I’ve got the same affliction: the total inability to pass a seashell store without stopping!

That’s why, when driving around Cortez, Florida, with a friend, when I saw The Sea Hagg out of the corner of my eye, I asked my friend to stop. He did so gladly because he’d found a place he’d never seen before and he’s lived down there for 20 years (his wife and kids knew about the place but he didn’t; as he says, “they go shopping, I goes swimming”). We both enjoyed this place. My friend said to the owner, “this is a labor of love.” It is indeed.

You’re only allowed to take photographs in the Salvage Garden, the area outside the actual shop. All the pictures in this post are of that outside area. Each of the tiny thumbnails below opens to a much larger image. If you find that too tedious, you might want to just watch a slideshow of the same thing. The images in the slideshow are large, so it may take each image a few seconds to load.

The Sea Hagg (12304 Cortez Rd. W., Bradenton, FL 34209; 941-795-5756; map) is open Monday-Friday 9:30-5:30, Saturday 10-5, and Sunday By Appointment. If you’re interested in souvenirs and collectables of a nautical sort, this place is for you.

Kapok (Ceiba pentandra)

There is a splendid example of a kapok tree at the corner of Beach Drive and Central Avenue on the front lawn of the St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts. As I mentioned in an earlier post, It’s Not All Palm Trees, there are several unusual trees growing in Florida. The kapok is one of them. This article from the MFA, What’s that tree out in front of the Museum?, describes the tree and has a very nice close-up of the tree’s flowers.

Rather than me detail what a kapok tree is, please see this very readable one page discussion of kapok trees at Blue Planet Biomes/Kapok, a site created and developed by West Tisbury K-8 School (Martha’s Vineyard) teacher Elisabeth Benders-Hyde which she based on a biome project by Ann and Karl Nelson, 6th grade math and science teachers. I’m not sure how long that site will be up; so, I’ve taken the liberty of listing part of its bibliography below. However, do try their page; it’s excellent. Here’s the working links from their bibliography:

• Ceiba pentandra (Bombacaceae)
• Ceiba pentandra L.-Kapok tree

The Kapok Tree Restaurant

Time was, however, that if you mentioned the “Kapok Tree” to anyone in the Tampa Bay area, they would know you meant the Kapok Tree Restaurant up in Clearwater. When I was a baby professor back in 1969, the entire faculty and staff of the University of South Florida School of Music–then just a small department of music–would be treated to dinner at this restaurant at the beginning of each academic year. The Kapok Tree was a palace of kitsch that was THE place to take out-of-town company and to celebrate anniversaries or birthdays. It is no longer a functioning restaurant, but much of its unique interior has been preserved, although the space has been carved into three businesses only one of which has anything to do with food (a catering company). The Kapok Tree has a devoted following. Below are two sites by fellow fans of this Floridiana classic establishment (Ben’s is a “must see” site) and an article from the St. Pete Times about the history of the restaurant and the recent passing of its founder.

• Ben’s Tribute To Clearwater’s Fabled Kapok Tree Restaurant–Benzplace (great, OLD pictures with lots of history and walk-through slide shows; a real tribute site, not to be missed)
• The former Kapok Tree Restaurant Gardens–Virtual Tourist (good pictures of the old restaurant)
• Kapok Tree Founder

There are more unusual Florida trees waiting for posts. One of my absolute favorites is the Jacaranda mimosifolia, but that will have to wait until summer when its numerous, delicate purple flowers are in bloom. However, not all flowering trees need to be in bloom to be interesting, visually. The kapok tree is one of those. The tangle of its limbs cantilevering at improbable angles invites a whole village of hobbits to rest in its arms.

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The St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club dates back to January 24, 1924, and was known as “The World’s Largest Shuffleboard Club” with over 5000 members in its heyday. Though much diminished in size it is still a cherished St. Petersburg institution. In addition to providing a physical home for various local cultural activities such as SPIFFS , the Shuffleboard Club still hosts international shuffleboard tournaments. The season for these tournaments is October through March. Visitors of all ages are welcome throughout the year. There is a $1.00 daily membership fee for visitors. (That’s not a typo. That’s ONE DOLLAR…can’t find a better deal anywhere.) For information on the tournaments click here and, for an aerial photo of the facility, click here.

However, for me, the primary significance of the Shuffleboard Club is that it is home to something that our world really needs these days: a family-friendly, gentle environment where, every Friday night from 7 to 11pm, entirely free, people of all ages can gather to have simple fun by playing shuffleboard.

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According to the St. Pete Shuffle’s website, “The Shuffle is a joint effort of The Artillery, Pinellas Heritage and the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club, and was designed to generate civic activity and reintroduce the Mirror Lake Recreation Complex to the community. Our goal is to build a broad constituency of advocates for this generation’s equivalent of the Million Dollar Pier.”

The primary way the St. Pete Shuffle does this is through their regular Friday night events where folks play shuffleboard to the accompaniment of some very hip tunes from an iPod connected to a small speaker system. People are invited to bring their own coolers, but cold drinks are available for free. If this scene sounds a little odd to you, you should try it. I think you’ll be surprised how laid back and relaxing the experience is. It is very mellow.

It is also charming to discover the mix of generations who interact so naturally. I counted at least four generations playing shuffleboard together at the Holiday Craft Shuffle this past week (the pictures in this post are from that event). From a few oldsters my age down through middle aged couples, plus young adults with their kids setting up their shuffleboard pieces in careful imitation of their parents, it was testament to the shared humanity that awaits when the televisions and video games are turned off.

In October, a Shuffle special events was the Bike Night. Last week was the Holiday Crafts event. Coming up, January 9th, will be Tonga Night, when the Shuffle will partner with SPIFFS. (I was the guest of honor at a Tonga banquet in Hawaii once and it was a wonderful event. I’m not sure if Tonga Night will have food, but my guess is they will. You’re in a for a treat, regardless.) February 13th will be India Night. This is the second time the Shuffle has had an India night. I missed the last one, which I hear was a real hit. I won’t miss it this time.

Go to the main Shuffle website to sign up for the mailing list, or stay in touch via their MySpace page or blog.

There’s an outstanding and important article on issues facing the Shuffle and the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club here. It details the efforts to keep this historical facility alive and well.

link to video

The visual highlight of the Shuffle’s Holiday Crafts event this past Friday was a projected installation by artist David Meek, who is a designer with Phillip Gary Design (622 1st Avenue South Suite 2, St. Petersburg, FL, 33701; 727-895-4092) which is located on the floor directly above Studio@620, another important St. Pete fine arts center. Above is a short YouTube video of just a fraction of David’s light installation from the Shuffle’s Holiday Crafts event.

I first met David when I was helping out with the St. Petersburg Opera (Inkwatu St. Pete Opera post). Phillip Gary Design, under David’s direction, did the posters for at least six of SPO’s operas that I know of. There’s a slideshow of those six, very powerful posters at the Inkwatu Flickr set, “SPO Posters.” I hope you also go to the Phillip Gary website to check out their extended and colorful presentation of their other projects.

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Pictured above are Christine Page and Chris Kelly, two of the many people who make the St. Pete Shuffle happen. According To Kelly, “Friday nights are ‘open to the public’ events: never a charge to play, for equipment, beverages or snacks, freeze-pops, ice cream, spam sushi, etc. The board of governors feels very strongly that Shuffle should remain free, with a goodwill donation. We encourage membership however. Membership is $21.40 a year (including tax). There is also a Tuesday night League that includes membership and a T-shirt for $40. All members can get a key to the equipment shed, which features enough gear for 8 courts (32 people), chalk, erasers, keys to the bathrooms, etc.” For more information on memberships, download this PDF. Through this secure link, it is possible to join online. However, it is important to remember that membership is not required for the totally free, Friday night events.

The St. Pete Shuffle board is Jen Thompson, Mary Eldridge, Sue Stanczyk, Joey Norton, Dan Hahn, Christa Fairbrother, Joyce Linna, John Dudley, Sara Hoeber, Christine Page, and Chris Kelly.

link to video

Above is a short video of some folks having fun shuffleboarding this past Friday night. Below is a court and barrel of sticks ready and waiting for YOU. See you on the courts.

(Remember how to play and score shuffleboard? If not, here’s the rules at mastergames.com)

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If you’re reading this blog, the chances are pretty good that you’re reading lots of other blogs, and if you’re doing that, the chances are even better that you’re a Reader (upper case “R” in case you missed it) and you read real books, too, and reading books has been an important part of your life since childhood. I’m a reader, too. Thousands of hours lying on the floor reading in all kinds of bad light, far too closely, and at an extremely bad angle, left me myopic and overweight, but it also left me with a passion for reading and books and the world that can be created between our ears that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

The main character of John Dunning’s Cliff Janeway “Bookman” novels is a former cop turned bookseller/appraiser who, in one of the novels, classifies folks—such as you and I—who have book collections. Cliff Janeway says one of the types are those who collect books just to posses them as a compulsion without regard to their individual significance (almost any books on the shelf would do as long as there were many of them).

If you’ve never read any of the “Bookman” series, you’ve a treat awaiting you. These are mystery novels a cut above most. Publishers Weekly calls them “compulsively readable.” That’s the truth. I suggest buying them all at the same time, because you’ll want to pick up the next one in the series to read, immediately upon finishing the first one.

You and I are definitely not in Cliff Janeway’s indiscriminate collector category. I’m sure you’re like me in which each book in your or my collection has a significance of its own and has not only been read once, but probably many times. That significance can vary, of course. Sometimes it’s the information in the book. Sometimes it’s its commercial value (such as a rare, signed first edition). Sometimes its power to move us (fiction or non-fiction that speaks to our heart). And sometimes it’s nostalgia.

I don’t have many nostalgia books, but I have a few. The story of my discovering the pleasure of owning a book for nostalgia’s sake began while recently living part of a year in New Orleans. Around the corner from the place in the French Quarter where I was staying was a tiny bookshop on a back street, Kaboom Books. As bookworms will do, I wandered around looking at titles, just enjoying myself, with no purpose other than simple exploration.

I came upon two old editions of Horatio Alger novels. Not being particularly valuable editions, they were cheap enough I felt I could indulge myself and buy some books that had shaped my father’s generation. I had heard about them but never read them, so my motivation was probably more curiosity than nostalgia.

Now, old books—and I mean really old books—have been a part of our family’s life for generations since my father, sister, both paternal and maternal grandfathers, and possibly even a few more beyond that were Methodist ministers who all had extensive libraries in their homes which included frighteningly old Bibles and, my favorites, ancient hymnals. So, old books are a comfort “food” for me. But buying the Alger novels kind of sparked a new slant on the meaning for me of old books. I began to see, now that I’m an old “book” myself, how my own life arch intersected old books I discovered.

The next solid step on this path of personal archeology came at a charity silent auction where I bid on two books I remember reading in grade school. I actually remember sitting in the little southern Illinois town’s public library reading them. I remember even the quality of the light from the windows above me while reading, the dust motes in the air, the tactile quality of the wooden chair, the pre-air conditioning air. I was particularly fond of the Indian book and would fantasize for hours about being in the woods with my bow and arrow and loin-cloth. Fortunately, I won the bid at the auction and have been able to read the books again.

(An aside: I think the folks who write fiction and non-fiction for kids deserve a lot more thanks and appreciation than they probably get. They’re the ones who shape generations of readers. Without any Doctor Dolittle, Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, or Nancy Drew, chances are there wouldn’t even be anyone primed to read War and Peace.)

Which brings us to the book pictured at the top of this post: Dave Dawson with the Air Corps from the Dave Dawson War Adventure Series. Now, one of the facts of life about being in the family of a rural minister was that you were also poor. You lived in a house provided by the church, called a parsonage, and it wasn’t considered seemly (or necessary) to give the preacher much of a salary. Sometimes, they just gave you leftover foodstuff. Or whatever else it was they wanted to get rid of. So it was that I wound up owning all dozen or so of the Dave Dawson books that were published during WWII. Although they were published a couple years before I was born and I was reading them 10 years after the war, I loved these books. I think it’s because of them that, today, I enjoy suspense and adventure fiction so much.

This past year, the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair was at the Coliseum here in St. Pete. (The next one is March 13, 2009, and you can be sure I’ll be there, camera in hand.) As I wandered up and down the aisles of the 2008 book fair, I happened upon the stall of Lighthouse Books, ABAA – owned by Michael & Cathie Slicker (1735 First Avenue North, St. Petersburg, FL 33713; 727-822-3278; LighthouseBooksABAA@verizon.net). About twenty years ago, I had been in their tiny St. Pete store but had not been back since. So, my curiosity was aroused. I stepped into their book fair stall and discovered one of the reading passions of my youth: Dave Dawson (pictured at top of article). I bought it. Beside the joy of owning it, I found it also prompted me to re-explore Lighthouse Books itself.

I’ve always measured the culture of a town in the ratio of taxidermy
shops to independent bookstores. In this regard, St. Petersburg fairs pretty well. I’ve covered two other St. Pete bookstores that I haunt, Wilson’s Bookworld and Haslam’s Book Store. Lighthouse Books is right up there with them in my personal pantheon of local independent bookstores.

Their copy says they have ” Floridiana, Americana, Caribbean/Latin American History, Southern Literature, Maps, and General Antiquarian books.” That, for sure, and much more. Every wall in this tiny, one or two bedroom cottage where they have been located since 1984 (before that it was farther downtown) has a floor to ceiling bookcase. In front of each bookcase there are books stacked several bookshelves high. You literally have to turn sideways to wiggle through the warrens of Lighthouse Books. Nothing’s haphazard. Everything is quite organized, but there are more books in one space than you might think possible.

There was half of one whole wall devoted to the Civil Way that my Mississippi Cuzn Don would have loved. Another cranny was dedicated to genealogical books among which I noted several for research into the, I’m sure, frustratingly tangled roots of African-American ancestry. And…an entire room of antiquarian children’s literature!

They were all there. Dave Dawson. I treated myself to a $3 one and a $6 one. I’m hooked, aren’t I.

Lighthouse Books is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10.00 am – 5.00 pm.

Florida 1920 Foldout

For almost as long as folks have been coming south to Florida to vacation, picture postcards of Florida scenes have been a staple. They are highly collectible now. In today’s post, I’m very pleased to present scans of vintage Florida postcards from the collection of a good friend here in St. Petersburg, Fran Sims.

They’re presented here in slideshows: 400 pixel ones embedded in the body of the blog and full screen ones through external links. They’re grouped according to the descriptions you see in the headings. This first collection is from 1920.

Florida Pass-a-grille Foldout

This collection of Pass-a-Grille, Florida, postcards (see my Pass-a-Grille Beach Inkwatu post) is from a little later decade. Notice the color palette. Already you see the archetypical “Florida” colors, especially that specific quality of orange.

Florida Foldout 1

By the time of this collection, you also start to see the style of typography that is so associated with Florida “kitsch.”

There are frequent shows of vintage commercial items, including–but hardly limited to–postcards. I go to all of them I can because they evoke such warm memories of childhood vacations for me. There’s every possible item with a “Florida” theme. These things are usually described as Floridiana.

One promoter of these festivals is Hula Productions, here in St. Pete. The 2009 Festival will be Saturday, February 7, 2009, at the Gulfport Casino Ballroom (5500 Shore Blvd. South, Gulfport, Florida 33707).

Florida Foldout 2

There are, of course, websites specializing in Floridiana, such as this appropriately named website, Floridiana.

The digital Floridiana collection of the University of South Florida library includes oral histories as well as Florida African-American histories.

Florida Postcards 1

An image search for “Florida Postcards” yields well over 147,000 images. A similar web search will give websites of enthusiasts, hobbyists, and sellers. Yes, sellers—an individual postcard can easily start at $5.

A nice site, is St. Petersburg Florida Postcards which has a number of items, including maps and calendars, for sale.

There are at least two local entrepreneurs who have business that imprint enlarged vintage St. Petersburg and Florida postcards on computer mouse pads, coasters, tiles, throw-pillows, trays, etc. If you go to the St. Petersburg Saturday Morning Market (see my Inkwatu post on the market), you’ll see them there. The company with which I’m the most familiar is Bonnie and Sam Rivenbark who have a stall at the Saturday Morning Market and from whom I’ve made purchases in the past. These times make perfect gifts for your friends and relatives up north!

Again, a special thanks to Fran Sims for letting me publish scans of her collection of vintage St. Petersburg postcards.

Florida Postcards 2